Mmm, The Pleasure of Reading

While the ‘Benighted Estate’ spent last week and this week jousting over politics, International Children’s Book Day slithered past almost unnoticed. World Reader, Golden Baobab and the Read Worms Club (Ashesi Uni) travelled to Adeiso (Eastern) to read with school kids.

The kids have been provided with electronic readers by World Reader so they can read books without turning pages. Mmm, pleasant. World Reader is a not-for-profit. They are doing this as a calling.

The reader pilot programme is running at Adeiso, Kade and Teacher Mante. Adeiso is the kid’s-gloves child. The kids have e-readers, Saturday readings with visitors from World Reader and Read Worms. Kade has just the e-readers, and at Teacher Mante the kids just have government books or government no-books.

After a while, Adeiso, Kade and Teacher Mante will be compared, and we all know what the scale would be.

E-reader providers, African-content promoters, and undergrads with purpose are coming together to build a sparkling future for our kids, and it hardly makes the news! It’s at once one of the most wonderful, heart-warming, ‘smileable’ things I’ve heard of since ...

I’ll Never 4give You

Anon text message I received from a UK number while writing my blog post for today:  I’ll never 4give u.

My reply: Dunno who this is but Matthew 6:14-15.

April Fool? Remember Wilkinson & Downton

1890s England. A regular at a public house told the owner’s wife that her husband had been seriously injured in an accident and was lying in a ditch with broken bones at Leytonstone. He asked her to bring 2 pillows and a cab to take her battered husband home. It was untrue, and he was only playing a practical joke on her.

The harrowing news however caused a violent shock to the woman’s nervous system, causing her to wretch and her hair to turn white. She suffered other forms of permanent injury and incapacity including mental distress. Her husband was put through expense trying to restore her health.

Her husband sued the juvenile joker in court for damages, and the court held that the fool who thought he had jokes was liable to pay damages for his wilful lies which had injured the poor woman.

Play your pranks with care on All Fool's Day and every other day.

Fire Burn Your Arse

One night, a group of boisterous youth blows up a blazing bonfire in a grassy glade. They gym-jump over it to prove brazen bravado. Opana is one of them. He’s forgotten that he’s plugged his infirm derriere with a thick tuft of cotton wool. He leaps over the flame, and a flint catches his pants. A flare eats the wool up Opana's sorry arse.

He who lives in a glass house... 

Roughneck Radio in the City of Accra

Ghana radio’s raw and raucous; strident of speech; toxic of tone; boorish of music and moribund of news. I float on Atlantis or ride with BBC.

No Painkillers in the City of Accra

We’re scared. We’re very afraid. All manner of things are no-go areas now. No local Bitters or Gins. They increase the libido for 2 months and then give you a mere mushroom for life. Now, some boffin says here that painkillers cause ED. In other words, if you want to be well and firmly hung, don’t take Ibuprofen, though your head splits into two.

The Devil Tried to Sell Me Bread Last Night

I was stuck in the Accraian vehicular mud on the way home when he accosted me near the dark Airport Traffic lights. He materialised upon me, wielding a loaf of bread in his right hand. His left hand was out of my view, so I could not see the miniature pitchfork certain to be clutched in it. His eyes were hard and bloody, his ears, hairy and elfin. He gave one severe look, and I zigzagged through the queue. He may have been a human vendor, but I didn’t stick around to discover. I fled with the thought that since the time of Jesus, You-Know-Who has been tempting Earth with bread.