Doing 'La-pour' in the City of Accra

When I was a curious, capering child street-sauntering at Achimota School, there was an obliging, octogenarian gardener with no known name. People called him "La-pour". La-pour taught me many things, including how to count from one to ten in Ga. 

The backstory goes that, many years earlier, La-pour had played along with his fellows at work, while they pilfered bags of flour from their employer. Then, La-pour (the man) promptly turned to 'do la-pour' (the snitching), and his mates were fired. Good man! He received ridicule from his community, lost his real name, and got a shame-name. 

The other day, an obviously loved MP was brutally bayoneted to death at home.Between a former prisoner, a phone repairer and the police, a suspect was arrested in a half-blink. These people went to 'do la-pour'. 

That's where we are, now, in Ghana. With crime and cruelty cruising at abandoned altitudes, it's time to make observation and la-pour-ing to the police a way of life.

Sex Tapes on Social Media

Young, impetuous idiots. Why tape the transgression? Can't you just find forbidden fruit anytime? What am I saying? Shouldn't you be seducing your syllabi senseless?

Soldiers Against Black Magic

A security chief of a company was being replaced. He’d been caught sozzled on the job. The next Monday morning, he was introduced to his replacement. The CEO asked the two to work together for one week. A transition. They were both ex soldiers. Fit. Strong. In good health. Apparently. They started on a tour of the grounds. Two minutes into the tour, the new security capo collapsed. He was whisked to the hospital, where he came to. His vital signs read healthy. He zoomed back to normal in minutes. The next day, he emailed the CEO to say he’d not be taking the job. His reason – he didn’t want to expire by black magic.

What about you? Do you know of any similarly weird stories? Do you believe that black magic works at all. And in this way?

In Jest of MUSIGA

Just one pageant probably plays per night – pick whenever – in the city of Accra. Performers pitch bruising background battles to snatch a slot in the spectacle. Fiercer flashpoints erupt everywhere when fatuous awards are arriving. Every flippant, flippety-flop figures that ‘four or five figurines will be fine for me.’ Why, then, do performers pretend to pool together with one positive purpose?

Black Woman with Natural Hair

She explodes through the pixilated party-crowd with effervescing energy in her honeycomb. Kinky, coily, fluffy, black stuff, sparkling and fizzing towards the bar...where I stand. In her milky white dress, she radiates her foamy halo in my face. The hair whispers to me, and takes me. The cameo’s over, the music floods back. She glides away with me.

Old Warriors and Pretty Young Wives – Pt 5 (The End)

He shadowed her around the house

Suspicious if she fed a mouse

She'd stopped him from keeping his spear

Not at home or anywhere near

She stayed young, he grew older

And the gap between them bolder

And she started to miss her husband

The one that they had cruelly canned

As she cooked he’d sit behind her

While she fanned the fire in a blur

His memories would come a-floodin’

And he’d sing his fears a-sudden

Adwoa, I’m frightened by your fanning

Eno Adwoa, what are you planning?

Is there a spear out there tonight?

Eno, will I live to see the light?

Old Warriors and Pretty Young Wives - Pt 4

Déjà Vu

An old warrior lost his life
And his killer found a wife
Their little secret - it was kept
Though out the baby crept

The years flashed by rapidly
The warrior aged inevitably
But Adwoa, the warriors' woman
Her genes stayed young - unkind omen

First went her pleasant responses
Then came her repeat absences
He blamed it on that the child died
Other reasons, he feared, denied

He'd won a thousand battles
Acquired great wealth and chattels
But his power was on the wane
And the blood cooled in his vein

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