Our Kids Are Smart; They Just Have Shitty Teachers

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” That is my earliest memory of a saying. Well, there are others. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” That one was rubbish in my gangrenous grammar. Were Apple and Day best friends? How could they work together to keep the doctor away? What was the doctor trying to get to? You get the point.

Let them go right ahead. A farming settlement outside Accra with exam-flunking kids snarls at the local teachers. Next, they threaten to lynch them, and issue a worrying writ to quit town. Be my guest. Sink deeper in your educational cesspool right there. At least you had some teachers.

Girondin

Beneath his starlit eyes

All passions burn so cool

Smiles a lot, slow to speak

Mellow voice, mellifluous

He is a tone of brawn and braw

But he’s naked to the bone

He wins his hearts in serenades

And a smooth je ne sais quoi

Girondin is cast in steel

That no fire can hope to melt

His mystery flows beneath the floe

A halo crowns him like a charm

He stalks the wildest fantasies

And stirs the songbirds to a tune

He’s on, he’s off, he’s flittering

Who can hold bold Girondin?

(S)Pin(n)ing

I did not know, the time we met
That it would end this way
I'd not have sung this long duet
Or walked to meet halfway


I did not know true love could die
Unlike in fairy tales
I would have sliced mine like a pie
And boxed a piece with nails


I do not know the way from here
Or if I want to go
Today, the sun did not appear
Tomorrow, it will show

Silence

It is the music of the trees

In the drone of the balmy breeze

It is the stretching of the hills

And the tears the sky sadly spills

Thunderclap in breaking hearts

The unseen tail of poison darts

It is the picture of the sea

The still before the storm we see

It is the depth of the deep black hole

The massive ice caps in each Pole

It is the cosmic dance of stars

And the sounds of life on Mars

The great allure of muted minds

The need to see behind the blinds

The presence of stark loneliness

The blank before each ‘I confess’.

Finis

It rose and then it glowed

Was hot and enragé

Turned cold and blazed again

It grew and flew away

It struck a light and shone

Was swept up in a swirl

Tailspinning in a trice

It mellowed and refined

It set and gave a sigh

Was far from growing old

The time had come to go

It crept away to die.

PatrOItic

Rubbish teacher. How can a person luring kids to a TV programme say "patroitic" and expect me to let my child watch? I've seen too many kindergarten teachers destroy our kids' speech and pronunciation with 2 decades of undoing to correct. Are teachers at that level not probably the most important? Patroitic? Idiotic!

Do You Know Certiorari?

Three lawyers and I found ourselves in a suite with building engineers. For a spell we forged ahead swimmingly, while jousting over fair laws and shear walls. Then, the convener careened into construction clichés about ‘fixes’. To tease us, mystified advocates, one engineer made a grand old show of explaining ‘fixes’ to us. What did I do? I fixed him with a fast-fetched question: Do you know Certiorari? He waved his hands in his pride-peeling pickle and did not veer my way again.