Broken Water on the Streets in the City of Accra

A pitiable, teen-age boy snoozes like a sculpture hewed out of the darkness at the roadside. A medium-size basin poses upright in the street, one metre before him. A half-dozen plastic bags lie scattered and flattened on the street; and the boy, the bowl and the bags all stand in a tiny wash of water.

The boy looks dazed, and utters not a sound. As every car schleps by in the half-light jam, he lifts his cheerless eyes to the window, and then into the black heavens. The first time I witnessed this, I worked out the obvious interpretation, and was moved to stop to give him 5 Ghana Cedis.

Not quite a week later, I saw the same woebegone scene re-enact itself in a different part of Accra, and another in another part, and another, and another…. And, then, I caught on. It is a new money-making ploy in the City of Accra!

On Rubbish Adverts

Ghana loves you,
Melcom loves you more…

I saw this rubbish byline on a fading billboard on the New Times Road. How dare you, in trying to be clever, insult national affection? In Turkey you’d go to jail. Somebody should tear down that offensive piece of male cattle crap.

Wilderness

Woman on the highway
Peeing down her thighway
While her man keeps watch
For the cops or Sasquatch

Heavy Curtains, Pigs with Lipstick

In my Superior room, at dulcet dusk, Lil Girl glided round the heavy drapery onto the snug balcony for a breathtaking view of ivory-and-amber-lit, wooded, residential Kumasi. And I surveyed the sublime sights of her flowing roundnesses. I lent my ken, for a second, to the TV, for what McCain-busting move that god, Obama, was up to. Between pigs and a whole lot of laughable lipstick, I heard Lil Girl say, “Baby, I can’t find my way back in.” For a trice, I didn’t know what she meant. Then I saw hands on the carpet; lovely, shortened hair; a mischievous grin. Lil Girl had found her way back in by crawling on all fours under the portiere. On TV, the old man who first brought in the pigs with the lipstick was trying to pull down the curtains on his deliberate misinterpretation of the god’s wisecrack. He won't find his way back in.

Everybody's Love Triangle

Many years ago, I read Peter Abrahams’s ‘Mine Boy’. Even then, its rich ménage of themes came to life for me, but what really struck a chord was the racial bigotry that ran through everyday life, from the paper pass, to a simple drink of beer. And the sadness in the novel leapt out and gripped my heart in a vice for many long days.

Last weekend, I read Mine Boy again, and savoured, once more, its clean and colourful characters: Xuma, Leah, Elisa, Maisy, Daddy, The Red One, The Fox, that sonofabitch, J. P. Williamsom et al. But, in the simple plot, this time, my now-older mind fixated on the theme of love, and of wishes and reality.

Powerfully-built Xuma loved the dainty Eliza. She loved the trappings of the white man’s world. She wanted a gentleman (like the doctor); a man who could read. Who would have clever-clever conversation with her in the night, and not just the raw, physical thrust of simple love. So, although Eliza loved Xuma back, and became his woman for a short while, she left him like a twilight thief. And she was never seen again.

Maisy was not quite a finished work of art, but she had warm laughter in her eyes and a lot of sugar in her heart. She loved Xuma, and he liked her. She made him happy, and, with her, he saw his worldly woes fly away. But he felt he loved her not.

In the end, Eliza stole away. Xuma was going to jail for co-leading a strike at the deathtrap which was also called a mine (a thing a black man had no donkey’s right to do). Before turning himself in, Xuma fled to Maisy, and beseeched her to wait for him. Maisy said she would, and we are all sure that she could and would.

Somewhere in that triangle, I learnt a lot about love, and what it really means. It means being at ease, being at peace, and having free fun with whoever is the one it happens with. That is love!

Postscript: Thank you, Peter Abrahams. This was too special to edit. It had to be read raw!

School Rules

Too often, as a rule
They who've been to school
Act arrogantly like a King
But don't understand a thing!

Conference

It is icily intriguing to see plots poles-apart come forth, while the truly important issues are ignored. It is easy to identify who is shielding or protecting what immiscible interests. With sundry make-or-break motions afoot, I caught a mini glimpse of how political campaigns should feel like near the general elections.