Silly, Self-Love Friday: The Hunk in the Mirror

Swaggering down the office corridor towards the dividing glass door, I saw this swanky-dandy, dressed-on-point, God-I-hate-that-dude kind of guy strutting towards me. In a panic of pride, I picked my phone to call my girl to make sure she was far from him. To my bright-eyed surprise, he picked up his phone too to call his girl to make sure she was far from me. Then it hit me in my slender body. The God-I’m-so-envious-of-him guy was my own reflection.

Hunger Strike, Dumber Strike

Ah! Some grieving group of teachers strafed their stomachs with a hunger strike in protest against the belly-full leaders of yet another teachers’ association. Such benighted belittling of that wonderful political tool! I have scarcely heard of a dumber strike. (Be sure to listen to the ridiculous audio here).

No sooner had their sham stomach shutdown started than they quelled it questionably by crouching behind a court order (obtained by the police) restraining them from the hunger strike. Confused? So am I. They’re simply saying in order to be law-abiding citizens, they’ll go back to eating. That’s male-cattle excrement.

Lake Bosumtwi

Refreshing, sun-blocked, some-earth-some-grass glade. Running round a terra cotta, waking lake. Far flung from where most of you (ad)venture. Swimmers tumble rough in the eddy, while dancers bop and bump around the plank-wood stage. The bush-meat pepper-soup bubbles in a cauldron under a mahogany tree, not five feet from the palm-wine ‘pulpit’. Huddled close are fish and rice and loads of fantasy foods. Holidaying here is far lovelier than Accra.

Dark Dens in the City of Accra

To my nought surprise, there are holes and hideouts for the hoi polloi in the city of Accra where the herds and humans bleat and feed, mate and litter, and even die together among scrap-made shacks without electricity.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Working Out in the City of Accra

On every rough-hewn (rasta) park, I see a rag-tag team a-play. My slightly richer, 'trendier' peeps say the gyms are hot agog too. It seems Accra has finally caught on that a little pay or pain ahead is cheaper than later bills from 18th-Century med centres.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

The Streets of the Two Accras

In clustered Central Accra, they pave the streets in praise-pursuit; china-smooth like heaven's highway. But the suburban straits are genocide (or is there a more sombre word?); raw, rugged, lumpy-bumpy thoroughfares cruelly calculated to cripple your chassis.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Drivers & Angels in the City of Accra

You again! Or are you her sultry sister? Or her sister's sister? You're all divinely descended from one prepossessing Mitochondrial Eve. Was it the blue-black jeans sculpting your sensual, s-shaped sinews or the tantalising-in-tone torso? Or perhaps the devastating dimple (I saw just one)? Your eyes 'diamanted' towards me, my right foot zombied onto the brake, my left hand zigzagged towards the kerb. Danger-dealing demoiselle, please don't beam bright beside the road. You're too stunning to behold.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Corrective Rape

Corrective rapes
Collective rapes
Sour grapes
Stone-age apes

Rough Riders In The City Of Accra

No bulging bags after six pm. Really wretched riders will ooze out of the lessening light with scimitars and lurch for your wrist or jugular. Delayed submission leads to loathsome laceration. Best give up the sac and ask if they don't require the padded wallet and matching shoes as well.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

When The Power Gets Cut (As Usual)

It's amazing how everything (but my bodily functions) ceased when the electricity company cut the power during a poco-powerful storm. It's been off for 7 hours now.

I was lucky that my handheld held all day (after the laptop had died in a fight scene of a psycho-thriller) even though I Whatsapped, BBM'd, Gtalked and tweeted all day.

In a blast from the past, I scoured every column and feature in the Graphic and Mirror by torchlight. Nostalgia - I don't read the papers anymore. I get all my news from the digital media.

So, the electricity company goons may outdo even their own assinine record. I'll turn the vacuum into a positive experience.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Holiday Hangouts in the City of Accra

Not surprising. The traffic circle near the Accra Mall was jammed. Packed thick with cars. 4 lanes of cars in a two-lane way. All were going into the Mall. Most did not make it. The Mall was already full of herds. On a public holiday, there is nowhere to go. They all throng the beaches or the Mall. Oh, the Mall was a pen or sty.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Hitting on the Home-Route Girl

Silly, old man. Leaning over the till in the convenience shop at a service station. He miscalculated he could use the sales girl for his convenience. When I walked in, he was in the middle of crooning the history of bank notes to her. He stopped when my shadow darkened the note. He said she could pocket the 'clinky' change of two coins. She said a rapid half-thanks and dumped them noisily in the cash register. He could not have missed her sublime slight.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

The Case for the Demolition of Drums

Must State and corporate official events always be laced with trombo-trumpet tooting and brain-busting drumming even during office hours? Is it cultural to fritter away your waking hours with frivolous fun and to dim-wit distract others who want to do something else?

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

When A Car ‘Bumps You’ in the City of Accra

You have cleverly got around the insane traffic by pushing out at a thin hour. You are steering through a dark, ‘un-peopled’ spot when a car ghosts into your rear view. It catches up with you, and you slow down, but it does not overhaul. A small jolt and a jangling sound tell you the car behind has eaten your ‘ass’. You screech to a halt to inspect the damage and maybe replicate it on the other driver’s face. He also slips out (with his previously hidden mates) and holds a piece to your gonads. They zoom off with your valuables (and maybe your car). If you are still wrapping your mind around what is happening, you have just been robbed!

Weekday Hour # 1

The hour after work (6 to 7 pm, as the day kisses the night) is definitely my most enjoyable weekday hour.

The air con is off; team mates have faded away; work files banked in paper and mind folders; and still too early to tussle with the traffic.

I hook up with my friends online, catch up on news of this sinful world, tweet and blog: a little spot of heaven.

What's yours? The most enjoyable hour of your typical weekday?

Tangled Toes in The City of Accra

I shoe ten tangled toes (as do most of the 'kids' I grew up with) from playing barmy, barefoot football. Thus (these days) I shirk slippers outside home.

In those indigent, illiquid economic days in Ghana, we would have suffered parental thrashing if we had dared parade our shoes on the dump (football) field.

We had no sports shoes. Our (not so) patent leather shoes were hardly appropriate, anyway, and were bought on a strict one-child-one-pair policy. Wo de k)b) ball na )kyena w'ahye deEn ak) school?

So, the rugged rocks and rough roots, stone chippings and shards of glass, gnarled nails and snail shells sliced, stabbed, lacerated and etched their gory graffiti into our tarsals and metatarsals.

It is a ten-toe 'mazement that behind those gruesome-gladsome years, we could yet count two full feet of ten (tangled, traumatised) toes.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

The Runaway Music Scene in the City of Accra

Amazing - the way new acts drop (not so) tight tracks and (quasi) vibrant videos every week. The beats are not fresh or the lyrics crisp. The style is neo-Naija (commercially cranked up) and the themes are horse carcasses being flogged flagrantly over and over again. It is like chasing smoke trying to keep up, and you cannot help but think those who popped up 5 to 10 years ago got the cheese.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Doctors Against Washing Hands in The City of Accra

Philistine physicians! They were in 'our building' all week. It is really their building as we are tenants. In these terrible days when the public-health people are advertising pathological handwashing to prevent Cholera (and other conditions) every single doctor we saw at the loo simply zipped up after and left the men's room. We hope the sterilising standards were higher in the ladies' room. We must also hope that surgical gloves usage is widespread, but (even then) they have to touch the gloves first. Ewwwwww!

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Archery, Shaggery & Other Olympic Sports

My mates and I are having demented delight at Honeysuckle Pub. I offer that Chaskele is the greatest sport in the world and should make the olympics list. Kelvin and Kiz counter it should be shaggery. Males of country A versus females of country B. We all join the imaginary Ghana Males team and quickly choose Venezuela as our first opponent and line up Costa Rica, Colombia and Uganda on the way to the final (a pity Ghana Males cannot meet Ghana Females) Lovely Friday evening.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Spitting Season in The City of Accra

Get no place fast past an open car window without clamouring your coming. Give no rat's-arse respect to what car it is or you would be soused with stupido-senseless spittle. And then they would say 'sorry'! I see a spitting scene everyday.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone