It is a fearful thing to be in thick Accra traffic and to have an urgent call from Nature. The first confusion is how to manage the heat in the car and the heat in the alimentary canal simultaneously. Second challenge is how to control the pedals without disturbing the delicate equilibrium achieved as the mind goes into analytical, scanning and zooming mode: where to go?
The options aren’t a lot. According to my friend Kafui Dey, you could park the car; leave the hazard lights on, walk quickly to the nearest hotel. Smile at the receptionist, request a brochure then ask for the washroom. When you return to the front desk, hold up your keen interest in the hotel facilities available by asking a question or two. Thank the receptionist profusely and let her know you will be using the facility in a short while. Sweet relief. Get back to your car, pay the towing charges and drive away.
Sounds like the best solution, actually. Just that it is assumed that you can reach the hotel safely: you will surely have to walk with circumspection and calculated steps.
Ebo Beecham believes the nearest bush calleth, but bush in Vanderpuije’s Accra? Scarce. What if you are in central Accra? Another friend suggests prayer, but here too, you can only do silent prayer. Don’t start blowing away in tongues – you need all the control to concentrate!
During the Ghana @50 activities, one of the main plans was to construct washrooms and rest stops along the major highways. As happens many times in Sikaman, the talk is sweet but the execution is sour at best and usually nil. We are still expecting those.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a Sikaman policeman. If it is not your license, it will be your insurance tag which is checked. If both pass, you will be asked for your warning triangle. If you have that, you will be asked to show your fire extinguisher. Bring it out and you could still be asked to produce your first aid kit. Don’t be surprised when the kotiman asks you for your torchlight. At noon. If you don’t have it, prepare for some time wasting. Your time. You could end up in court…or your money in the policeman’s coat.
A guy was stopped around 5p.m. and asked for his torchlight. He argued that it was not dark yet. The policeman asked him where he lived and when the driver told the policeman, kotiman stated that there was no way the driver could get home before dark, so he still needed to show the torchlight!
The highway patrol guys, those with the speed gun, pray you don’t get into their trap. They have a special ability to hide around sharp bends.
In Ghana, drivers on highways are like brothers. If you are attentive, you can usually pick up the warning signals that the police are ahead, from the cars coming towards you. The signal is a high light, followed by one finger pointing to the ground, repeatedly. If you miss that, you aren’t lucky.
This reminds me of a story I heard. The highway police realised for about 30 minutes that all the vehicles from one direction towards them slowed down metres away and the drivers smiled at them when they passed their temporary checkpoint. They were puzzled. After a while, Chief Inspector, on a whim, asked one of his boys to take the bike and go around the bend to see if the vehicles were getting any advanced warning. The rider didn’t have to travel far. A little boy had decided that day to put his ingenuity to good use. He was standing about 100 metres from the police checkpoint, with a placard reading ‘Slow Down, Police Just around the corner’. The little boy was getting all the tips from the drivers!
I was ‘arrested’ once between Cape Coast and Takoradi, on my way to my holy village of Wasa Akropong. I must have been travelling around 70km/hour, the limit just after the town I passed was 50km/hour. The policeman flagged me to stop, and to get down.
“Boss, where do you stay?” He asked me, after giving me a note to report to the court in Tarkwa the next week Tuesday.
“I stay in Tema.”
“Where do you work?”
“Tema.”
“Can you come to court in Tarkwa next week?”
“No, I will be at work.”
“Hmm, so what will we do?” He asked me.
I didn’t answer. I told him it will be difficult. Very difficult.
He left me to attend to another victim. About five minutes passed.
One of his colleagues came to me.
“Boss, what did my friend say?”
I told him, I was to report at the Tarkwa court the following week.
“Boss, where are you going now?” I told him.
“Hmm, Wasa Akropong is very far, and your time is going too. So what should I tell him? I can talk to him to ‘do something.'”
The first policeman kept passing by me, attending to other drivers. He would come and ask, “So boss, can you come to Tarkwa?” I used the best strategy I had learnt in dealing with the Police. Keep quiet. Act humble. Very humble. Nothing feeds the policeman’s ego more than see a ‘big man’ humbled. So I did just that.
And it worked. About 30 minutes later, I was ‘set free’, to go and sin no more.
The speed guns used are not always calibrated. My friend Harry Adu-Adjei decided to take them on one day. He was so sure he was not travelling at 70 km/hour (interesting how many times that speed shows on their screens), because he had seen another friend on the road and slowed down to wave, or something to that effect. He challenged them, insisting that the equipment was faulty. He asked that one of the policemen drive his car, turn and come towards them at a high speed, so he stands by the recorder to check its efficacy. The dial stayed at 70 km/hour, regardless of the speed of Harry’s on-coming vehicle. He was dispatched with ‘Go away with your too-known!’
My writer friend, Qouphy Appiah Obirikorang, related his story. “Those highway patrol cops are really dreadful. Got busted on the Tema-Akosombo road. Cop charged me GHC5, I had only GHC 10 notes. Cop took the note, I asked for change. Cop sarcastically asked me whether he looked like a forex bureau!”
Ei, kotiman wants to catch you, only Jesus can save!
It is a fearful thing to be accused wrongly by a girl in a Sikaman school. I have attended co-ed schools all my life but it was in the secondary school that I learnt, very well, that when a girl makes a complaint against you, the likelihood of getting your side of the story believed is very slim. When I was in the University I used to joke that any time I wanted to visit a washroom in the Central Classroom Block, I was very careful to double check that it was the gents I was entering. Any mistake or the slightest shout, and mankind could be branded for life. In general, it is a fearful thing to be on the receiving end of a girl’s wrath. Even the greatest wrath in hell is said not to match its ferocity.
It is a fearful thing to miscalculate the swallowing of a morsel of gari and beans and not to have a cup of water close by. It happened mostly in secondary school, in the dining hall where water was not served on the tables (well, during the time I was in school… perhaps, things have improved now). You are able to recognise a victim when you see the person sit still…very still…for some time as if in meditation, and then nod solemnly. The time between the start of the stillness and the nodding is when the morsel takes its sweet time to travel down the oesophagus, via peristaltic movement to the stomach. That movement must not be disturbed; otherwise a blockage of the system can happen, leading to a gasp for breath. Even if water is available, the volume needed to push the morsel, like fluid pushing a pig through a pipeline, should not be too much, lest back pressure is experienced!
It is a fearful thing in Sikaman to be in a position of authority and to have your sponsor who helped you to that position hit at you and criticize your every move. It is even worse when he nominates another person, closer to him than he (the sponsor) is to you, to replace you when you duly expire.
It is a fearful thing in Sikaman to go to the Ohene Djan Sport stadium to watch a match between Kotoko and Hearts and not sit with the right group of supporters, that is, those supporting your team. You will learn a great lesson in sycophancy and masking of feelings that day. For every good move that your team makes, you will have to show the reverse emotion. You will learn to cry with your opponents, smile with them, rejoice with them and celebrate their goals with them. If you lost concentration and jumped up in jubilation when your team scored, know that you will not sit again, so you start saying your ‘Hail Marys’.
It is a fearful thing in Sikaman to have your car breakdown on the Tema motorway at night. Firstly, no car will stop to help you. There are so many crooks around these days that one can never be sure if the person flagging you to stop in the middle of the road is genuinely in need of help or not. Next, you cannot trust those who come out of the bushes to help you. It is claimed that most of the farmers by the side of the motorway have more implements than the usual crocodile machetes and hoes. Some of them have tools that will put any regular fitting shop to shame. Thirdly, you cannot be sure that your car parts will be intact later, if you left the car there. These days, we are lucky there are some 24-hour towing services available. That is, if you have their contact numbers. If you are unlucky to have zero credit on your phone, there are no phone booths on that stretch of toll-paying road. Then, how do you get home from there? Above all, there are no streets lights on the motorway. It is a fearful thing.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). Especially these days that I hear they receive interns from NEPA on industrial attachment. Woe betide you if you postpone the ironing of your clothes to the morning of an important meeting, only waking up to find that the ECG duty officer has had itchy hands again. Or that it rained at dawn…
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a Sikaman tailor and the seamstress, his sister. It is only when the tailor sees you coming that he picks up your attire to work on. Leave and he leaves your work to attend to that of the new customer he sees approaching his shop.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a fire outbreak in Sikaman. The first challenge is which number to call, and will the call go through whether you are using a landline or mobile? Two years ago, one of the telcos instituted some numbers we could use to reach the Fire service, Police and Ambulance service during emergencies. I called each of those numbers as I wrote this article; response: “The number you are calling is switched off.”
I googled and found on the Service’s website the advice to call the Fire Service on 192 to report fire (giving a vivid location of the fire outbreak). I decided to try it and called the number from my cell phone. Response: “The number you are calling cannot be reached.”
The second challenge is how to give directions to the location of a fire outbreak. The street naming system in Sikaman is still not functional, despite the good work done so far by Google Maps. I doubt the Fire Service knows about Google maps though. In any case, even where street names exist, there are no signposts to facilitate easy identification of the location. Pray that the fire outbreak is not in the evening or at dawn because the most significant guide links in any directional instructions in Sikaman are usually authentic only during the day – the groundnut seller, the waakye seller, Alhaji meat shop. Add the fact that the speed with which most new developments in urban areas spring up is way beyond the ability of metropolitan and municipal authorities to fathom or curtail and the fear increases a thousand fold.
Third challenge is that of accessibility to most homes. If fire broke out in a market like Asafo or Makola, the fire tenders can only get to the main entrance of the market and continue the journey on foot, at best – to start the investigations and not to quench any fire.
Then there is the issue of fire hydrants. Most of them are either non-existent or not functional. Fire tenders are known to rush to the venue where there is fire, only to discover that there is no ‘water in the tender’. Hopefully, with the supply of 54 new fire tenders to the service in 2011, our Fire fighters can fight high-rise building fires, above four storeys. Otherwise, pray that you do not find yourself in such a terrible situation because it will be fearful.
It is a fearful thing to live in Sikaman and have a medical emergency in the night. You drive to the nearest private clinic/hospital (a nice flashy ultra modern facility which charges outrageous fees), so you can seek immediate care, only to be told there is no doctor or they don’t handle that kind of emergency so you end up going to the very far away government hospital by which time, if you are not lucky, things may have deteriorated.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a ‘good school’ in Sikaman. They fix fees as they please (some of the fees make you wonder if the children are actually in the Senior High school), whatever you say at the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) is not considered, and five-year olds go through interviews for admission into KG2.
Sharing his story, my pal Elijah Atta-Aidoo recounts: “I remember going through an interview at Akosombo International School back in 1990. I started vomiting when it got to the colours and shapes session. I guess I was either frightened or was just not ready for a drill of that sort before a panel of three.”
Indeed, as part of the preparations towards a five-year-old’s interview, the parents need to pray for boldness, willingness to talk and a good mood for the child. Some children just decide not to speak at all at such interviews! Why blame them? I started school at age four, and definitely would have had nothing to say if I attended an interview at five years, in English! For the where!
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a hungry, angry, unemployed, disgruntled foot soldier in Sikaman especially if you are a government appointee, specifically a District or Municipal Chief Executive. You either get chased out of your office or have the President sack you for incompetence. Incompetence here is defined as the inability or unwillingness to deal favourably with the foot soldiers, including demands to award them road contracts. Many of these foot soldiers know not the difference between a shovel and a large spoon, except the fact that they look alike. Forget the difference in sizes.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a person selling land in Sikaman, be it a chief, a family member or a land agent. The first hurdle is how to get the proper document signed and delivered to you. Secondly, you have to deal with the likelihood of that same portion of land being sold to three or four other persons. Then, the hassle of getting the land registered and transferred legally to you. Having gone through all that, if you are not ready to develop your land immediately, you have to pray that no one interprets your lack of development of the land as lack of interest and so starts building on your behalf. ‘His’ building. You have to remember to visit the land frequently to ensure such a person does not even start the foundation of ‘his’ building. Otherwise, getting it demolished may take years. To solve all this, you may have to engage the services of the non-political foot soldier. He is called a land guard.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a fake pastor in Sikaman. It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand the proliferation of pastors and their churches in Sikaman. Even more wierd is the great variance in the doctrines they profess and their modes of operation. Some consult exclusively in hotels now. The temple of the Lord is no longer posh or adequate enough for them to use. I like to scan the radio stations from time to time to listen to some of them preaching and offer on-air consultation. Recently, I heard one of such pastors argue and justify that pastors must charge fees for their services because the materials used for their work (anointing oil, and all manner of materials – including coca cola, lime, oranges) needed to be purchased and also because airtime is expensive. Everyone who calls into the programme for advice was encouraged to come quickly to his church, in person , for one-on-one consultation since the caller’s problems certainly could not be solved only by speaking and believing the Word in faith. It is, indeed, a fearful situation, when one ponders how easy it is to call one’s self a pastor in Sikaman.
It is fearful how many Christians have become gullible in this land of our birth – looking for quick fixes for almost any situation. It is even more frightful to consider how many of such Christians fall easy prey to these fake pastors.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a mobile phone company in Sikaman. If there is rain, or threats of rain, know that you are going to have a useless handset in your hands pretty soon. You meet a long lost friend in town and you want to ‘flash’ him so he can store your number and you get a message saying his phone cannot be reached. Yet, he is standing right next to you, phone in full working order and beeping nicely. Ah, network problem. You don’t know whether to wail in frustration, emit a hollow laugh, curse loudly or simply bite your lip till you draw blood.
It is a fearful thing to access the private Ghanaian media. You pass by a newspaper stand and you are amazed at the plethora of newspapers jostling for prominence and screaming at you with their banner headlines proclaiming political Armageddon. In a vast number of cases, the headline does not reflect the story. ‘Minister Whacks X’ turns out to be that the minister simply chided X. You lick your lips in anticipation of a salacious story, only to come away dejected.
You tune your radio expecting to hear a debate and instead you wonder whether you are listening to a verbal fighting bout. Members of one political party or the other hurl insults at each other over incoherent, ridiculous arguments in such an abhorring manner that calls for debate. You trawl through the channels. Same story. Finally, you switch off, reach for pain-relief medication (APC tablets) and lie down in a quiet, dark room till your migraine passes over. Fear Sikaman media and live long!
Ah Sikaman. But would I live anywhere else? Naah, Sikaman for life!
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By: Nana Awere Damoah
Author, I Speak of Ghana