Back-Stabbing – The Anlo Experience

In 1783, warriors from Akyem, Ada, Akwapem and Ga ganged up with Denmark (yes, Danes!) to fight a war with the great and proud people of Anlo. What had the Anlos done? Oh, they’d only pillaged a Danish trade caravan and killed its leader (just one man) of whose names only Thessen appears to have survived history.

Against the force of such an overwhelming conspiracy, the great Anlos lost to the Danes and the back-stabbers, and were ruled and controlled by Denmark until 1850 when they suffered the ignominy of being passed along to Great Britain along with other ‘possessions’ of Denmark, which had lost interest(?) in what is present-day Ghana.

One Million Paths to Love

Time and Attraction
soon lure love to themselves;
Wit and Humour
fetch a fertile fondness;
Smiles and Kindness
will coax cascading affection;
Loneliness and Presence
bind unlikely souls together;
Risk and Adventure
ravish reason with seduction -
One million paths to Love.

Kwahu Easter Fiesta

Obo, Obomeng, Atibie, Mpraeso: they attract revelling crowds from the 4 corners of Ghana and lands beyond. Rarefied-air-on-mountaintop, music and barbecue tightly hugging the narrow, eroding-bitumen streets on either side, wealthy chateaux holding hands with old, 1970s homes.

At Atibie: paragliding for foreigners (because it costs GH¢50 a glide), at Mpraeso: Music Music by TV3, at Obomeng: founts of drink and mounts of food. But, this year, somebody directed that no women should wear miniskirts, hot shorts or short dresses. Next year, they’ll lose numbers.

Egoprovocation

While exiting a white-goods shop with Lil Girl, a bloke pulls up and waves at her, so we figure they’re familiar. I’m stowing a bag in the boot, when bloke accosts Lil Girl and whispers that she’s beautiful and he wants her number. Lil Girl calmly gestures towards me and says that her husband would not like that. Oaf-bloke turns around and ‘penguins’ into the shop. He’s fat, and his boxers are oozing out of his sagging jeans.

The Ghana Music Awards

A regular commerce-driven company organises the Ghana Music Awards. It was a master stroke of business genius for them to create the event which attracts more suspense, intrigue and excitement than almost any other in Ghana. I don’t think many events have been more crazily followed in Ghana in the past 10 years than the Ghana Music Awards, apart from the General Elections, the Africa Cup of Nations 2008 and Barack Obama’s pit stop in Accra.

In its time, I’ve seen the Ghana Music Awards criticised by musicians almost every year. Now, criticism itself is not a bad thing, is it? But if so many are so variously angered, dismayed or repulsed by nominations and awards at the event, why is it still so inexorably popular? Cannot the musicians and their associations set up their own glitzy-ritzy awards event? And since they will be the organisers and the eligible at the same time, the popularity of their programme will mean a necessary waning of the star quality of the Ghana Music Awards.

You can support the Ghana Music Awards and make it better, or you can cull its clout by setting up a ‘self-awarding’ musicians’ event. Whatever you do, do not accept nominations every year and turn around to criticise if the “Most Popular Song of the Year”, by your estimation, is no more popular than cricket in Ghana.

Provocation – One Minute to Murder

Silently suffering the only one United bite two H2 bullets from the band of badass Bavarians, a hoggish, hirsute hobgoblin hobbles between my main man and I, provoking me with his puerile revelry because he’s figured with his kernel brain that I’m a United fan. I eye the coke bottle on the table, imagine his blood on the shiny Equator-Bar floor, but elect to bark at him instead. He scampers off with his tail between his hinds.

Integrity

No darn dictionary can tell me what it means. But I know its main meaning when I’m fringing a cruel cliff, stumbling toward the great gorge below, and one mere metre at my blind back hovers the sole beneficiary of my ‘loaded’ life insurance.