The Women Ask Too

Saturday evening; a tall, elegant police woman at the security checkpoint. Black military boots, blue-black uniform – hugging her gym-going long legs, torso-tight, topmost button open. She reminds me of the woman-in-uniform idolatry. She saunters towards me, as if we’re both expecting something to happen. She asks me why I’m “chilling” alone. I know she’s seducing for money, but I decline to infer. I flash a serpent’s smile and wink, and gesture the passenger seat, if she really wants to “chill”. She waves me on. She didn’t smile the whole time. She reminds me, also, of the women-at-the-war-front debate, although this situation had a little milk poured over it.

Yellow Slipper in the Street

Moseying along the Spintex Road, past the bumpy link called Flower Pot, I gained on a banana-coloured flip-flop poised on the cusp of the street. Street vendors huddled together in market-conversation on the dusty shoulder, as other observers eyed the separated Siamese (the slipper) as if it was a shrine, or the magical mules of a saint. An excited ambulance had just jetted past five minutes earlier. I think that a car had scythed the lone yellow slipper from its twin and their wearer.

Business School Doctor

I’ve first-sighted this curious case of a daytime doctor, night-time malcontent who’s disbursed a decade of his life in med school; the nearest two years stitching up broken bodies. Now, he’s so foully frustrated by his failure to clip a suture in the hollow at the pit of his pocket. He’s elected to refract his career path to business school, and then become a billion-buck banker. I find this haplessly heartbreaking.

Kim Kardashian, The Racist Test & Other Random Questions

Has Kim Kardashian already picked an engagement ring?
What, on Earth, is a Red Fox Labrador?
Will Kaka really go to Real Madrid?
Is Havard serious with its 'Racist Test'?

The Demons Who Betray

What are the social lines? In a small society, where everybody knows everybody else, can friends go after their friends’ partners? Can your partner guiltlessly go for your friend? Which would mean that marriage is the only sacred grounds? If the answer is ‘yes’, then please go ahead and tell me the difference between ‘friend’ and ‘fiend’.

Sacrifice

The highest point of Love is ...


...SACRIFICE!


Now I have discovered what this means to me!

Accra’s Angst in One Instance

Gravid Grandam, why do you furiously fling me the evil corner eye before the soonest sunrays have made the scene? I was just bundling into my car for work when I espied your tired trundle towards me. You seemed to be arranging to eject spittle in my general surroundings. Is it my fault that I scurried into the car? Why did you swivel and survey me from shocked head to shivering shoes like that?

The Song Life Plays

Silence...
Violence...
Silence...
Violence...

The Poison Hunters in Accra

They flip the top of each soda they buy, hankering hungrily, but not after the fizz and flavour. They fish for harlequin hints of paddling particles, damning drops of detergent or some alien allergy in the bottle. First, they’ll blackmail and menace the manufacturer. If that ship sinks, they curse and sue for devious damages. They can rent false injury at twenty Cedis per devil-dealing doctor.

Elementary Eye Care

My friend’s eyes were always crimson-sore – they looked like a dying fire. So, the obligatory oculist opportunistically ordered optical lenses. The ersatz eyes arrived, but the raw discomfort mulishly remained. Rather than return to the pricy eye doctor and risk racking retinal surgery, we ’wimped’ back to the ABCs. We discovered that if my friend laved his still-sleepy phiz at first light, then he didn’t drive his hands to his eyes. The soreness soothed, the burning breezed away, and into the bin flew the gainless glasses.

Groundhog Day

If your every day
Looks like the one before
Then too cautious you play
Your life must be a bore

What’s the Luxury in a Car?

Some time ago, I pilloried a retailer for audacious advertising on a bumptious billboard. Now, they’re running an electronic encore. Streaming a sales promo on TV, they swear their heart is set on giving away two luxury cars. Now, the two cars are those minuscule, atomic Asian cars that you could even send by text message. So, what’s a luxury car?

Musical Chairs

In no telegraph time, I come to link my cell phone ring tone with the ten or so Undesirables that I would rather not hear from. Every one of those cringe-calls really rattles me. So, I shuffle my ring tone every month or two or three, according to when my Don’t-Pick list touches ten.

Predator and Prey

What did you permit
To bother you today?
Would you also admit
Being both Predator and Prey?

‘Exotic’ Videos in the City of Accra

Ghanaian artistes cut their music videos with animated windmills, the Alps, Manhattan or flying Arabian carpets in the busy background. They’re casually crooning about common affection or double-entendre coupling. So, the welkin wonder is the ’rhymeless’ spectacle.

A Time to Heal

Tell me, should a battered, broken heart
Not hide away till time heals the pain?
Or should it stay wide open and apart
And try to trust and love again?

Free-Riding in the City of Accra

In the creeping cord of traffic on the gritty main artery of Adenta Quarter, two draggled, frowzy men hopped off the rear bumper of the trotro (mini bus) in front of me. They’d been freeloading from Madina Town for about three turbulent kilometres. The driver didn’t seem to mind – I wonder why I did.

Coin-Counting Carousal in the City of Accra

Equator Bar, Accra, 9p.m.

He let slip to case a new place to hang out with an advance party of his mates before whisking a woman there. Now, he and three of his mates are having happy drinks with a woman – a tall, dark, leggy vixen in a short, small, black dress. She’s full of electro-magnetic elegance. They put on a cheesecake aided by the combo band. Then, it’s time to go. It’s time to pay.

The waiter drops the bill. The men shoot back in shock. They debate in decibels above the music exactly how many of what they have had. One appeals to see the drink menu – Jackass, isn’t this two hours too late?

Thirty minutes later, when it’s time for my group to hit the door, Miss Legs and her guy are still stuck in their booth. Their mates have long left them. My guess is they are going to bring some money to pay. Miserable toads!

Letting Go

Why should you let them go
When it's true, and you know
Their chance of a happy life
Is all in being your wife?

Quasimodo dies in the City of Accra

Ghanaian old wives’ tales will tickle me to tantrums on any given day. Whooping and living it up with Kiz, his Barbs and Lil Girl on a muggy, grey Saturday, the gloomy, gravid clouds gave way, and, then, they gave us rain. I had just been observing to Kiz that the Adenta sun seemed the most fiery in Accra; almost vile and volcanic. Outside, it was splashing and slopping cats and dogs, but the sun still shone through. Kiz chirruped that a hunchback had just died! I was rallying to be horrified, when Barbs confirmed that Kiz was only flipping folklore on its head. A traditional belief, wow! The rain let up for a while. Guess what was said next, in jest, when, presently, the Sun-Rain came down again: Wow, they bury them fast these days! He’s funny, my friend.