Too Many Hair Stylists in the City of Accra

East Legon, Accra. But also Madina. And Kaneshie. And Dansoman. Every quarter of Accra is festooned in yellow, blue, green, white, etc of MVP, Revlon, UB and Dark & Lovely. The ads are draped on wooden shacks and wooden kiosks, sandcrete stalls and disused steel sea-freight containers. These are all hair stylists. There are puny hair-styling schools every forty paces and hair stylists every thirty. There cannot be half-enough heads to go all round for business. So what are they training the girls for?

The Creative Parts of Accra

It’s so easy to perch pretty in your tight spot in Accra and ‘enclose’ the economy in Ridge and Osu; Kaneshie and Makola. I’ve recently ‘touristed’ the dustier parts and scanned technology shacks with computers, musical instruments, cameras and boom mics couched behind mechanic yards or ‘chop bars’. Young men mixing audio and video and creating the modern music sounds of Ghana. I totally dig that.

The Empire Which Died in its Sleep

And so the greatest empire formed over the land now called Ghana was brought to a humiliating end without a single rifle shot. I don’t know what to make of it all; of the novel pacifism of its formerly warlike rulers; of the treachery of the ‘enemy’. I mean, Troy had its horse, Rome its hellish decadence, and Germany its ambitious war. But why did this empire not fight? Its name means “because of war”!

The Radio of a Night Watchman

The night watchman's job must be as lonely as death. How often do I see him striding in his give-away clothes with a transistor radio locked down on his shoulder in the oblivion of some overloud treble talk?

The Swinger

Swinging showily down the spruced-up sidewalk of the Ring Road East, just past the Ako-Adjei interchange, in her blue denims, a flimsy, frilly cobalt top and a coffee ‘overtop’, I eyed her as her wonderfully moulded body perked up the streets where the cuckoo crowd clusters not, whether morning, sun or five.

Population Circus in Accra

The homeless hustlers of Accra loathe being counted by the government. They’ve been reckoned once or twice before, but they were not lavished with the loot or nice living. Why should they let you number their foreheads in their open-sky bed-and-bath-rooms? Do you care? They heckle and harangue the head-counters from ‘their’ streets until they ‘heel’ it to the hotels. There, some managers would not let them count the guests. Maybe they aren’t supposed to be there. There’s a census going on. Or did I hear wrong; is it a circus?

Female ‘Bonk’ Workers

A bank is NOT a safe place to keep your valuables chaste. Maybe not in Ghana today, where there’re no jobs for fresh graduates, and those who grab a position (or is it the position which ‘grabs’ them) suffer slavish terms. We’ve always inferred that some banks shanghai their female employees to do ‘a little extra’ banging banking to suck in the moneyed clients. So, while Clients can keep on keeping their gold and diamonds in a bank, young female employees may well lose their Rubies and Pink Sapphires after working hours.