Have you realized that one of the expressions you would want to spell and rehearse in your head before carefully pronouncing is ‘status quo’? For me, it is more difficult than pronouncing ‘interoperability’!

That my friend who has a problem saying ‘Alive Arrive’ instead of ‘Arrive Alive’; ehern…he is the one I am referring to. However short the distance he is driving to or from, this guy would put on his seatbelt and leave his mobile phone in his car booth when driving to avoid any distractions until he arrives at his destination. 

The Police should be arresting some people for whatsapping while driving. It is more dangerous than talking on the phone while driving. Sometimes we pray for the traffic lights to show red so we can respond to whatsapp messages and more often than not, that is when you reach the traffic light hoping it would turn red, it will be green for a long time and we will be speeding and still trying to respond and then kraaan klaaaan-disaster. Innocent third parties and ourselves!

God protect us through the use of ‘mobile phone common scent’! Hmmm! Mobile phones are controlling us and a significant cause of road accidents. That is the reason I have taken a cue from my friend ‘Alive Arrive’ and leave my phone in the car booth when driving till I reach my ‘destiny’.   

Don’t get angry at me o, yoo. You don’t have to worry when people get angry at you; what you did to make them angry is not the actual thing but something else. It is just like having a headache; the real cause may not be the headache but something wrong in your body may be triggering it. When people get angry at you (ie fire), meet them with water (silence or a smile)!

Mostly what is actually angering them started from somewhere and they just happen to find you as a fine dumping ground to offload it. Cheer up, mehn! Happy yourself o, yoo! After all weytin no happen before! Today is 21^st and you think you are broke er; I broke pass you o. Hahaaaa!

So ‘Alive Arrive’ knocked on the door four times but there was no response. As a complete stranger, one would have expected him to give up but he kept knocking and becoming a nuisance to the people around.  Then he pushed the door open. Gba ya haaa! Everything was there including the things he didn’t want to see.

Oh my God! Is that how men and their women behave when together indoors? The man was giving the wife chop money to cook and after that he closed the door and went to work! So what were you expecting him to see? Even me I don’t know what he actually saw Ama Zacheus climbing and descending from, as short as she was with the husband.

Ama Zacheus was not really short physically but vertically challenged. Her mum was a petty trader and sold stuff to people on credit. Ama was the one who goes round for the repayment from her mum’s debtors. Ama was smart! Assuming Ama was to collect a repayment amount of GHC10, she would tell the debtor the money has increased in value by GHC3 so she would take GHC13 and keep the GHC3 to herself. She became richer than her mum.

You know our forebears often sold things on credit but hardly calculated interest on them but Ama who never attended the School of Administration knew they had to pay interest because GHC10 today is not the same in value as GHC10 yesterday! Most of Ama’s mother’s debtors were in all the towns in Accra ending with ‘shie’! But you know what she did with all her money? She would climb a big yoryi tree in the neighbourhood and share the money to the boys.

Me and my friends were not really interested in the money per se but what was under her skirt when she is up on the tree and we were down there caught our attention even though we really didn’t see ‘anything’. Ei, we enjoyed watching oo and became poor bcos other guys and girls with good morals were busy scavenging the moneys thrown down by Ama Zacheus. After all of that, Ama would come down from the tree empty handed! Indeed that was what earned her the name Ama Zacheus.

Now this is where I want to confuse you. If you have ever lived in Bubuashie and Kisseman in the 1980s into the early 1990s, you would probably have played the game we called ‘Ziloo’. It was a kind of hide-and-seek game but not exactly like the famous ‘Piloloo’. Ama and I were members of the same Ziloo team. You should have lived in the ‘village of the city’ before. Ehern, have you realized that Alogboshie is one of the oldest suburbs of Achimota to the western part of Achimota College and near ABC yet it is not a popular town at all? I don’t know why.

Please get the difference o, I said Alogboshie and not Agbogbloshie (aka Gbogblo-City)! There are too many towns in Accra ending in ‘shie’ so I can understand why this one has been hiding since. Talk of Kaneshie, Shiashie, Bawaleshie, Bubuashie, Laterbiokorshie, Alogboshie, Agbogbloshie, Teshie, Awoshie (as for Awoshie it is sharing borders with another town and anytime I hear the name, I feel nauseous – Anyaaa…shie!).  Okaishie, (ie the headquarters of medicines and drugstores in Ghana).

Abeg, add any other town ending in ‘shie’ and you are likely to be owing Ama Zacheus’ mother. I wish someone could explain to me what informed all these towns whose names end in ‘shie’ shie’. Though not a ‘shie’ town, I love this town – Abokobi in the Ga East area! It is still on record as being the only town in Ghana where there is no alcoholic drinking spot!

Please check with any source. Up till now, there is no single akpeteshie or beer drinking spot in Abokobi even as big as it has become, at least my last check can reveal. I learnt it is bcos of the Presbyterian Missionaries and the values they instilled in the people they came to ‘missionary’ to! What about the other towns where the missionaries went too? My home town? The missionaries didn’t succeed here o; the cat soup business is still booming la. The Missionaries had no choice but to name cat meat Joseph, ie if it is that of a male cat. The name of the meat of a female cat? Please guess. That reminds me, this Saturday I will be attending the funeral of the late Dad of my friend Josephine Dossah in Takoradi. Joe, see you tomorrow wai!

If you grew up in any of these areas in Accra chances are that you would have had these experiences where family democracy never worked no matter what you did right or wrong. You are just beaten…for fun! Regardless of the provisions in the family constitution those days, lashes in your palm, buttocks, back or ‘sobo’ (calf) were in abundance. Sometimes depending on who is beating who, physical fights resulted. Our fathers and mothers meted out punishments to us and the charges were funny though they moulded us into more responsible adults!

We spoke vernacular to international heights in public schools in these towns. I just remembered Odoi who fought a teacher for lashing him for speaking vernacular – Ga! He was a noted Olympic medal holder in vernacular speaking so even the day he managed to speak small English, it still sounded like vernacular to the teacher’s ears. Beatings be what! Even in trying to explain himself, Odoi did that in Ga! The teacher nearly killed him through beatings! Kai! Some of these teachers just loved to beat and often waited for us to make a mistake.

At home too, our fathers beat us for very unnecessary reasons. When you are crying without being beaten, they beat you, when you are not crying after being beaten, they beat you. When you are crying after being beaten, they still beat you for that ‘offence’. When you are standing while the elders are seated, they beat you. When you are seated and the elders are standing, they still beat you.

When an elderly person talks and you talk back, (what do you mean?) you are beaten. When an elderly person talks and you don’t talk back, you are still beaten. If you have been too obedient and free from beatings for too long, you are still beaten. Why should you be so compliant when the beatings of our elderly was their hobby?

 When you start singing after your father has just finished advising you on something, beating follows.  Refusing to eat, you are beaten. Eating too much, you are beaten. Eating too little, beatings nkoaaa! Being moody, you would be beaten. Being overly excited, beatings follow. For what? Fighting with your age mate, whether you lose or win, you are beaten. It is even worse if you are a boy and you fight a girl your age and you draw! Woe on to you if you should pass gas in their presence!

You could be jailed as is the new law that is coming up in Mallawi. You didn’t know? It is rumoured that Mallawi is coming with a new law where farting in public is a crime as is the case in smoking in public in some jurisdictions. Those of you especially my friend Dela who like eating beans and eggs, defer your travelling plans to Mallawi or else…hahahahaha! Passing gas in public being a crime? Then all the passengers on board a typical Ashaiman-bound trotro bus could go to jail, I suwear! Kai! The land of the birth of my backborn, Ishmael Zogbenu and Ama Zacheus? Ala!

Please don’t be looking at me like that as if I have spoil the air la! Is it not biogas from beans and eggs? Pass that Mallawi incoming law in GH and everyone would be prosecuted, even my Pastor! Happy yourself o…hahahahahaha! Tuin!