Vendors with Bells in the City of Accra

Today, I drove past a frowning fat man in a yellow MTN vendor’s vest. He was pitching strips of rubber-sealed phone top-up cards in front of the Palace Hypermarket (what’s that?) on the Spintex Road. Nobody was buying his cards (which must explain his fat fart face). But what really stood him out in the pedlars’ queue was the little black metal bell in his right hand – a now-not-so-common selling aid. With tiny twitches of his wrist, his three-clang cadence compelled attention to his common cards.

Fighting Crime by Sacking the Police

Mexico’s police are in a wanton war against thugs, drug traffickers, kidnappers, escaped prisoners, robbers, criminals. It’s ‘the trenches’ – nobody’s winning. The Mexican police are corrupt; they play both felon and catcher (but I wonder if this isn’t true in most countries). The government has sacked 3,200 of them (that’s 10 percent); another 1,000 may follow soon. That country must feel on sure ground, unthreatened and unmolested. Ghana probably needs to axe more than 50 percent of her own force, no? But, in the time it took to train replacements, the recidivist ruthless robbers would wipe us all out.

What I'd Say to My 16-Year-Old Self

What's with the rough, pineapple face? And quit being such a wuss. Walk over and say hi to that girl! She won't bite!

One Law I'd Abolish

Dangerous Risk Adrenaline Suicide by Fear of Falling

The crime of 'Attempted Suicide'. If I could reverse one law, this would be it! What business of the State is it, if I remove me from this world?

The Mistake

Even in your silence,
I feel the vital sense –
the telling thrashing about
of your throbbing heart.
That is true love, no doubt.

Even behind the pretty eyes
that turn soulful and soft
each time you look at me;
and through your wordless signs
I feel your love, for sure.

*Poem written in my past for the wrong person.

I Wish I Could Take This Back

There's no bigger critic than a guilty conscience.

About 5 years ago, I knew a girl called Josephine. Pretty, quiet, good - and she was my friend. But she changed her phone number. She gave the new one to me, but I did not save it. I went to her house, but they'd moved. We were really good friends. I think I must have hurt her. If I could take back something I've done to someone, I'd take back the silly way in which I lost contact with Josephine.



Is there anything you've also done to someone that you wish you could take back?

Barbie Dolls and Peacocks at the Accra Mall

I was just speaking with Old John. I asked him to tell me about markets long ago in this land. He said before colonisation, there were no fixed marketplaces where you could go and buy stuff daily.

There was a ‘watering hole’ where people and peoples from North and South met on scheduled days to barter salt for fish, cotton for iron, kontomire for cane rat, kola for white clay. When the goods were finished, they’d barter news. A man took a fifth wife; a woman had her Badu Dwan (a celebration of her tenth child); a boy and girl were banished from their town for festive fornication.

When the news is digested, messages would then change hands (or ears). A man sends his love to a maiden – he sends it with a guinea hen. A woman sends a half-piece of calico cloth to her daughter who lives with her sister at a far-off place.

Then, I told Old John about the Accra Mall; about the overdressed Barbie dolls and Peacocks that flock its corridors and spaces from morning till midnight. Old Man John said he was little surprised. Pre-colonial market day was also a time to show off wealth, magic, beauty, wives, horses, cattle, sons and daughters.

Old John thought the fixed market was introduced by European merchants to enable them offload their little-needed goods of European cloth, alcohol, guns and gunpowder, tobacco, mirrors and hats(!) to Africans!

So a mall may be American, but Accraians remain African!