Two young men snatched a phone in broad
daylight and bolted. One slipped away; the other was bagged by oh ten thousand ‘petulants’.
They hurt and hammered the hangdog with sticks and stones and switches until
their gall seemed to peter out. Then, a jobless Beelzebub fetched a grubby jerrycan
of grimy engine oil. They soused him slick with the stuff, and made him glug a gallon or two.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Smiling Monsters after Dark in the City of Accra
Man Mountain, hanging like a treacherous cliff
over a forlorn length of the shadowy Spintex Road in the mini-principled city
of Accra, why are you counting on a lift from strangers with that tarzan torso just because you can smile?
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The Village Fool Lives Long
Years ago, while crawling back to this smothering
city from a country cruise, my team mates and I gained on a hamlet as the day
lit out. The family was back from breaking rocks, bones, pods, grounds or whatever
hard work they did. The evening feast had been finger-licked. Father and
mothers, siblings, dogs, cats and birds huddled together in a close circle to
ululate an uncouth song. The father fooled, frolicked and tripped the light
fantastic in the middle. The women and children egged him on. Stress almost kayoed
me today at work, and I remembered that simple, solid scene.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
African Marriage Doesn’t Need the Church
Imagine my holy hang-up when a parish prescribes
principles for neo-nubian nuptials: dwindled dowries, laundered lists, ‘liposucked’
linguists and alcohol alternatives. Church, stay out of African marriages. You
have your own mysterious matrimony. We can pray without the Paternoster.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Songs That Seduce
Scores of songs have seduced us
silly by stirring us from soothing slumber, and sucking sweetly at the heartstrings in
the ensuing twilight-zone spell.
The Papaya Fruit Girl
In the sea of sellers of anything, she
flared her loveliness in my view. Too pretty, too dee-lee-cious, to stride the sour
streets. Too sweet in eyes and nose and oh her lips to schlep diced papaya;
swaying on her head, swaying to the beat of her body-full of ‘S’ shapes in its strut-n-swirl. The flask
woman behind her – bland, sun-blistered battleaxe – she didn’t stir a single
whisker of my heart. Silly, sad me: pouring pity on the flower, sweeping scorn
atop the bug. But beauty is such a disabler! Oh that stimulating papaya fruit girl on
the sunny streets of Accra. Will I see her tomorrow too?
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The Sentry and the Squatter in the City of Accra
In the city of Accra, at genteel Ridge, at
9 am, a man in hermetic jeans was looking to leak his liquid privy into a
drain. I shuddered to see him crook his legs to enable him to sag the seat of the asphyxiating denim for release.
Not quite ten metres away, another man in a
white caftan was squatted over the same poor drain, doing similar business. I thought
I caught him cast a disgusted glance the way of the standing man as if to ask
which lowlife would hang his dispenser out on broad-daylight display.
I was desperate to stop and correct the
squatter’s delusion that he was the better man, but I had to hurry to the
office to go spend a penny.
All About the Head
His head was save-me-Lord uncomely - hardly humanoid, neither miles near any familiar fine-formed fruit. So, in a football match Ghana was bossing, why did he have to diss a Tswana boy's head in public?
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Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Senegal – No Football Lions
Twisted, rangy sinews, a sixty-minute
engine and sharp snipers will maul a second-rate skirmish, but not a six-match
contest. Your problem is seeking to admit yourself into the Pride when you’ve
only roared once.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
If I Don’t Speak Up Because It Didn’t Happen to Me
Any State that treats the fourth estate
with the third degree because it sees them as the fifth column is crude. It’s
that simple. In truly democratic countries, the ‘security’ job is carried out like
infra-red light. Not in Ghana! We run it like fireworks on New Year’s Eve.
Because of our hairy history of railroading
our impotent institutions of democracy, any bloke in boots, a beret, a big belt
and a badge – never mind whether they’re even private security – demands deity-deference
because they can slap-slap you to Paga, Pluto and then Purgatory.
Paradoxically, the most disciplined and
brightest security outfit by far in our democratic sparks has always been the
military.
So when Ghana’s national security enforcers
advertise their brawn like a neon billboard right outside a court of law, you’d
expect their civilian masters to pull the leash and put them in the doghouse.
Why should our shadowy moles unleash their
cloak-and-dagger 'yawa' on the streets and sow insecurity in the deepest hearts
of the lamb they’re sworn (?) to protect. This week, they pummelled a girl journo
and rent her clothes to dishonour her. If she was taking shots of an unfolding
public scene which they resented, why not simply arrest the offending camera. And
even that...
Monday, January 9, 2012
Selective Memory
"My educational colours didn't fly in Ghana because too much rotates round raw rote memory." Daily discourse I hear which dampens my day. I often roundhouse-kick the brainless regurgitation in our schools on this blog, but it is dishonesty when you vomit verses from King James Version to varnish every vowel.
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Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone
Friday, January 6, 2012
Shoes from the Loo
The droplets on your shoe
Say you’re just from the loo
Hands unwashed, knowing you!
Even if you didn’t poo
Your hand’s a microbe zoo
And I won’t shake it too
Thursday, January 5, 2012
New Year Resolutions
New year; he launches out to sea
No last look at the fungous wreck
Which cast him here many monsoons ago
In no time, Big Wave sweeps him ashore
He’s read the flotsam books back-to-back
The seasons, the reasons, the nano and the
bio
Conquest and empire – he knows it all
But he does not know where he is
The little legs pattering near his hut
The warm smiles where his food is fired
Even the blithely breathing body in his bed
He does not recognise them any
Next year he will try again
And push out to find his hidden Home
But Big Wave will fling him back
Won’t build a house or town or school
He won’t colonise this place
He’ll try to leave again and again.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
A Despicable Thing At Opeibea House
An urchin scampered from car to car at the Opeibea House intersection. That is where an ex-president's car turned cartwheels when it was crossed by a 'drunken' man. The boy would touch his nostrils to each car window and mist it up as if to disgust the driver to give him coinage quickly and make him evaporate. A driver of a tiny box-car swept him away by throwing the door open. Three times he did this. Each time, the lad pushed it back shut. If you insult him by treating him like dirt, don't be surprised at what he will grow into.
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Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Tomato Movie Awards
The makers-happen in our ‘measled’ movie market
amaze me mindless. You roll and eddy over one another like confused
crosscurrents with your myriad flimsy film awards. If you don’t close them to a
classy one or two, you’ll continue to clutch at celebrity straws.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Assad, Gingrich and Other Random Questions
Has the EU ever needed Britain?
Should Iran give back the border-breaching drone?
Shouldn't we put an assassin on Assad?
Why did they allow Gingrich to rise again?
Should Iran give back the border-breaching drone?
Shouldn't we put an assassin on Assad?
Why did they allow Gingrich to rise again?
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The Art of Public Peeing
Yes, I understand that art must mimic real life. It matters nothing if ‘real life’ is a national dishonour for us. But the movies strike me dumb! Why must the movie-makers stream sick scenes of men dog-peeing in the open where civilised people live?
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Faux-Fang Vampire
Twelve or thirteen year-old spectre haunting the Mahogany avenue at 37 beneath where the bats hang upside down. He has his hand to his mouth. He stirs the cars to motion and makes me wonder why. Then he ghosts up to my window and drops his hand. Geez, he has two-inch fangs for canines, and he tries to shock you to give him money. I thought him unfortunate but a friend thinks they were faux fangs.
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Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone
Monday, November 21, 2011
Give the Bone a Dog
Yes, I wrote and meant that. Give the bone
a dog. Imagine my voluptuous stimulation on hearing that profligate, plundering
Portugal, who formerly came to explore, and then exploit, Angola is now imploring
Her to save Him from imploding. Asking Her to buy fat stakes in His ex-economy.
Oh, give the bone a dog!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
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!
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