The Kayayo Crusades

They issue southward into city markets to carry ‘donkey’ burdens. They digest daily disrespect, sleep savagely on shop-front streets, risk rampant rape and robbery, litter ‘loveless’ children, get kidnapped and transported back up north into forced marriages while still spring chicken; all for a daily tip below the subsistence level.

Banking on Bonking

Many good girls are mating with men just for the money. But that’s not the story. Many ‘benign’ boys are bedding big blokes just for the dough. They’d rather be loaded bisexuals than hungry heterosexuals. An older 'friend' introduces them to the unpleasant initiation; salved by the generous post-coital ‘payoff.’ It’s banking on bonking.

Wicked Armed Robber

It is not grinding poverty that is your wicked warrant. Your methodical mind and paramilitary planning could have banked you honest money. You are just lecherous, lazy, envious, cruel and, frankly, downright demented. If Poverty is a disease, then I curse your arse with the most virulent form!

Children of Bawaleshie

Eking an existence near Easy Street (that’s excessive East Legon), they gobble gruel of cornmeal for bare breakfast, kenkey and protein-pinched pepper dip for lunch and more cornmeal gruel for dead-man’s dinner. Fish is a fairytale feast! They know what milk means; they’ve never lapped milk.

The Prostitute

She stands scantily clad on the sunless streets of candied Cantonments or carnivorous Circle. She supplies live, natural delights for a fatuous fee. She possesses no other sustenance skills, and would have perished waiting on one or other gormless government or on nonchalant neighbours. Through her sensible skin trade, ten or so dependants can eat. Family infants are fed, clothed and schooled.

Poverty

Let’s talk about poverty, this week. My initial theme was “Poverty is a Crime”. I thought about it again, and since I could not put my finger on the ‘criminal’, I changed it to; to See Poverty, to have the ability to do something about it, but to do nothing, is a crime”. This picture was taken by Kevin Carter (poor man), who saw this and was constrained or tricked into not doing anything. The vulture was waiting for the child to die to pick at its flesh. The child was crawling to a UN food centre 1 kilometre away. It is not known if the child made it. Poverty!

(Picture: www.pulitzer.org)

Identity Symbols

There are rainbow recitals of the sundry symbols same-sexual-polarity people flaunt to recognise one another. They have hues and tones, rings in earmarked earlobes, foreknown fabric, etc. I wonder weakly – if they are ordinary people, why do they need special symbols?

Same Script, Different Cast

Jo has been obscurely ogling the delicious, dapper dandy in the pinstriped navy suit for a queer quarter hour. He’s quaffing whisky; whisky-tippling men – Jo’s great weakness. Jo doesn’t feel the faintest guilt for his lurid lust. After all, he’s just having sex with Kwame; they aren’t married; can’t be, right? Jo brings his mind back to the bar. He’s unable to approach the delectable drake. Somehow, one cannot approach the same sex the way one does the opposite sex.

Eden

Nana Ama lies wakeful at night. She made loyal love to her handy hubby, Kobby, just 30 minutes ago. He’s fast asleep and basking in some paradise at the back of beyond. But Nana Ama is flushing and longing for her little girlie, Sena. She’s only person who has made her come in her whole life. And Sena creates heaven every time they make love. She looks sadly upon the blissful face of sleeping Kobby. Then, she turns over and reaches for her phone.

The Closed Concept of ‘Spouse’

Kwame is completing groundwork ‘government’ forms. At “Marital Status” he smoothly ticks “Married”. At “Beneficiary” he smilingly scribbles “Spouse”, but slowly stops where he must provide a name. Kwame has affectionately cohabited with his Jo for five flourishing years now. They’ve built a life together, but now he cannot put his name down: Spouse: Richard Kojo etc etc.

Two Man-Parents

Jo kisses his son’s little head, amazed, riveted by his penetrating questions. In a weird-but-wonderful way, such waltzing wittiness reminds Jo of his magnificent Kwame. On that touching, tender thought, Kwame floats down the stairs and sails across the living room floor to Jo. Kwame gives Jo a caress on the lips, and involves their son in a long, warm hug. Suddenly, Jo wakes up; it was a taunting dream, and Kwame is still fast asleep beside him. Jo sits up on the bed. He has woken up still in Ghana; there is no child! He and his Kwame cannot adopt.

Same-Sex Relationships

I am sitting here with a gay man sitting across from my office desk. He met me when I went to a radio station to give a talk on defamation. He said I inspired him, and he wanted me to be his mentor. It is clear that he is gay. And somebody who went to college with him (and knows him) has confirmed it. But that’s no problem at all, except he had better concentrate on me mentoring him professionally, only. This week, we will be exploring same-sex relationships from (hopefully) interesting points of view.

2009

In 2009, these are fair statistics:

2 thousand relationships ‘attacked’
0 go unscathed
0 remain unshaken
9 barely survive

Much of Accra is going after other people’s people. That is aggression!

Dangerous Games

“Would you please get up? This is the seat number on my ticket.”

First, he ignores you. At the subdued second asking, he stands erect and beats his chest to proclaim his gorilla ruggedness. You make a good choice, and, as you inch your pacific way out of the stadium of sneak thieves, King-Kong kerfuffles erupt all around you over stolen seats.

Downtown Dementia

In the gawky gridlock, your tomfool tailgater will honk a homily at you; a blighted bus on your blind side will edge in without warning; a daredevil driver will cannily convert the dividing line into a Harry-Potteresque Lane 1¾; a police cortege (sorry, convoy) will come screaming through; and you’ll be praying to Gideon’s God to spare your limbs and car from fractures, dents and scratches.

Trolley Tussles

The Trotro halts harrowingly in the middle of a major street, and a nursing mother hops out. She drops her shrieking suckling on the pavement, and seizes the reptilian driver’s mate by the scruff of his neck. As the callused captive tries to escape her grasp by aiming kung-fu kicks at her nether notch, another woman gathers up the abandoned nestling. Stranger and foundling are soon enveloped by the madding crowd.

Another Trotro has not even come to a serene stop, when a bawling boor tumbles out. His feelings have been injured by the driver’s mate’s stupefying slap. He rolls until he bangs his head on a concrete pylon. He gets up on his feet swiftly, sees the driver’s mate advancing with insane intent in his eyes, and dives towards the nearest rock. The mate beats it to the other side of the minibus, just before the projectile hurtles in.

A Foolish Case

A coconut huckster nicked my main man’s wrist with the macabre machete he was brandishing in order to avoid giving back the change. This senseless impulse erupted in broad daylight. Moments later, a vacuous vixen in the complaints cubicle at the Legon Police Station took one languid look at my friend’s bleeding hand, and barked, “foolish case”.

Aggression

This week’s theme will be Aggression. Aggression in urban areas. Who’s to say what the reason is? I’m looking for material beyond aggressive cops at checkpoints, street beggars, vendors etc. I am also looking beyond the scariest spectre of armed robbery. I really don’t know where this will lead. I hope it’s worth your reading.

The Bouncing Lights at Yeji

When nightfall swallows the day, and only the valiant venture outdoors, a psychedelic spectacle sweeps across the wooded pathways in yawning Yeji town. In the dark distance, dozens of brilliant, yellow lights bounce hippity hop towards you, past you and away into the night. Witches and wizards on their way!

Elfin Fertility in the Volta

A stony kernel and a hale hen are brought to the festival grounds at 7 a.m. Fetish dances and songs are performed by dreadful spirit-beings in varicoloured clothes, dry grass skirts, naked torsos ‘pastelled’ in chalk and war paint. Around 9 a.m., the kernel is buried in the holy ground, and a cock is intimately introduced to the hen. The yodelling and gambolling continues, but as the fetish demi-gods become possessed, they start displaying some shocking acts; wickedly whipping one another, breaking the sable skin and bleeding badly, but there is no cry of pain. Some are cutting and stabbing their own bulging bellies with knives and daggers, but there are no weeping wounds. By 12 noon, the kiddo kernel has grown into a 20-foot-high palm tree with mature, vermillion fruit. The hen has laid an egg and hurriedly hatched a chick. Now the mystic messengers of the gods are appearing and disappearing with a bellowing ‘poom’ amid wisps of white and yellow smoke. At 2 p.m., the chick has ‘imagoed’ into a big, fat hen, and the mother hen withers and dies. By 3 p.m. the new hen and the palm fruit have been cooked into delicious palm soup. Six short hours it took!