When Ghosts Come Shopping in the City of Accra

When Christmas comes to town each year, it checks in with chariot-loads of gate-crushing ghosts who swirl and meddle about the business of the living. They tip the natural balance between the dead and un-dead and stanch the tick of the cosmic clock. 

This triples the headcount in the city centre, and causes the viscous traffic and the sweltering heat. This is the explanation of some people on the streets of Makola Market - the ghosts come shopping!

A friend’s mother accepts the phantom theory only in half. She swears that the hellish heat steams out of "the anus of a witch".

Ha ha ha. Merry Christmas.

(Picture credit - clevescene.com)

Ghana’s Crude Oil & the Dutch Disease

Hmm, the World Bank – not quite the world’s bank – is saying it believes Ghana’s mining and cocoa industries are so well-managed and well-established that they will not be hurt by the emergence of - and focus on - crude oil.

After all these years, the World Bank – not quite the world’s bank – does not understand the Ghanaian culture where novelty gets all the time, attention and money, while old glamour loses all its gloss. Oil & Gas is already the only leading buzz-phrase in Ghana, no?

Shall we count how many times the World Bank – not quite the world’s bank – has been hopelessly wrong in its reading of the economy, culture, pulse and climate of an emerging economy? Dig in, then, for we’ll be here till Christmas in 2011.

(Picture Credit - Tehrantimes.com)

The Rape of the Snob

So I was ‘radaring’ for ‘bloggable’ material last night when a Ghanaian movie ‘brought itself’. It was raw, reeking rubbish. A village snob of a woman was taught a lesson by a young lecherous lout through the imperious instrument of rape.


He went unpunished and was even glorified by the girls, while she suffered a drop in social slot. What warped wanton wicked moral was that? Must she be shamed that way because she's a snob? 
Rubbish rubbish movie.

(Picture credit - sexandlasgidi.com)

Diplomatic Passports

What kind of passport is diplomatic? It is issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to diplomats, high-ranking officials, members of the parliament and persons travelling on official state business.

Therefore, I was shocked out of my little body to discover that governments had – over the years – issued diplomatic passports to religious leaders.



As far as I am concerned – somebody please educate me if I’m wrong – there are hardly any clergymen continuously involved in central government business to warrant a diplomatic passport for them.

What, are they going to see the pope, some archbishop or patriarch to help solve Ghana’s economic problems?

Now the diplomatic passports are going to be withdrawn from 375 government ‘dysfunctionaries’. Ghana – non-diplomats travelling with diplomatic passports. Wasting money. I pay my taxes – do you hear me – I pay my taxes. So y’all don’t go acting like big men travelling on undeserved perks on my taxes and those of others!

(Picture credit - cafepress.co.uk)

Staircase Busy

These people never learn.
After the Elevator fiasco
(see post below)
they put this sign, today,
right in front of the same elevator.


Plus, I really wonder what kind of meeting
the staircase was having? 
Or was it watching tv?


(I swear I did not stage this).

Are you Going Up or Up?

On the 2nd level 
of the building 
I work in,
the elevator seems 
to go only up!


(some dumb workman
placed the lower button
upside down after maintenance!)

I’m Tired of the Music in the City of Accra

I have always told critics of ‘senseless’ music to shut up. Music, movies, art – whatever kind of entertainment – does not always have to make sense, edify, educate or be loaded with lessons. It can be thrilling, fun, emotive, escapist for its own sake. But...

But now I am tired. There’s no originality. We’re singing about boobs and booty and sex – with euphemism or not – and unwittingly confirming certain unfair, untrue, bigoted and wicked racial(ist) stereotypes. Mtcheew.

This Christmas – Dear Lord – please let me stumble upon 1 hiplife music video without push-up bras, shirts worn as dresses, shorts only big enough for cartoon characters, scary hair-dos, and tin swinging chains. I stop my request here or they will build a stairway to heaven.