Features
The vulture a patient bird
The vulture descends from the great heights and clears up every mess
The vulture is not particularly handsome. Spotting a bald head from birth, it is not counted among the bold and the beautiful. But one thing people have come to know is that there is also something good in being ugly. At least, in becoming a vulture, you can become rich and famous.
The Vulture whose surname is Akaga, incidentally has no Christian name. It presupposes that the vulture is not a religious character and has not undergone the ritual of the baptism of water and fire. The vulture is not born again.
CARCASS
The vulture is, however, not shy of being a pagan. After all, it does more good to society than 90 per cent of Christians. Go to Alogboshie or Agbogbloshie and you’ll see Kweku Vulture and Kwame Vulture cleaning the mess made by human beings.
Talk about smelling carcass decomposing innards, discarded and rotten fish no creature on earth wants to touch. The vulture descends from the great heights and clears up every mess human makes. If there are any environmental awards in Sikaman, they must go to the vulture.
It is very unfortunate the vulture which does more work than all AMA conservancy labourers put together, yet has not been honoured. The bird has to contend with the fact that it certainly would receive its reward but in heaven.
The only problem is that, it would have to repent and believe in the good news before getting the visa to heaven, which the vulture is not prepared to do now. Not when there is a dead rat to be attended to.
Anyone who has studied the vulture will realise that it is a very patient bird. It waits patiently, painstakingly, enduringly for the sick animal to die. It can even be more magnanimous and allow it to rot before making a meal of it. That kind of patience, no human being has.
Everyone is struggling tooth and nail to become rich overnight. Hard work is no longer a virtue. Stealing, embezzlements, fraud and ‘Sika Duro’ have become the order of the day.
These are the fast-track methods of making it in today’s world. Damn the consequences!
But if you go the ‘Sika Duro’ way, you might have to be turned into a vulture first to learn all about the virtues of patience. Turning into a vulture may not only be for ritualistic purposes. While engaging in vice, you must learn virtue.
Even in getting ‘Sika Duro’ you need patience. And how best can anyone learn patience than becoming a vulture himself?
Following the publication of a front-page story in ‘The Spectator,’ Ghana’s top-rated weekly newspaper, that two ‘Sika Duro’ adventurists had turned into vultures, I have been under siege. It is as if I had written the story.
People have phoned me, questioned me, and interrogated me as if I’m a criminal the story goes like this. Three friends who allegedly went in for juju money were turned into vultures, obviously to learn the noble art of patience. They were made to feed at a rubbish dump during the day and brought home at night to sleep, while rituals were performed.
PROCESS
The final process was underway when there was a terrible mishap. The first vulture was transformed into a human. At this point, ritual materials get short and some needed to be procured.
The jujuman went to get the materials and got knocked down by a vehicle. He died instant. The two remaining vultures could therefore not regain their human form.
The only lucky one of the three had no choice but to return home to enjoy his wealth. But he had the shock of his life when he realised that his two vulture friends were flying after the vehicle he boarded back home. His friends definitely came back along with him.
Now, when two vultures were alleged to have started hovering and perching at a spot hitherto free of the presence of vultures, people naturally became curious.
COMPANY
I don’t know whether the place the vultures are said to be perching constantly in each other’s company, has now become a tourist attraction, earning Ghana some foreign exchange. Cocoa is not fetching much.
But to anyone who questions me as to the veracity (truth) of the story, I refer the person to go and see if the vultures are at post. It is the presence or absence of the vultures that can tell if the story is true or not.
Meanwhile, Sikaman Palava has been handed over information that other forms of ‘Sika Duro’ are becoming very popular. My investigations are on-going and soon ‘The Spectator’ will offer its numerous readers another front- page banner free-of-charge.
Heard about those who are using their semen (better referred to as sperm) to get ‘Sika Duro’? They are building mansions but they have also become infertile.
They can have sex all right, but cannot impregnate a woman. Those who already have children are disqualified from acquiring that brand of juju money. What is the world coming to?
This article was first published on Saturday March 1, 2003
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
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
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’
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
