Fraudulent Festival

A season for sellers to move their chocolates and wines and gizmos more briskly than usual. A reason for other people to extort presents from you without appearing as beggars.

And what remains unsold or un-cadged will have to go in less than 2 months, when Valentine’s Day creeps along. It's only business.

Regardless of what I have said, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Please stick with me in 2010.

Visit my new blog of controversy: What Do You Really Think?

Accra, City of Squatters

Whenever one gutsy vote-winner tries to make angsty Accra ‘marchable, ‘breatheable’, ‘tourable” and humanly habitable, another (usually more powerful) will freeze the Fahrenheit of the effort. We, who are lightsome with free-flowing pavements, may well be in the minuscule minority now, and politics being a statistical sport, we are doubly doomed to lose our homes and space to streptococci-squatters

At The Cinema, A Twice-Told Tale

At the Silverbird, ’spooking’ ‘New Moon’ with the lovely Lil Girl, the guy behind us kept echoing the dialogue in the fantasy flick to the chesty-and-cheeky chick with him – not translating; just repeating.

So, she was either not cosy with the accent – which was quite universal, by me – or she was doing some...thing, else, that was dulcetly distracting her in that darkened, slightly isolated corner of the frigid room.

‘New Moon’, itself, was all it had promised to be, after Lil Girl had shown me ‘Twilight’ on her lemon laptop. But, from the way the well-muscled werewolf, the gothic girl and the vanishing vampire left it, a tantalising trilogy is truly served.

University Liberian

I sensed a judge’s anguish, today, as she subtly struggled twice (and crashed) to enlighten a university registrar that, although the people of Liberia are famous for achieving higher education, it is not every university in the world that has a Liberian student or lecturer. So, the clueless registrar made off from the courtroom not knowing that what he really wanted to say was “Librarian”.

Spintex Supermarket Road

They are broadening the hairline hips of the Spintex Road into a buxom, bodacious dual carriageway. The cuss-the-government gridlock is already easing up, and the previously plugged passage has more fluid flow, now, than the 37-TQ artery, which is suffering a cardiac arrest. Sundry supermarkets are sprouting up on either side of the works: Melcom, Sneda, Palace (which calls itself a Hypermarket), Price Club and others. I predict some tasteless traffic in 2010. Could it be time to move?

Pastors and Demons

They have ‘carteled’ clout over the prissy population with their doping displays for decades. But, in recent rough times, they have faced faecal flak. From who? Desperate demons? Hallucinating humans? Guerrilla pastors? The media casually pukes their reverent names in association with sold sex, shanghaied sex, fatuous fraud, talented theft and obeah-occult.

Star-struck by Okyeame Kwame

I honestly thought that I was beyond that (unless you brought Barack Obama or Nelson Mandela). But I have twice met Okyeame Kwame in the past week, and I've been mildly star-struck. He’s doing a good thing too – launching a foundation to fight Hepatitis B. Talk about using one’s coolness to spread more coolness and love. And he gave a great speech at the launch. The best rapper alive (cut off your own head, Executioner Obrafour) is also a great speech-maker. And, guess what, he made me his MC (I had to add this) on the spur of the moment. I got my 15 minutes of ego-heroin!

Because They are Children

I do not care what tired toes I tread on – it is an inferior culture which treats children churlishly; no rational respect. At an otherwise winning wedding reception last Saturday on a sunny shore, the hungry minors were ejected by the MC from the querulous queue at the food table, while the adults ate and wasted. Even the lower species feed their young first. Thankfully, the gracious groom had the children put back in front.

British Culture & the BHC’s BS

So much gravel is ground about the galled Ghana Civil Service and its castoff client-service culture. But subject your good self to the British High Commission’s main switchboard in Accra. They NEVER pick up. At least, the people at the ministries, talk to you.

BHC Switchboard: +233.21.221665,

Yellow Yeast at the Airport

I don’t know what triple-turned me off – was it the bushy boofiaa (two-edged afro) or the blister-bleached skin which was yellower than his banana necktie? Could it be the nasty red heads ‘pineappled’ all over his fermenting face, or the superior way he swept across the public space? Oh God, I whole-heartedly hated him on sight!

Wild Country

You aviate for 35 minutes, or dirt-drive for 4 hours. You arrive in another country - wild, untamed, raw, confusing. Cool customer service in Accra is on vacation, but this Gehenna of Graces does not even have it. You see some bum breakfast when the sun goes down, your a/c is fixed after the heat season, the internet crawls like it’s been caught in a net, and ‘civil’ civil servants treat you like some fetid felon. It’s really wild, even in Kumasi. So scary to leave Accra.

Paid Protectors? ‘Fraid they’re Gangsters!

No! We don't want to frighten visitors away, and almost everybody will go with hair unharmed while pacing through dark, dark, Accra. But half a dozen policemen were just jailed for rogue-robbing a businessman in his hapless hotel room. So, last night, at 9 p.m., I slackened speed to give two cops a ride up the Spintex Road. But, wanting to arrive safe and sound, I changed my mind and simply sped off.

The Perils of a Pretty Car

This time it hit cosily close to home. My main man was teeing down the Tema Motorway and minding his own beeswax, as he always does, when a hail of heavy objects hurtled into his windscreen. There, in the shadowy shrubs, he was meant to halt, be hustled, robbed and maybe hurt, but he hissed on with a smashed facade. And it was not even late. It’s sensible not to stop in Accra no matter what has struck your car.

Nightdress Parade

In the suburban streets of the City of Accra, when the daylight is already broader than their sofa hips, many women sail about in their sheer nightclothes. At a 6 O’clock convenience kiosk, this mammoth matron scratched her Grand Canyon through the rear of her see-through frock, right in front of paralysed passersby. A keen-eyed mate suffered this, and thought it bloggable material for me.

Babies’ Night Out

So, my colleague is dining out at eleven ‘midnight’, when a tight, comely cluster of barely-stopped-suckling cubs ‘swashbuckle’ in. The oldest of them cannot be more than twelve. We used to be timid in our time. These kids are cool and confident; making business calls, ordering ‘haute cuisine’ and acting cosy and lovey-dovey. They grow up so fast, now!

Parental (Un)Control

When some parents settle it that even parental-uncontrolled DSTV is not engaging enough to enthral their adventurous adolescents, they line their pockets with lucre, and chauffeur them to the prepossessing positive influence of the Accra Mall; leaving them there on their own, obligingly. These kidults then haunt the ‘complicated’ corridors with purpose until after dark.

Children and Pastimes

This week, let's explore children and leisure in the City of Accra (knowing that many kids from poor homes already work, and have no time to put up their infant feet). Pointedly, what pastimes are parents obliging their children to pursue.

One-Month Romeo & Not Quite Juliet

Cliques of playas-in-their-prime ‘peacock’ around Adabraka town and other folksy parts of Accra. They have hours and purse-pride aplenty, and precious little self-respect; devoting days and dollars to shifty, married women, pulling out all the stops to knock her down (and, hopefully, not up) and score an ego point. They go ‘Full Romeo’ until the dame is ‘tabled’. Then, they bring down the curtain. Drama over, she goes back home troubled, used, but smiling.

Cupid’s Bubble

Between the loan-lined lives, the arranged ego-calls and accidentally dropped names, they got hitched hurriedly. Seven sad days later, they mutually discovered double-dealing deceit. He was not half important; he’d lost his homemade humour; she did not have an American passport; and she could not fry a chip; they were both drowning in debt.

The Ugliness of a Cheater-Beater

A pendulum swing to the third month after the whirlwind romance, proposal, wedding and exotic-islanding, he ‘wormed’ home late one night. He reeked of whisky, sweat and cheap, cheap sex. He did not say hello, could not. He just sprang and slapped the angel in her face, mumbling something about her sitting in his chair. Fuelled by filth and guilt, the force (no farce) of his swinging arm flung a condom pack out of his shirt pocket. Guilty!