Yeah, Amphibian Brains

As seen on the Independence Avenue today. Awful driver; but what's new?

Amankwatia, Gallant General of Asante

Chief of Bantama and General of the army of Asantehene, Kofi Karikari (misspelt Koffee KalKalli* by Major-General Garnet Wolseley) Amankwatia was hailed as a great military strategist and deeply feared by the vassal States of Asante and the free States surrounding the empire.

Research into historical accounts mention an Amankwatia from as early as 1715, who led an Asante army to wipe out an Aowin army in the Asante_Aowin war. Another Amankwatia is thought to have led an Asante army in an indecisive victory over the Akyem and Akwapem in 1814.

Amankwatia (the Bantamahene) designed, planned and executed the last great stand of the Asante at the village of Amoaful against the advancing British Army of Major-General Garnet Wolseley in the Third Anglo-Ashanti War. The Battle of Amoaful itself did not last much more than 24 hours on 31 January 1874.

The British won (and the Asante lost) the Battle of Amoaful. Some (perhaps questionable) British accounts have it that the biggest havoc in the British ranks was caused by bad air (malaria) and yellow fever, but in the Battle of Amoaful every fourth British soldier was hit by the heavy Asante fusillade.  

You see, the Asante chose forest cover and ridges overlooking bogs (through which the British had to wade) as their battle stands. Amankwatia is credited with such clever calculation. What advantage the British had in heavy armament and superior rifles the Asante countered with far superior numbers (no wonder between 2000 and 3000 of them were either injured or killed). The British soldiers for a long time came under heavy gunfire from people they could not see.

After the defeat of the Asante, many chiefs (generals) were counted among the dead, including Amankwatia. Although Wolseley was happy to refer to King Koffee Kalkalli as a “wily savage”, he allowed his fellow general Amankwatia the following tribute: “The great Chief Amanquatia was among the killed, and the King of Mampon was wounded, while many other chiefs bit the dust. Admirable skill was shown in the position selected by Amanquatia, and the determination and generalship he displayed in the defence, fully bore out his reputation as an able tactician and gallant soldier.”

*To be fair, Wolseley was likely misled by locals who interchanged the sound of L and R liberally.

Nice to Meet You, Bless...

... and where's your brother, Curse?

The Presidential Debate

A presidential debate

We watched with breath abate

By just before midnight

We’d found the leading light

We'd confirmed a certain two

Were just as we knew

As for the other bloke

Oh what an utter joke

A Reason Not To Shake Hands

Pretty woman in my rear view; in the spotless, silver Corolla; digging deeply in your nostrils; checking out what you produce. You're the reason I don't look back often enough. When the traffic moved along, it took you ten seconds to note; you were balling up your goo.

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Open Barbecue in the City of Accra

In broad daylight, last Friday, on the ceremonial street at animated Nima, Birdie and I saw a group of muscled men singeing a whole cow-carcass with a blow torch and scorching the pavement black.
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Vacuity!!!

2012! It bewilders me, and I cannot say which vexes me more – the superstitious teachers or the benighted varmint. The ones have zilch to teach because they need a lamp too. The others are a stupendously sorry sight: ignorant, petty, perishing, future-less. 

How I Stumbled Upon Blogging

In 2008, Accra was a jaded jamboree. I preferred to float in bed and fantasise about far-flung frolicsome places. I had happened on ‘personal websites’ without knowing their sexy name - blog. Then, my friend, Sandra, introduced me her blog.  I was besotted three times over. A poet in hibernation, I dusted off my skills and became a seeker of ‘second sight’: that hallowed ‘hang’ to see extraordinary sights in everyday scenes. To experience and describe Accra’s rich, deep and colourful layers of sights, sounds, smells and tastes in a unique way. Blogging has given me a novel, vibrant city that’s all my very own.

A Toyota, No Doubt!

He fixed it there, just so you're doubly sure it's a Toyota!

The Fluid Traffic Lights in the City of Accra

I've heard it said about prisons, mental-health institutions and toilets. Now I add traffic lights. You can tell how civilised a country is by how its drivers mind the traffic lights (and traffic circles).

Five or six years ago, a friend and I saw a Nigerian businessman do a jaw-drop when visiting Accra for the first time. "They actually obey the lights?" He asked. He said the lights were useless décor back in his country. We had a sneaky suspicion that he was self-deprecating too hard.

That kind Nigerian gentleman; he visited five years too soon. Every morning at the Regimanuel traffic lights on the Spintex Road, I barely hang on to dear life after three 'Hail Marys' and four near misses.

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Racing with Cyclists in the City of Accra

My heart turns cartwheels every time I see a cyclist’s thirty-second madness. Pumping pedals to race your car, they’re in the lead for twenty seconds. Then you’re level...edge past... whiz ahead. Ten seconds scrape by; they surrender; admission of no catch-up chance. It’s the human spirit in the race of life.

The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence is gone. We buy late-night Kelewele at 5pm, and do dawn-jogging at 7am. Twenty of us at a pub are no match for 4 gunmen. Saturday night-crawling is a far-off, silver-screen fantasy. Security is merely a word we teach four-year-olds.

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2016

Four years from today, you'll leave home on Monday and get to Accra City Centre on Wednesday. If you don't take too long about your business, you may make it back home by Saturday. But we'll still vote for leaders.

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A Robbery Victim's View of Mob Justice

Days after my rebuke of the Nigerian mob murder, a robber's pistol poked my chest. And a friend's question probed my beliefs: do you still condemn mob justice? I thought about the shiny, black, cold metal and the nine years' worth of data lost. Then, my answer run out boldly: Yes. Mob justice is wrong and the lynching murder.

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Hideous Humanoids, Barbaric Beings

Four boys are lacerated, eviscerated, excoriated and incinerated by a mob of maybe ten. Thousands, literally, feast on the cruel skill of their local ‘gladiators’. A few officers of the law cower among the rabble in this arena of the gory and the gruesome. They do nothing to stop the baying wolves. If they try to stop the lunacy, their reward would be a flaming pneumatic garland.

This happened in Nigeria recently. It could have been Ghana or Kenya or South Africa or anywhere in Africa. (WARNING!!! IT'S REALLY, REALLY GORY!!!)

In my knowledge of African history, criminals and suspects may have been punished by flogging, burial-while-alive, banishment, capital punishment. BUT it happened after a trial; a trial by the elders or, indeed, a trial by ordeal before the gods and their priests. The punishment was cruel sometimes and the trials not credible in today’s conventional wisdom.

BUT THERE WERE TRIALS BEFORE PUNISHMENT!

We were cheated into colonialism, yes. We inherited some great legal norms, though, to add to valid virtues of our own. Joy!

So when (and why) did we learn to seize suspects, untried, to bludgeon-n-burn to death? Why are we more barbaric today than 500 years ago?

Bon Apetit

I should have bulls-eyed on my food at Golden Tulip Kumasi City Hotel. Or I should have focused on the horror movie of the distinguished-looking old man to my right, gouging himself with wine and enough rich food to feed a dozen pigs.

The swimming pool is just outside the restaurant. It has a terrace on which diners can eat open-air. So in they walked when I was just about to throw up for the gourmand sat to my right.

A boobs-a-spill girl likely sixteen; a fully-clothed lass maybe fourteen; then a grand papa, couldn’t have been below fifty-five. He’d brought them dining. That they wouldn’t walk together, and her curious get-up got me thinking that the sixteen year-old and the almost-geriatric were in a relationship. Well, an arrangement.

I looked around to assure myself that nobody had seen my curiosity. I was wrong. Everybody in the room must have been thinking the same scadalous thoughts, including the gentlehomme with the piggish appetite. When our eyes met, he was choking down the laughter. The moment seemed to call for words, so I said, “Bon apetit”.

I was really referring to his wolfish traits, but he burst out laughing and sprayed strawberry gateau over his table-for-one. Then, it hit me. He though my “Bon apetit” was meant for the grand papa, his below-legal liaisons and whatever pleasant pastime we thought they were headed for. 

Financial Controller

There is a smutty lunatic hectoring the elbow room of the Dzorwulu Access Bank ATM. He’s a scary totem pole in the day time, still as a statue in his self-imposed straitjacket. He comes to life at night, using all the space to swing his imaginary cats. The punch buttons must be squeaky clean, for nobody ever uses them. Maybe the bank doesn’t know he stands there. Maybe they know and like it.

The Cat-Kicker

Inside the wooden fencing, they’re watching a La-Liga match. Outside, where the loudspeakers bellow loud, we sit among the smoking tables, each two less than a metre apart. The varicoloured bottles remain arranged on the tables when a round of drinks is done like some mating-dance plume show. A couple huddles near the perimeter opening. He’s having a drink. She’s having a drink and eating out of a plate. Her mouth drops almost all the way to the table. I’m watching the obscene curvature of her ... backbone, when I see two cats circling the table. One can no longer wait for scraps and bravely rubs against her leg. With a shout above the music, she kicks the poor cat in an airborne arc into the crowd. Who kicks animals anywhere? And who kicks felines on a date?

Triplets at El Wak on a Saturday Morning

On a twilight cruise for Saturday soccer at Labone. Aviation Road is already abuzz with busy-bee Accraians. The traffic lights fire red before I can cross Giffard Road into Cantonments. I don’t like stopping here: not fifty feet from where the runway-gobbling plane scythed through the swarming street.  Three sets of tiny feet identically shod in bright-red ladybug-like shoes pitter-patter across one lane. Their mother plods behind them. The first stretches out her tiny hand and wriggles the fingers at passing cars. Her two sisters repeat what she does. One, two, three, four, all cars are hypno-stopped. They sail across in a straight line in rhythmic step. Mother ‘walruses’ awkwardly behind them. Then, they are gone. Beautiful. Beguiling. 

Automatic Car Wash

I was thrilled earlier this week to see an automatic car wash open right outside my neighbourhood on Spintex Road. My hood was far from dusty, but the elements had gnawed at the tired streets. Then, some smart person chose to cover it all with pavement blocks, and then the pavement with cement dust. Now a car can only stand clean for one hour.

Today I went to the car wash. It’s owned by two Lebanese old men. They take pleasure in pressing the buttons themselves. The car is lathered and washed with electric pompoms and semi-dried with electric dryers.

A few metres further down, four Ghanaian lads wipe the cars dry. That’s the real story of this post. They are filled with so much hate. They insult their employers from the time you drive in, and theirs is the last voice you hear on the way out – insulting. They speak in Twi, of course, and try to draw me into their xenophobia. I ignore them. When I’m ready to drive off in my shiny car, one of the owners capers up to me and asks in a friendly voice, “It good?” Although it took longer than your regular one-hose car wash, I’m going back there.

It was those boys’ attitude that needed to run through the car wash, not cars.