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BEESIWA – PART TWO
Within a few days, Beesiwa had made herself comfortable and useful in Yaw Awotwe’s home. Although he was generally a well organised person, the young bachelor was in the habit of leaving things at open spaces, obviously thinking that because he lived alone, he would easily find them. Beesiwa got round to placing his money and important documents in files and drawers, and would inform him as soon as he came home. Yaw really appreciated that, and started getting into the habit of asking Beesiwa where some of his stuff were. She organised his dresses, and was so glad to see how the choices she made impacted his looks. Yaw Awotwe was a very good looking young man, and it was so nice seeing him at the breakfast table looking so sharp. Yaw had been converted to her cooking, and had started bringing his friends home to share his fun. And she loved walking him to his car, handing him his snack and suitcase, and waving him off. She was enjoying herself. She wished it would be possible for ‘something’ to change their relationship from reliable, efficient employee and appreciative, generous employer to something more interesting. But she was a very realistic person. Yaw was top class. He was way out of her range. Rather than spend precious time on emotional dreams that would never materialise, she decided to take advantage of her presence in his home to improve herself.
Yaw was quite pleased to learn that she was interested in current affairs, and experimenting with cooking. He encouraged her to take both interests seriously because, as he put it, knowing the world around you places you way ahead of your peers, and people who cook really well often make big money. Whenever his friends commended her on her good cooking, Yaw would offer Beesiwa’s help with catering for small parties and family occasions. Of course, he quickly added, she had to be paid well, because she was already employed and not looking for handouts. Within a couple of months, offers started flowing in, and Beesiwa told her boss that although the money was quite interesting, she didn’t want to stop working with him, so she was cutting the outside catering to manageable levels.
‘Thanks for wanting to continue working with me, Beesiwa, but why don’t you consider employing one or two people to help you? Talk to your mother, and train a couple of young people during the weekends, and then anytime you get a job or contract you can guide them to go and deliver. And with the kind of things people are saying about you, you will one day need to set up your own catering company with quite a number of employees. So don’t throw away this opportunity. You don’t want to stop working with me, but let’s see whether you can find others to help. Think about it and join hands with your mum. Things will happen big time.’
And that is exactly what happened. Within a year, Beesiwa had created space in her mother’s home for a well-equipped unit with four efficient young ladies that continuously delivered good quality dishes for all sorts of functions. Beesiwa was transformed into a gorgeous personality, and Yaw started thinking whether he should be looking closer home instead of farming afield for dates. He had been going out with Patricia, a doctor, for a few months, and they felt very comfortable in each other’s company, but their work schedules were a problem. Dr Patricia was more than a key person in the Children’s Hospital where she worked, and she had very little time for life outside the hospital. Yaw greatly respected her dedication to work, but he wondered whether, with his own business about to gain momentum, it was wise to enter into a commitment with a woman whom he would only meet at home once in a while. Beesiwa was not just a beautiful girl with good character and efficient home manager. She had been able to combine managing his home with starting a business enterprise on the side which was doing very well. He started to approach the issue gently, and hopefully he could get her to see things his way.
Beesiwa, on the other hand, had been nursing some frustration about what appeared to be the fruitless dream of nursing ambitions of a relationship with Yaw Awotwe. Although she had begun to make some good money and had therefore gained some self-confidence, Yaw was still streets ahead, and did not show any sign of being interested in her. Moreover, he and the lady doctor seemed on course to make their relationship permanent. And as if that was not enough, there were a couple of other ladies who were seeking to grab his attention, but did not seem to be getting very far. Around the same time, Jeffery Darkwa, a friend of Yaw who was regular at his home, started showing interest. He took her out on a couple of dates, both quite enjoyable, but Beesiwa made it quite clear that she was not interested in a relationship with him. Jeff, however, had been nursing ambitions of winning her over for sometime, even though part of the reason was the deep jealousy he had been nursing against Yaw for so long.
They had become friends in the course of meeting at business workshops and lunches, and had helped each other with useful contacts and business tips. Jeff was almost ten years older than Yaw, and had developed a resentment for him due to his quiet but effective way of conducting business, which had made him very successful, for a man at such a young age. And he wasn’t just good looking but very well dressed, and ladies often made their views about him known. And he had longed noticed Beesiwa’s deep affection for him. Winning Beesiwa would be a big personal victory. He invited her to lunch and put his plan into action.
‘Beesiwa, I need to discuss something important with you. I am very interested in you. I really love you, and would like you to become my wife. But I realise that you are rejecting me because of your feelings for Yaw. I am not letting go, not only because of my feelings for you, but also because you don’t know Yaw very well. I will say this in great confidence. Yaw is not who you think he is. He is not a successful business man. In fact, he is covering a lot of debts which might end him in deep trouble, so I’m trying to help him. I can tell you that over the years, my business has grown, and apart from having financial muscle, I also have big contacts at the very top. So, I would ask you to be careful with Yaw. Give me the chance to make you a successful woman. We can be a good partnership. I am willing to give you a house if you accept my offer. I am talking this way because I really love you, and I want to marry you.’
Beesiwa’s head was spinning. She didn’t know how to process the explosive stuff she was hearing. ‘But if you have these feelings against Yaw, why are you friends with him, spending time with him regularly?’
‘I don’t have anything personal against him. In fact, I am helping him overcome some major financial issues because we are friends. But I see nothing wrong with wanting you more than him.’
“
Beesiwa, I need to discuss something important with you. I am very interested in you. I really love you, and would like you to become my wife.
“
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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