Weekday Hour # 1

The hour after work (6 to 7 pm, as the day kisses the night) is definitely my most enjoyable weekday hour.

The air con is off; team mates have faded away; work files banked in paper and mind folders; and still too early to tussle with the traffic.

I hook up with my friends online, catch up on news of this sinful world, tweet and blog: a little spot of heaven.

What's yours? The most enjoyable hour of your typical weekday?

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.

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The Runaway Music Scene in the City of Accra

Amazing - the way new acts drop (not so) tight tracks and (quasi) vibrant videos every week. The beats are not fresh or the lyrics crisp. The style is neo-Naija (commercially cranked up) and the themes are horse carcasses being flogged flagrantly over and over again. It is like chasing smoke trying to keep up, and you cannot help but think those who popped up 5 to 10 years ago got the cheese.

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Doctors Against Washing Hands in The City of Accra

Philistine physicians! They were in 'our building' all week. It is really their building as we are tenants. In these terrible days when the public-health people are advertising pathological handwashing to prevent Cholera (and other conditions) every single doctor we saw at the loo simply zipped up after and left the men's room. We hope the sterilising standards were higher in the ladies' room. We must also hope that surgical gloves usage is widespread, but (even then) they have to touch the gloves first. Ewwwwww!

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Archery, Shaggery & Other Olympic Sports

My mates and I are having demented delight at Honeysuckle Pub. I offer that Chaskele is the greatest sport in the world and should make the olympics list. Kelvin and Kiz counter it should be shaggery. Males of country A versus females of country B. We all join the imaginary Ghana Males team and quickly choose Venezuela as our first opponent and line up Costa Rica, Colombia and Uganda on the way to the final (a pity Ghana Males cannot meet Ghana Females) Lovely Friday evening.

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Spitting Season in The City of Accra

Get no place fast past an open car window without clamouring your coming. Give no rat's-arse respect to what car it is or you would be soused with stupido-senseless spittle. And then they would say 'sorry'! I see a spitting scene everyday.

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Two-Inch Imagination in The City of Accra

In the loathesome-lazy, get-rich-quick-no-sweat city of Accra, I could not convince a big girl that some people depart for work at 5 am and only leave their desks work for home at 10 pm. It is the civil-service mentality.

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Ban Public Smoking in the City of Accra

Monstrous Malaria is not enough; nor TB nor AIDS; not even the doggone health insurance system. Our governments have waited a long time for Lung Cancer or its carcinogenic cousins to cut our numbers low before curbing public smoking.

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Judging a Man By His Car in The City of Accra

Those commission-quaffing attendants would not compete for the tank of the crickety Corolla. The driver did not look like he could buy half the fuel to power a tiny rodent. But I know him. He also owns one of those shiny Chrysler almost-jet para-cars. The next time he taxies that in here, they will break one another's noses to air-traffic-control him to their pump just to sell him a gallon.

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Death by Hanging in the City of Accra

Prisoners spend long, lazy, luxuriant hours in the plentiful sun of Nsawam Prisons. I have heard it said that killing is barbaric in all cases. Thus, Ghana must be barbaric for keeping the death penalty. In truth, nobody has been executed in almost 20 years. So murderers and other insanely-wicked criminals know they will be sentenced to death, but bask in the tropical soleil until old age strangles them. In 2 cases, convicted murderers have even been released on a presidential pardon.

The Chinese City of Accra

A quarter-century ago in the city of Accra, if it was pretty and made by human hands, it was made in Japan, Taiwan or Korea. Now every ‘desirable’ is imitated made in China – hair, toys, laptops, clothes, cameras and a few cars. Added to this, you can see a Chinese man on every other street of Accra. How this place has changed!

Cheating Nature in the City of Accra

A woman-beggar haunts the 37 intersection, especially at night. She does not cadge the Cedis directly - she uses children for emotional blackmail. She must have a foolish frau somewhere ‘lending’ her the little darlings (I have seen different ones) to bore a hole through your heart and your wallet. What she did last Friday, however, won the pitiful prize. She was hip-hoisting a 10-12 year old while wincing 'neath the wily weight. Mehhhhnnnn!

Hearse-Racing in the City of Accra

What irreconcilable irony! I was creeping down the Independence Avenue at high noon, when a packed trotro whiz-zigzagged through the traffic and shot past adrift of me. A jet-black Mercedes hearse ‘deathed’ past at full-hell speed in the other lane. Its casket chamber was empty and hungry for a body or two. A trotro kamikaze-racing a hearse in thick traffic – how do you think this curtains will drop on this scene? I suggest a full hearse.

Grooming with Horse Powder in the City of Accra

Office mate and I went to the barber’s. On his countertop was a big powder container. It had the picture of a horse on it and was labelled in Turkish. Were we wrong to allege that he was using horse powder for humans? After all, powder usually has the picture of a human baby or woman on it, no? And the container was so big, it had to be for 'stable' use.

The Fairest of Them All

I loved Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales when I was growing up. I still do. There are millions of lessons in there; and they all lived happily ever after.

The thing is when it came to girls I loved the fairest of them all. We may all pretend that fair means beautiful, but it also meant light-skinned. Try calling Naomi Campbell the fairest woman in a room full of white English gentlemen and ladies.

The point is it was not until not long ago that women of other races were allowed “beautiful” at the same level as Caucasian women. I am not exploring racialism here; just the effect of words on the subconscious mind.

So, when I was growing up, all my legendary crushes were light-skinned girls. It took my twenties to realise the big, open truth that very dark girls could be fair beautiful too.

At this point, this post could go in any of many directions, but I’ll end it here and leave it to the comments.

Ciga-Rette The Ogre (Part 6 - Final)

She turned this way, she turned that way
But, help, it did not come
She was too scared to stop and pray
Her heart beat like a drum

She worked her way to a corner
Half-willed it all to end
She wondered how they would mourn her
As she saw a paw descend

It picked her up like a pillow
And squeezed her with its claws
Bones snapped and cracked like a willow
And open came its jaws

Before Ciga-Rette could kill her
A mouse crawled 'cross its feet
It dumped her and fled like a spur
So Dora death did cheat

Ciga-Rette The Ogre (Part 5)

Mother, please open the door
Mother, please, I'm filled with dread
Mother, what (a) hideous jaw'
Ma, I'm stalked by Ciga-Rette

Let him take you, Dora
Should have stayed in like Nora
I can't open the door, ah!
For I am filled with horror

Nora, my twin, please open it
God, he reeks so dreadful
Nor' you said we'd never be split
I Swear that I'm remorseful

Let him take you, Dora
Dora, rules ignorer
I can't open the door, ah!
For I am filled with horror

Ciga-Rette The Ogre (Part 4)

Two steps and crouch, three crawls and dart
She snailed the long way home
The clouds wouldn't come slight apart
No light - not cream or chrome

She felt a presence behind her
Each time she turned to look
Not leaf nor breeze nor pall did stir
Although the ground, it shook

It was all more than she could bear
Her little heart did flee
Her legs carried her in a blur
Behind her charged a scree

She was sudd'ly among each street
And alley way she knew
Above the roofs, she saw huge feet
A giant came vaulting through

Ciga-Rette The Ogre (Part 3)

The ball was fun, the ball was fair
It should have made her merry
But being not supposed to be there
Her joy was not very

The brand new dance moves all were stepped
And new intros were made
A few hearts off their feet were swept
And Dora found a mate

But Dora, she did grow tired
She found a place to rest
Sweet sleep was now what she desired
She made a couch her nest

The loud music had stopped to play
When Dora stirred again
A vacant hall, to her dismay
Was all that did remain

Ciga-Rette The Ogre (Part 2)

Now, there was a young people's gig
At a neighbouring town hall
Once in a year and always big
It got going at nightfall

Every girl wanted to go
And every boy did too
The threat of wild Ciga-Rette though
Did leave most home and blue

Our Dora did not want to miss
The pleasures of the ball
Dance with a boy; maybe a kiss
She wanted; that was all

She hid some clothes and went to bed
Even before Nora
And when the night was still and dead
She turned a night crawler