Nigerian Women – A Different Breed?

Today, I tried to catch a quick swim before Ghana’s failed football final, but changed my mind at the poolside, for the water showed slightly green. Before I turned around, I ‘glamoured’ this group of 5 or 6 Nigerian girls gaily splashing about. They cat-pawed observers like me with their clothes-off body-confidence, easygoing splendour of fun, and the lingering look they lavish you with when something about you interests them. All this, and they were not even lovelier than the local competition... didn’t need to be.

10-Second History of Ghanaian Corruption

Just observing a trend, under military governments, soldiers have become rich. Under democracy, the wealth has gone to civilians. Corruption is always a coincidence...

Bookshop Brute

I observed an Asian Aunty and her attendant, a Ghanaian guard/greyhound. She was looking for receipt books. She stood stone-like at one cool spot and sent him countless times to sundry shelves. Every time he returned, she would yell that he'd made a gaffe, and slap the books out of his hands onto the floor. I am wondering what was making her do that.

Dodo Driving in the city of Accra

Necrophiliac Neanderthal, you stopped dead in front of me, in the middle of the street for a fate-flogged farm girl to ‘frog’ into your car. When you looked down, as I drove past, were you more ashamed of the wench or your dodo driving?

Rat Race v Human Race

Question:
What's the difference between a Rat Race and the Human Race?

Answer:
A Rat Race is run by humans, not rats; the Human Race has some 'rats' in it, but no running at all.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Adultery

Why doesn’t “Adultery” mean doing the things that adults do, like lying habitually, or having sex, or having sex with other people’s people, or treating children like they’re small? Anything that adults typically do...

Can Cantata Get Any Tarter?

I accept that we mustn’t criticise creativity too cruelly or we could crush and cremate it. But, please, would some maundering meddler kindly clarify how “Cantata” crept onto national TV in the first place?

A Big-Bad-Wolf in Every Office?

Does every job-hunting girl, in this bitty city, have to fob off randy Big-Bad-Wolves, if she's remotely pretty? Pity! So if there's a 3-man interview committee, won't she get through if she's witty? Does she still need to give all 3 the 'kitty'?

Get Your Hand Out of My Face

In a public building’s restroom, I asked an egressing (and regressive) man, “Don’t you want to wash your hands?” Knowing, as I do, that so many people have tacky toilet habits, and seeing, as we do, that handshaking is just like that in glorious Ghanaian culture, I find myself thinking in 2 out of every 3 greeting situations: Get your hand out of my face. Throw in the predilection for public nose-picking, and the panic becomes: Get your effing hand out of my face!

Lifted by a Dress

Accra, 6.30 a.m. In the thwarting traffic, I wolfed a woman in a dapper dress. Oh, it was russet and sienna and Sea Island cotton ... and more hues of brown and red. It choc’d her brown skin in a warmer glow, and rolled her dynamo hips under its windswept flow. The simplicity and style took me whole, and helium’d my spirits for the rest of the morning.

No Rules, Just Food

Life is claustrophobic enough, as it is, without mentally growing grey about BMI, and cholesterol (which, like angels, comes in good and evil variants) and bland balanced diets. We should simply eat and drink some (but not Nero’s portions) of everything.

Ghanaian Culture & Freeloading

You can have whatever you like
Food, a phone, shoes or a bike
Half of us are freeloaders
If cultural, it's so odious


*Inspired when thinking about all those people in Ghana who would like others to do free professional work for them because of some arcane relationship or acquaintance.

Are You Good-Looking?

What a “stupe-thick” question to ask. Why would anybody answer no? A Ghanaian media company is advertising a job, and that is the opening line: Are You Good-Looking? Even for a TV job, that is a doltish first line. To use an ancient “Ghanaianism”, SWINE!

Breach of Promise to Marry

Imagine you spend some telling time, mad money and expensive emotions on your postcard-perfect partner’s promise to marry you, and, then, they rudely run off with some wicked wretch who also lives on your street. If you knew you could take them to court for bucks and boodle, would you do it?

(Un)Sound Engineers

When I loud-listen to music made in America or Europe, the notes fall clear and crystalline, but homemade Hiplife, played at high decibels, distorts the Bose baseline, and ferries fart sounds through the loudspeakers. The same boom-boom blights neo-Naija music too. Why?

Is It Like That For Shop Assistants?

I dived into a convenience shop, at 10 p.m., on my way home, last night. The friendly shop assistants were counting coins by the tedious thousands at their sales stations. They told me that they had to repeat the routine morning and night, everyday. I didn’t have the heart to take my (substantial) change.

“Am”

Maybe it’s the currency of cyber-speak; maybe it’s lowbrow laziness. I can’t stand people who write or say “Am” when they must mean “I’m”. They’re too lead-lazy or dynamite-deaf to learn the difference in pronunciation. I hear it spoken everywhere, I see it in magazines, newspapers and on TV. “Am tired” of hearing people say “Am ...” anything. See how that repulses.

Taxi Driver Kwasea

This one taxi driver would not go scot-free. In just 3 hours, I had been rudely road-rushed by crazy manoeuvres in double digits. He did it at Kwame Nkrumah Circle. I hounded him on Ring Road Central up to Bus Stop. As I gained on him, I shouted “Taxi driver Kwasea”. He was pained to shock, hardly expecting effluence like that. But I was gone before he could react, and all he could do was to honk hysterically.

Public Pubic Pawing

An office mate and I ‘visioned’ a vulgar vassal in black, velvet shorts vocalising on his violet celly on the avenue behind the British High Commission. In the vivid daylight at 10 a.m., and inside his shorts, the vile vole was holding a varicose bulge! By confidently looking at us, he made us rather feel ashamed.

Five Lives

A young mother of five
Didn't want to see them alive
She administered death's drink
And immortalised her name in ink.

For an interesting note on the woman who is suspected of murdering her 5 kids, all below age 10, by poisoning, see Co-blogger Que's note here