Tyre-Mending in Accra

On a rainy evening on a public holiday, I was just zooming off from work to wolf a pizza. It was already ordered. Ah-woooo! Phhst, a tack retired one of my tyres! I’d fixed that same one the week before. The rubbish tyre men had looked thick and bungling. But it was in the middle of the Devil’s ass – I couldn’t pick and choose. They’d applied super glue instead of rubber glue and a little common sense. So I stood glued in 'Mud Acre' while proper tyre hands did over the punctured pneumatic. It’s just like that, no? So many Accraians only pretend competence.

The Melting Streets of Accra

The fiery sun is barbecuing up the sweltering streets of Accra in their own bitumen. I wonder, if a similar sizzle is not sautéing the (delicious?) delicate sauce around the human brain. Might that be why some street Accraians behave like little devils dancing on a bed of flaring coal? We have scythed down all the trees for urban (under)development!

Cascading Buildings in the City of Accra

A college girl dies. Her friend is between a rock and a hard place. They were only leaving a hostel as students do. A canopied walkway avalanches on them. The building was erected decades ago. Money is not for maintenance in Ghana. It is for creating, and then creating some more. Already existing infrastructure can take care of itself.

Her parents were expecting a smarter girl back. They are getting a corpse. It happened in school; on school property. Somebody has to pay. Her parents are grieving, I know. But, they should PLEASE not simply leave it to God. Sue somebody. Sue everybody who should have cared. It won't bring Eva back, but do it anyway. Start with university authorities!

God, I did not know her – why am I so upset?

The Accra Central All-Ages Nudity-Stupidity Circus

The fetid, frowzy throng makes it even harder to breathe in the sun-baked air of Accra’s bus stations. Yet another hapless mayor is evacuating vendors from one of the bus stations. The vendors, who think they own all public space in the city of Accra, have threatened to strip to the scandalous skin to protest. Fools! Did you pay a tuppence for that real estate? I’m always at phone-camera ready. I’ll record your circus freak show. You’ll make Accra uglier than you already have (than I ever thought you could!)

Married at 15

I stray one thousand miles today. A big man in a West African country has alleged nuptials with a fifteen-year-old North African girl. It’s said she cannot be ‘wifed’ off at this nymph age in Pharaohland. So, the ‘dowered’ deed is done in Naija. A ‘mammaried’ minister is asked if anything is being done about the stolen youth. She says consultations will be held. Has a crime been committed or not?

Vampires against Mothers in Ghana

We are not developing – we are primitive! Why is it that in 2010, so many women die during childbirth? It is rubbish! Cow dung! I do not think you need state-of-the-effing-art equipment to prevent these thousands of deaths. What you need is competent medical personnel. What you need is caring people. What you need is less negligence. What you need is strong punishment for negligent medical practitioners and establishments. What you need is a jail term or two for a doctor or nurse or midwife or quack. Don’t no doctor feel tres bien in Accra, Bawku or Half Asini for the next year unless maternal deaths nationwide are below 100! Or may you choke on your stethoscope...or sphygmomanometer!

Albert Luthuli Road, Accra

It is a little, arboreal street turning off the Gamal Abdel Naser Avenue at Ridge, in the city of Accra. Luthuli hosts the Ghana Maritime Authority, and a part of the Passport Office, where Accraians, other Ghanaians (and people who sound Nigerian) queue from 5 a.m. for Ghana passports. It also hugs a long wall around a decrepit colonial bungalow. In seven places on the wall, somebody has charcoaled “Don’t urinate here”. It must be that passersby do not know the great South African Chief, so they pee on his 'Nobel' renown. Would they stop if they found out who he was?