Harbin’s Hidden Hurrah in the City of Accra

Friday evening along Accra’s car-crowded coastal route. As you cruise past the hallowed twain of La hotels, you gain a rocky, bumpy construction dirt-land on the way to Teshie. Drive carefully past the leftward Military Barracks and rightward Next-Door beach ‘place’; a two-storey high converted warehouse stands up on the right. Slow down, or you may miss its shabby, scrubby drive-in.

Harbin shows off a bowling alley ten-games wide and a video-game arcades with racing cars and bikes, dancing light pads, shooting hoops, shoot-em-ups and pool tables. It’s all neatly arranged in two not-very large spaces with two enclaves for the reception and a bar in the room ‘ante’.

Harbin is pure, unaffected and down-to-earth delight. It’s best to invade it with a mini group of four to eight. It’s good on Saturday and Sunday too, although it’s ready to close at eleven. I had so much fun knocking down the pins on Friday night, and I have a torn lawyer’s tunic shirt sleeve to prove it.

Yellow Pagoda Skirt

Bright-yellow-early-morning shock, cascading from your sylphlike hips right down to skimming-the-ground. Forming four or five pagoda roofs in its wind-swept flow. Something sacrosanct must dwell under it, but (before I can stick around for an un-defiled duel) the demon driving behind blows his evil horn to move me along, and I can only think to write about you.

The Psycholinguistic ‘Prostitute’

Men who act this way must be barred from politics for life.

You’re not man enough to take her on in a popular vote, so you call her a prostitute. Your evidence – she’s not married. She has two children. She’s had different lovers over time. That’s your case!

Rubbish. You know how this society sees women who receive a nightly wage for a bodily transaction. It’s psycholinguistics. You don’t fight fair to win. You label your female opponent that way to win. Politics is not just about winning.

To everybody practising the psycholinguistic ‘prostitute’ political prank, some village is missing an irreversible idiot, and you are he.

3 Events That Have Shaped My Life

When I was only 4 or so, I fell out of an upstairs window but didn't hit the ground below. The telephone cable entangled my foot, flexed and bounded me back in. I was slightly concussed.

When I was about 14, my father compelled my twin and I to kill a sheep for Christmas. I learned the value of life (any kind) then, and have not taken anything that lives and moves for granted since then.

When I was 17, pretty Chantal from Cote D'Ivoire broke my heart. She was 18. I'm not sure if I really ever recovered from it. I started writing poetry as a means of dealing with it. I've not stopped writing since then.

Can you think of any 3 of your own?

Dealing with Gbagbo – The Limits of Reason

I have been haunted by images I have witnessed and imagined of Laurent Gbagbo since yesterday. Yes, he must stand trial for the alleged murders, rapes and beatings of civilians by his followers – he has political responsibility (and let us not forget the alleged murders, rapes and beatings of civilians by Ouattara’s men too).

But why was he pictured being dragged out of the President’s official residence? Why was a TV crew in the room at the Golf Hotel when he was wiping the sweat off his body and changing shirts? And why did the first soldier to reach him in the bunker allegedly slap him? Why?

If he allowed his men to commit beastly crimes, are his captors any better for their treatment of him? Have both sides not acted outside the limits of reason?

The Oldest Thing I Own

The oldest thing I own is an old book that belonged to my Grandfather. It is about 50 years old. It is a book on jurisprudence - the philosophy of law - and he wanted to be a lawyer. Unfortunately, he did not go far enough in formal education to be a lawyer, even though he made it to magistrate (career magistrate). I loved him to bits.

He called me "Senior Brother", and died before I discovered I wanted to study law. Maybe I did it for him. He died sitting up in a hospital queue. He was 84 and very ill, but nobody would let him jump the queue.

I have never read that book - I never may. It holds much more than just the complex writing in there: life, love, sentiments, a deep bond.

What is yours? What is the oldest thing you own? What's the history behind it?

Who Would You Wait in a Line For? Or What?

The longest I've lingered in a line has to be between freshman registration day at the University of Ghana and waiting to cast my ballot in the 1996 Presidential Election. It must have been 6 hours apiece.

But, God, I really hate to be held up in any kind of queue for anything. Come to think of it, I wait in 'line' all the time as a lawyer waiting for my case to be called in court. Shucks. Need to change jobs.

What 3 things would I gladly wait in long lines for?

1) Maybe Lil Girl after she's been away for a while.
2) Maybe Obama (or Nelson Mandela), if he will actually exchange a sentence with me.
3) Can't think of anything else.

What about you?

Judges Only

As seen next to a courthouse elevator today.

Apartheid? Nah, just kidding.

Mmm, The Pleasure of Reading

While the ‘Benighted Estate’ spent last week and this week jousting over politics, International Children’s Book Day slithered past almost unnoticed. World Reader, Golden Baobab and the Read Worms Club (Ashesi Uni) travelled to Adeiso (Eastern) to read with school kids.

The kids have been provided with electronic readers by World Reader so they can read books without turning pages. Mmm, pleasant. World Reader is a not-for-profit. They are doing this as a calling.

The reader pilot programme is running at Adeiso, Kade and Teacher Mante. Adeiso is the kid’s-gloves child. The kids have e-readers, Saturday readings with visitors from World Reader and Read Worms. Kade has just the e-readers, and at Teacher Mante the kids just have government books or government no-books.

After a while, Adeiso, Kade and Teacher Mante will be compared, and we all know what the scale would be.

E-reader providers, African-content promoters, and undergrads with purpose are coming together to build a sparkling future for our kids, and it hardly makes the news! It’s at once one of the most wonderful, heart-warming, ‘smileable’ things I’ve heard of since ...

I’ll Never 4give You

Anon text message I received from a UK number while writing my blog post for today:  I’ll never 4give u.

My reply: Dunno who this is but Matthew 6:14-15.

April Fool? Remember Wilkinson & Downton

1890s England. A regular at a public house told the owner’s wife that her husband had been seriously injured in an accident and was lying in a ditch with broken bones at Leytonstone. He asked her to bring 2 pillows and a cab to take her battered husband home. It was untrue, and he was only playing a practical joke on her.

The harrowing news however caused a violent shock to the woman’s nervous system, causing her to wretch and her hair to turn white. She suffered other forms of permanent injury and incapacity including mental distress. Her husband was put through expense trying to restore her health.

Her husband sued the juvenile joker in court for damages, and the court held that the fool who thought he had jokes was liable to pay damages for his wilful lies which had injured the poor woman.

Play your pranks with care on All Fool's Day and every other day.

Fire Burn Your Arse

One night, a group of boisterous youth blows up a blazing bonfire in a grassy glade. They gym-jump over it to prove brazen bravado. Opana is one of them. He’s forgotten that he’s plugged his infirm derriere with a thick tuft of cotton wool. He leaps over the flame, and a flint catches his pants. A flare eats the wool up Opana's sorry arse.

He who lives in a glass house... 

Roughneck Radio in the City of Accra

Ghana radio’s raw and raucous; strident of speech; toxic of tone; boorish of music and moribund of news. I float on Atlantis or ride with BBC.

No Painkillers in the City of Accra

We’re scared. We’re very afraid. All manner of things are no-go areas now. No local Bitters or Gins. They increase the libido for 2 months and then give you a mere mushroom for life. Now, some boffin says here that painkillers cause ED. In other words, if you want to be well and firmly hung, don’t take Ibuprofen, though your head splits into two.

The Devil Tried to Sell Me Bread Last Night

I was stuck in the Accraian vehicular mud on the way home when he accosted me near the dark Airport Traffic lights. He materialised upon me, wielding a loaf of bread in his right hand. His left hand was out of my view, so I could not see the miniature pitchfork certain to be clutched in it. His eyes were hard and bloody, his ears, hairy and elfin. He gave one severe look, and I zigzagged through the queue. He may have been a human vendor, but I didn’t stick around to discover. I fled with the thought that since the time of Jesus, You-Know-Who has been tempting Earth with bread.

On Eating Rice with a Spoon

I am freedom’s fiancé; pied, assorted, motley, sundry kinds of freedom. I believe people are free to march on their heads instead of feet; fart fifteen frivolous times every fine day; banquet on a bowl full of Fufu and Fanta and drink up the soup chilled from a bottle; wear a gruff goat rope for a belt. I believe in fulsome, fetterless and fanciful servings of the flavours of freedom. But please, philistine friend, don’t eat rice with a spoon! At home, at work, eating out, Villein, please don’t do it!

Picture credit - dreamstime.com

No Love At All in the City of Accra

Really, apart from hanging out, it’s been a very long time since I saw anybody in Accra do anything because they simply love it – and I’m not talking about work. So, what are people doing in which the payout is ... well, a smile.

The Son Who Wanted a Car

A son badly wanted a car

On his coming birthday

He found sly ways to hint his Pa

Whose wealth was off display

The birthday came; it surely did

The Son, he got a bible

And a hearty dinner of squid

He felt like Cain, not Abel

A year after the Son’s letdown

He went to see his Pa

And accosted him with a frown

His harsh words left a scar

The old man fell down, and he died

He couldn’t bear the words

And after all the tears had dried

It all then turned absurd

Found stuck inside the Holy Book

Were keys to a new car

If only the Son did look

He'd have both car and Pa

Looking Hard at Maids – Are They Slaves?

This story is harrowing but not out of this world. Domestic servants (or maids, in Ghana) have been with us since time immemorial. African children have always been taken to live and work with their aunts and uncles and parents’ friends. After independence and the rise of the African elite, maids in rural Ghana would go and live with stranger-families in the cities without pay with the expectation that she would grow up into an Awuraba (or Gentlewoman). It is now difficult to find a girl who would travel to the city to live with and work for a family without pay, work from dawn until midnight or not insist on days off. I once got into an impassioned argument with a Ghanaian boy whose girlfriend was a temporary student girl from America. I barracked him because I thought he was selling out for calling it modern-day slavery. Now, I am ready to change my position.

Date Rape in Ghana

I’ve read somewhere that most rape is committed by a familiar and very few by total strangers. I’ve never heard a real date-rape account told by anybody I know, but I have heard some female friends over the years tell me about near-rape traps they tripped into. Now, I’m wondering how overwhelming or underwhelming the incidence of date rape is.

Too many young girls I have spoken to are easily star-struck and appear to lose their head and heart around famous people. I can think of precious few A-List stars in Ghana: a few musicians (Kojo, Lumba, Amakye Dede), a few sportsmen (Pele, Essien, Appiah maybe), a few diplomats with obvious names, more than a few business persons, etc etc. So why do you bloody let a nothing small-time straggler (dabbling as an actor or musician) get into your head and date-rape you? But it’s not the girl's fault.

People are free to feel giddy about other people, mice, sports, depraved North African presidents or English football. THERE IS NO EXCUSE TO RAPE A GIRL, EVEN IF SHE THREW HERSELF AT YOU!

Does anybody know about any date rape in Ghana?

p.s.: Anti-Rhythm achieved its 40,000th visit yesterday. Thank you everybody for coming around.