The Stranger Downstairs

They were a spicy, flaming item for most of a year, and had been merrily married for two or three months. She stirred awake in the dead of one night; his side of the bed was empty and cold. She crept down the stairs to look for him. He was nowhere, and the doors were all secure with the keys in place. She eyed the portal to his private room. The one he always kept under lock; the one she had never stepped into; not even to clean.

A sliver of multicoloured light is shooting out from behind the door. There is a chink in the doorway. What happens next all seems like a dream. A humming holds her mind and hauls her towards the door. There are candles everywhere: red candles, blue candles, white candles, big and small, ordinary and scented. There are also ginormous, grotesque masks. The room is swelling (and her head swirling) with hollow haunted chanting. A butt-naked man squats in the middle of it all. It’s her husband – the man she did not know!

P.S.: Totally true story; she filed for divorce.

Bruising Breakups

Women in Ghana used to stay...in bad abusive relationships; much more than men. Now, it’s difficult to say who’s more likely to move on when the shit hits the fan. This week, we will explore the high divorce rate (especially among marriages under 5 years) and some of the more bizarre causes I have bumped into.

Facebook Tone

How often do I hear somebody say at a facebook page, “I knew that girl in school. She’s now become so fair!”

A ‘Shady’ Playing Field

A capricious count of the jackpot jobs, luxury lairs and comfy cars in Ghana are held down by men who will ace the clouded colour test. One questions what the companies are interviewing for, or who the banks are backing.

The Marilyn Effect?

When will some obliging ogre pull the plug on the many dumbass light-brown divas with thin talent in Nigerian and Ghanaian movies, and put us out of our misery? If they are in there for their dubious ‘good looks’, then please rip them out and splurge them instead on gloss magazine pages and still-picture exhibitions!

The League Table

In this (cool) coal-coloured country, most of the skilled, delicious, wonderful women, who have smoothly scaled the prized professional pinnacle, while harmonizing hundreds of happy homes, would have flunked the toxic tone test. But they excelled where it mattered most. Now, tone that!

2 of a Shameful Kind

A leading telecom company and an international bank in Ghana employ mostly manila-skinned demoiselles to man their public spaces, solely on that sepia note. These lamp posts wear ugly frowns from dawn to dusk, mistaken that it adds up to their alleged allure; pretending that no one’s figured out their facade. Enough!