Sunday, June 26, 2011

Tangled Toes in The City of Accra

I shoe ten tangled toes (as do most of the 'kids' I grew up with) from playing barmy, barefoot football. Thus (these days) I shirk slippers outside home.

In those indigent, illiquid economic days in Ghana, we would have suffered parental thrashing if we had dared parade our shoes on the dump (football) field.

We had no sports shoes. Our (not so) patent leather shoes were hardly appropriate, anyway, and were bought on a strict one-child-one-pair policy. Wo de k)b) ball na )kyena w'ahye deEn ak) school?

So, the rugged rocks and rough roots, stone chippings and shards of glass, gnarled nails and snail shells sliced, stabbed, lacerated and etched their gory graffiti into our tarsals and metatarsals.

It is a ten-toe 'mazement that behind those gruesome-gladsome years, we could yet count two full feet of ten (tangled, traumatised) toes.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

12 comments:

  1. hahaha... evokes fond memories of way back when... the good ol' days! Brilliant writing, love this piece! And if these "two full feet of ten (tangled, traumatised) toes" could talk, they would say exactly this!

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  2. lol... a good one there. Nowadays every tiny village has someone selling football boots to the people.

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  3. I love this...Those poor toes!

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  4. haha memories that for some reason, makes u a better man

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  5. Kwame Mensa-Bonsu27 June, 2011

    Ya, typical Ghanaian story. But thinking of it, i seem to believe you are re-telling another's person's story, not that of your dadaba self!

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  6. Awww, Yeh, thank you so much (from my ten toes and I).

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  7. Yes, Nana Fredua-Agyeman, football is now a serious competitor to education as a ladder out of the poverty pit.

    Remember when it was just sport and a pastime for us? Smh

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  8. Yes, altheakale, those poor toes...

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  9. I wonder how many toes The Cupboard Boy has, then...

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  10. Kwame, you believe wrong (both on the source of the tale and my purported 'dada ba' self). :)

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  11. Kwame Mensa-Bonsu28 June, 2011

    hahahahah...as if i didn't know u.

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  12. kwame, hahahahaha (that's one more "ha" than yours), i know me more!

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