Wanting

I have not felt the want of anything so badly in such a long time. I espied a loafing, adorable urchin on my street this morning, while everybody was at church. He was gazing over a dwarf fence into a neighbour’s compound. Even from far, I could tell his naughty contemplation. As I got closer, I saw his bait: a chandelier of low-hanging green mangoes. He panned from the fruit to my face, and then back. His honest hankering made me almost stop to aid the trespass. Such simple hunger! It is a feeling I have not had about anything in yonks. And the mangoes were not even ripe!

Pre-Mall Accra

I only do blue-moon drop-ins at the Accra Mall. The cars and crowds are too “clustered thick as seeds”. I nurse a middling memory of pre-mall Accra. There was the government’s GNTC. It lay down and died when I was still an embryo. Chandirams went out like a candle. Kingsway kicked the bazaar bucket. Glamour walked the plank, and UTC bit the dust. Melcom survived (sometimes on a respirator, I think). A&C came and found a niche and reposed in it. There weren’t too many cars, then; Kingsway’s palm-size car park worked just fine. There was no colourful range of glittering goods to spike your Saturday surprise. Now, as then, some stay at home. Then, there was too little (to choose from). Now, there are too many (people to shove out of the way).

The Unlawful Business of Serving Food in a Whites-Only Club in Accra

An Italian uomo hissed at a black Afri-lady that she could not gain membership of his degustation restaurant in Accra because she was “not white”. He laughed while hissing. She was outraged, and waged war through social media. The unsavoury jibe jarred on the public psyche-palate. The government boys ‘came to town’ and closed down the ‘club’.

I believe the Italian man. I believe that he was just joking. The Afri-lady was with a Spaniard and a Japanese national when the pellets smacked the ceiling. I understand that the Japanese was a member of the club. I have doubts that the Italian uomo would have thought the Japanese white. Plus, if there was real racism going on, why would they not simply make it a private, members-only gig? Why would they allow non-whites to walk in and eat, and only withhold membership with its (usually) dubious benefits?

That said, I believe it was a very lame defence for the Italian man to say the fact that he was married to a black woman was proof that he was not racist. Very lame!

So, I believe that it was a mere jackass joke, and not true jaundice.

But the joke exposed him. He was operating a legit, front-room, raw seafood shop and an unlawful, backroom, seafood eatery. He evaded certain taxes by giving worthless scribbles on paper as receipts. He was cheating the nation.

So, a cruel, ill-thought, stupid, unnecessary joke exposed the poor man to odium, opprobrium and ‘government matter’. Hopefully, he thinks before he speaks next time, but I don't think he is racist. Enough of this row now.

The Hair

Exquisite, Elysian locks in angelic interlace crown her pretty head, and cascade in delightful, comely tresses to settle on her shoulders. The ribbed ‘rawness’ at the top and the subtle smoothness sailing softly below then frame her fine-featured face in fifty flawless fancies.

Water Everywhere in the City of Accra

Monstrous incompetence sluiced through the City of Accra on Tuesday night. It turned God’s bounty into a Greek gift; destroying lives and houses, cars and mattresses. It is among us the depravity resides. The wealthy wise-ass who chiselled and cast his brick-and-mortar in a water way because there was space; because he could; because nobody stopped him; because be bought off whoever tried to stop him. His workmen bought food in plastic bags and created compost blocks in gutters. Between the government goon and the conniving contractor who constructed a ten-millimetre gutter, if any at all, don’t you deserve to go Gaddafi!

Feckless Form Filling

Excited employee is completing a 6-page loan form. I ask him why he won’t scribble with a pencil first. He can always etch in ink when he gets all the details right. His long look tells me I’m a bloody busybody. He used a pencil already, he says. But I can’t see the lead strokes any. He gloats, “I deleted them all before restarting with a pen”. Three hours later, he’s still ‘donkeying’ down the document.

Petrol Station Detectives

The car coughs and splatters into the petrol station. The commission-earning attendant fights off two others, and the car quivers and creeps to a halt. As the nozzle nears, the driver slithers out to eye the dispenser meter with suspicion. If the system is rogue-rigged to pilfer a litre or two, how could you tell? What do you know? Hasten back into your car, and don't come back; not when I'm behind you in the evening queue.

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