Life of Distress

A man with an ex
And a wife
And a mistress

Deserves only wrecks
And a life
Full of distress

IT Professionals

between booting early
and shutting down
at night,
they live the day in jargon:
interface, protocol,
defragmentation, zip,
compress, trojan.
the self-importance
of a growing group.
they think they are
Homo Sapiens 9.0

No Lending to a Fool

he had magazines –
sport, politics,
quick reads on investment,
cars, houses, fashion
and prayer books in one room;
a two-way mirror in another.

when he finally met them,
he always knew
who to lend to,
and who to turn away.

Edgar

Poor Edgar
Illegitimately sired
From
Illicit copulation
Incomplete fertilization
Inclement incubation
Invidious parturition
Ugly and mean
Incurable criminal.

Eating Supper at Eleven

It’s 10 O’clock in the night. The children went to bed at 8, tired, hungry, exhausted and unwashed. They just dropped, one after the other, to the crumpled sheets on the floor, like poisoned flies. They slept in their school clothes. There was nobody to care if they had clean clothes for school the next day. If there were no clean clothes, no decent clothes or no clothes at all, the ones they were sleeping in could have been washed and hung to dry on the balcony or in the room under the fan.

A car came creeping up the quiet, sleeping street towards the stately house a little past 11. As it turned onto the compact, clay driveway with the loose little stones on the surface, the man servant heard the wheeze of the old, little engine and the grating of the tyres, and rushed to check the rice on the fire. Perfect, just a little soft and mushy, the way the master liked it. The car came to a gentle stop at the carport. Charles, the man servant, walked briskly to the door, but its occupant was already out of the car. He held a black, cuboid briefcase which he swung slightly in the direction of Charles. Charles caught it with practiced ease and croaked, “Welcome, Sir”.

The master settled in his beer-and-TV chair, called for his beer and turned on the TV. In those days, there was just the national broadcaster, GBC-TV. The 10 O’clock news (which was never broadcast at 10 O’clock) had come and gone. On, was the programme, ‘Contemplations’. Why anybody would bother to feed philosophy to the hungriest inhabitants of the third world was a stroke of genius which the present writer’s obviously simple mind struggles to comprehend.

Not long after the beer came the food. It was 11.30. The master must have remembered, then, that he had children germinating somewhere in the big government house.

“Where are they?”

“They are all asleep, Sir. I’ll wake them up to come and eat.”

And, so it was everyday that the children would go to bed dirty, hungry and tired in their school clothes. Then they would be rudely woken up to straggle downstairs like zombies at about 11.30 to eat dinner, and go straight back to bed.

Working From Home in the City of Accra

Six, before the sun ascends. You’re hairy-screeching, whistling through the hermetic highways and halting abruptly here and there, utterly uncertain to make it before eight to the pinched square inches you work in, or, if you make it on time, in how many pieces would you straggle up the stairs? You finally make the office scene, barely believing how you gave the runaround to scraping or bumping your car. You’re still singeing and seething from the hideous habits of the hoi polloi on the streets or the hoity-toity hoi polloi in the cars.

Imagine soothingly waking up at six, and taking calm, no-frenzy steps through your hygiene to a brilliant breakfast. The moments are still many for you to slip with ease into your “office space”, peacefully tucked away in a corner of your home. Rush Hour 1 is spent lapping on cool morning nectar, running the email trail and breezing through full-office-day work quietly and efficiently. All that goodly time, you’re keeping the corner of your eye on things at home. Wonderful day!

Paperless offices; remote access; high fuel prices; traffic-time costs; the surreal stuff that cleverly combine to make this dream so real, so sensible. After moderately high initials, the magic model makes for office cost savings and happy workers, no? The only outstanding obstacle becomes the old-fashioned boss. They need to see professionals do face time at the office desk; not wholly necessary once the job gets done, but a compromise on the wagon. Stay at home through the rush hour; show your face three times a week from eleven to three!

Nice She Looks, Bush She Is

Two dashing playboys in bespoke, slick, black suits lounge in a stylish drawing room, on a softly lit evening, wetting their wealthy whistles on expensive brandy, smoking choking cigars and deviously debating their thrilling chasing sport.

One is pulpit-preaching the virgin virtues of feeding on a fixed field of victims. He exhorts, “I’m against the cruelty of juggling more than five…”, when a fiercely fetching feline-featured woman with mostly invisible clothing on her sleek ebony skin raps on the door, and lets herself in, with lazy, libido-liberating moves.

A boy-butler (or whatever he is) appears on cue to show the sultry siren upstairs. As she sails behind him through the wide archway, she tartly trails her skilful, flexible fingers on the spotless white wall! Shocking!