Chaos In The Very Heart Of The City Of Accra

...and the biggest news item on health over the week has been whether heart patients should stay home and pray for their lives because the foremost heart surgeon was revered but released the government.

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Bra Failure In The City of Accra

The 'Cleavage Gallery' is an art exhibition I'm thrice-thrilled to attend everyday. Sans-bra is another dashing, delightful devilment at the other end. But when the cups runneth over as a result of 'syncopated' styrofoam, please do not call the wearer a 'Brartist'.

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Who Sells The Drugs In The City of Accra?

In this nation of saints and sinners (and I do not belong permanently to either group) I was surprised to see the public perplexed about the alleged compromise of anti-narcotic agents by drug barons.

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“Thank God We Are Not A Nigerians”

You’re playing football with your sibling in your backyard, when a miscued (but intended) hard kick floats over the wall onto your neighbour’s grounds and smacks your friend (who lives there) in the face, drawing blood from his nose. Yes, you were just playing, and the bleeding will stop, but should he just forgive you? Or should he scale the wall and thwack you right back on the chin?

So, there is a song by a very interesting pair of Ghanaian musicians – Wanlov and Mensa, also known as FOKN Bois – which has sailed over the wall and landed with a thud in the face of their neighbour.

I have not heard the song myself, but the title is (syntax stumble intended) “Thank God We Are Not A Nigerians”. 

Marking Maltesers

Sneaked out of the office freezer
Boldly branded against sticky fingers
Stapled to make doubly sure
Tantalising teasers

A Lovely, Educated Public

I was lounging at the curiously-christened 'Luscious Temptations', at East Legon, last Saturday, with fellow bloggers Kobby Graham, Nii Ayertey and Edward Tagoe, discussing the extinct education in ‘gambling’ Ghana. Then, today, I stumble across a news item that Nana Akufo-Addo (a presidential candidate) promises a “lovely, educated public” within a decade, if he wins Elections 2012. Sadly, the news report (shameful for a digital medium like myjoyonline) skips his ‘blowhard’ building blocks for achieving such lettered loveliness.

Electric Bills & 'Compound' Houses in the City of Accra

A compound clustered with twenty tiny cubicles - detached or semi - with twenty families 'tadpoled' into them. Human activity is measured by one power meter.

One government worker possesses the Tv, the hot plate, the iron, the fan and the fridge. Nineteen other families 'temp' his toys from him; cook their gruel on his hot plate, preserve their meat in his fridge and watch cheap South American Tv soaps into his sleeping time.

When the electric shock (sorry, bill) kicks in on the 29th, the landlord, without calculating, coldly carves a chubby chunk for 'white collar' to settle. The 19 families plead penury and unemployment and 'snitch' that it is the government man who hoards the Tv and other gainful gadgets. Nobody wishes to install a separate meter for their room alone.

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When Your Debtor Says You Owe Him

Mr. B. Borrower (B for ‘Barbarian’) cadged his friend, Mr. B. Birdbrain (B for ‘Boob’) for a loan of 200 Ghana Cedis. Birdbrain had only 150 that day, and loved his neighbour more than himself by handing it all over. Birdbrain felt his heart moved by the frowning face of wretched Borrower and pledged to provide the extra 50 Cedis on the morrow. The discourteous debtor accepted the 150 Cedis and said “Thanks. So you owe me 50 Cedis”!

What? Was it impudence or lazy language use?

(True story, made-up names. W’abodam papa!)

Social Media's Upheaval

Cynicism seized my mind and ceased my heart as I watched horrible fires and rioting in Clapham, Ealing Broadway, Croydon and Peckam. The kids are apparently not organised crime gangs. They're just angry teens with ski masks and no jobs or social centres. They're 'organising' with social media. The level of deprivation is more dire in Accra. Should we hope the poorest and street kids do not discover social media and its organisational advantages or find it affordable? God help the poor. God help the rich to help the poor. Or else, God help the rich!

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Caught on the Crotch-Watch

(Welcome to Silly Friday)

Women always cavil that men address their cleavage in conversation instead of their faces. Well, it’s true, and we aren’t ashamed to admit it. For many years, I’ve been catching women watching my crotch from the corner of their eyes (and other men’s crotches too). Of course, they pretend no such thing has happened. It happens particularly in offices when the woman is sitting down as you approach her. So we ‘cornered’ a colleague who admitted it to us and blamed it on our tight or body-fitting clothes. We did not bother to counter with a question on their low necklines – somehow we knew they’d say it wasn’t quite the same. She said she wondered if some guys kept a pot in their crotch.

As long as you remain on the crotch-watch, we’ll feel free with the cleavage eye-grope.

Living in a Bubble

A doctor friend asked me, "Who can survive on only one job today?"

A student friend asked me, "Whose mummy doesn't have a car?"

It's falsely looking like a monster middle class in Ghana. Who's doing hard work? Who's doing honest work? Who's doing only one? Whose mummy doesn't have a car?

When will the bubble burst? Would it be violent?

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Disappearing Drug

Village thug peacocks his way down an ill-lit path silently daring ghosts and sleeping villagers to come wrestle with him. He believes he wields the power to disappear into thin air. Two members of a rival gang un-fade from the darkness to menace him. Village Thug derides them and tries to evaporate, but the drug or divinity or hoodoo does not work. They wring his neck until he dies. I saw this last night in a Nigerian movie and laughed myself senseless. Disappearing drug, huh!

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The Lamppost

Out of habit, he haunts his house-front in the night. Oblivious of the now-glacial Accra night-time draft, he stands bare-chested and lonely like a naked lamppost.

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We All Know What You're Not!

As seen on the High Street, Accra.

Not Quite Almighty

Just when I was getting close (at last) with God, somebody went and gave him a new name.

Teacher-Stripping

Some punk pupils in a school couldn't wrap their sappy minds around the basic syllabus because (they claimed) three female teachers  distressingly did up in mind-numbing miniskirts and devastating dresses. The ‘roused’ ‘pubescents’ posted a letter to the principal dictating that the ‘cheesecake’ cease or they'd strip the teachers naked! Then, the cops came in. Do (don’t) the teachers need a talking?

Heel The World

Two young men still smouldering out of school. They snip and suture soft Italian leather from scratch (after they have gauged your feet with true callipers). They call the magnificent shoes 'Heel the World'. They give a percentage back through a charity. It's not confusing. It's inspiring and quite clever. They're making things happen in the city of Accra. It's pure art!

Oh Look at That Happy Face!!!

This is my friend (for five minutes) Yaw. I saw him in front of my parents' house at Achimota while visiting. I saw this amazing shine in Yaw's face and politely asked him if I could take his pic. He jumped at it.

He was eating cooked beans in a polythene bag...with so much ecstasy on his face. I asked him to show me how he ate it and he sucked it lovingly out of the bag.

When I thought I had taken the second (and final) picture, he demanded that I take another.This (above) is his own chosen pose.

He chose this one too. Oh 'mehhhhn' the happiness on his face! Sadly, when Yaw was gone, I was told that he had a 'mental condition' but was going/growing untreated.

I thought of how many of us 'ghost' around our worlds unhappy with all the blessings that we have. In five minutes, Yaw showed me how much he already had of the commodity so many chase without success.

The Vitriol of a Foreigner

Two kinds of people go to ‘foreign’ countries – visitors and bigots. For far too long, the creative aspects of the life of Africans (and Asians and Native Americans and Native Australians, etc) has only been studied as Anthropology, while the Euro-American way has been studied as Art.

I have always wanted to meet blogger Holli, but she’s frankly not worth a second of my time. To be very honest, I wish the people over at ‘Immigration’ would keep a strict eye on her status and see her off as soon as it is time.

Why am I saying this? There was a street festival last weekend at Jamestown (an old settlement of Accra). It is not the most densely populated part of Accra (contrary to Holli’s lies). I will leave it at that and ask you to make the time to compare different accounts of the festival for yourself.

First, puke on BIGOT Holli’s vitriol here.

Then, luxuriate in GHANAIAN Nana Kofi’s pictures here.

Finally, ruminate on 'EXPAT' Graham's riposte here. (I know him and he's a GENUINE 'visitor')

Do Holli, Nana Kofi and Graham describe the same event? Yes. But one’s description is sick, bigoted, hateful and dishonest. How I now value the saying about a picture being worth a thousand words (and also an attempt at 1000 fair and honest words - Graham)

The Services Make the City

The streets are choked; won't let the traffic flow freely. The pipes are parched; no water rushes through at all. The cables are confused; the current streaks one way and then the opposite. Is this only a city because it's crawling with millions of pacific people?

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