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The Cop, press and lost fingers

• The Sikaman policeman’s job is a risky one .....
• The Sikaman policeman’s job is a risky one .....

The job of a policeman, whether he is short or tall, is not a cheap one. He is supposed to keep the peace, protect society and monitor the activities of local magicians and money doublers who are specialists in making civil servants lose their pay within seconds.

Sikaman Palava
Sikaman Palava

By far the most difficult job of the policeman is when he is expected to arrest a murderer who is not only armed but also has a record of ap­pearing and disappearing at will. Even if the tough cop is in the company of other policemen all armed to the teeth, his stomach will turn to water when the criminal suddenly appears.

He is terrified not because the criminal is a better marksman, but because nobody dies twice. The prob­lem also is that a criminal might be prepared to die in a bid to shoot his way to freedom. But is the police-man prepared to risk death in the course of duty when he has a family to rear.

If he had just acquired a new girl­friend with whom he is enjoying life, should he not run away with his tail between his legs and tell his boss that the criminal is uncatchable?

Before some policemen go on pa­trol duties, they actually pray solemn­ly. “God send me into the wilderness and bring me back safely with my nose intact because I’m worth more than a common rat. I also do not want to die like a stray dog. If a bullet is targeted at my forehead, Holy Spirit please let it go over the bar, because six children is not a small palaver. If I die, who will look after them? Lord keep me safe day by day. Amen!”

The Sikaman policeman’s job is a risky one because he is not properly equipped with even a trained dog to help track down criminals easily. So he has to use his own nose judiciously in sniffing out suspects while making sure a bullet doesn’t catch him square on the jaw.

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My friend Sir Kofi Owuo, a.k.a. Death-By-Poverty was telling me jour­nalists are in an even riskier profes­sion. Apparently, he had been reading about the palaver of journalists in places like Algeria and Columbia. Algeria, even women journalists are not spared assassin’s bullet. You’d see them lying in front of their homes with their heads full of bullet holes.

In Columbia, no journalist is safe. When a journalist is leaving home, he has to tell his wife. “Darling, when I don’t come back by 7 p.m. check the mortuary

The drug trade in Columbia has made journalism a profession not worth practising. If you write on cocaine and the harm it is inflicting on society, you’ll certainly receive a phone call.

“Hello, Mr Journalist, your article yesterday was great. Congratulations! We never knew you were such bril­liant writer, championing the cause of society. Again we say congrats! But you know something, by your article, you want to take the bread out of my and that of my family. You don’t want us to beak. We are aggrieved beyond measure”

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“Oh, I was just… “You’d try to say something

“You don’t have to explain. The harm has already been done by your award-winning masterpiece. We have an appointment with you. You’ll hear from us.

Rest In Peace!” After such a phone call, you just have to pray to your soul, sing a hymn or two and get pre­pared fort appointment with death. For, death will surely come

I think pressmen in Sikaman would also have start informing their families appropriately before leaving for work now. “If I don’t come back early, I’m probably at the Ear, Nose and Throat Department of Korle- Bu checking a leakage in my left ear due to a gen­darme slap from an AMA official. If you don’t see me there, track me down to the emergency ward. If you see a newly-made cripple, I’m the one”

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What about referees? These days they are guarded during football matches so that the risk they bear in terms of lost teeth is minimal. For­merly, it used to be a job full of woes and tribulations.

You were expected to oversee a match in such way that would favour a particular team. If that is not done, you’ll get back home and your wife will not recognise you. She’ll mistake you for Frank Bruno who had just lost a bout. When she finally recognises you, she’ll fix some hot water to mas­sage your poor face.

I hear that these days, apart from the protection referees receive, some are well-armed with Damfo Dzai, a kind of jack-knife that can carve a rowdy supporters face in several designs.

My Press Secretary and part-time bodyguard Devine Ankamah, was tell­ing me if he happens to be a referee, he’d surely carry a Kalashnikov AK 47 rifle with him, complete with loaded magazine, before officiating matches. According to him, that is the only way to do the job without fear or favour. Anyone dares will lose his jaw.

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Anyway, risky jobs require good remuneration. As Kwame Korkorti once said, risky jobs require risky salary. A policeman would require a good pay so that when a criminal targets his left ear it would be worth the ‘am­putation’. Same for journalists and cameramen.

But go round private workplaces and factories and you’d see really risky occupations where workers are receiving salaries they can’t see with the naked eye.

In fact, in some private workplac­es, environmental safety is completely absent. Workers breathe in fumes, poisonous gases and risk lung and respiratory problems. Their employ­ers do nothing about protecting them against these hazards. Check out their payer.

In other places, workers have their fingers chopped off on the job, some losing as many as four fingers in stretch. The compensation they get can best be described as “wicked”. Their employers live big, chop big, ride big but are not willing to pay more than ¢120,000 for lost fingers.

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Actually the more fingers you lose, the more money you get. So if you intend losing your fingers on the job, it is advisable to lose as many as pos­sible so that you can get more cash. Those who have lost one finger have not benefited much and are encour­aged to lose more next time around.

Sikaman Palava is undertaking to investigate some of these cases of very risky jobs in private setups and companies where workers are being exploited to unnecessarily but not offered protection against health haz­ards, and not properly compensated when they sustain injuries.

This article was first published on Saturday, September 28, 1996

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Features

Attempts to kill natural therapy?

Sikaman Palava

Anyone who has the devil’s bene­diction of getting sick of diabetes and jaundice at the same time would surely blame an experienced witch for his or her palaver. Fact is, the combination is a dreaded one with the form and visage of an obituary.

The bio-chemical analysis of the unholy combination is, however, within arm’s reach. Diabetes doesn’t tolerate sugar and jaundice can’t get cured with­out glucose (sugar). The two diseases are therefore irreconcilable under any medical condition. They are just not of the same womb!

So the terrified patient has to choose between two styles of dying: either curing the diabetes or dying of jaundice or curing the jaundice and falling into a diabetic coma en route to a cold room transit. The next available plane is destined for the cemetery, meaning the world no longer has any business to do with you.

Now, forgetting about pathological combinations and narrowing the focus on diabetes, one can still crumble in fear. The reason is that diabetes as a disease is not a benevolent ailment. We can understand this because it has nev­er been philanthropic in any sense of the word. It demands its pound of flesh, and that is often worth a human life.

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The problem is that, if you have too much sugar in your blood (hyperglyce­mia), you risk falling into coma. If your sugar level is also too low, a terrible coma awaits you. You just can’t un­derstand the malevolence associated with the disease so you have to keep a balance.

TREACHERY

I am writing this piece because of the sundry sinister attempts of treach­ery, overt and covert, being subtly perpetrated to kill Natural Therapy which claims a cure for diabetes. The claim is completely at variance with the assertion of orthodox practitioners who believe that diabetes can only be man­aged, but can never be cured.

Basically, diabetes occurs when the pancreas is not producing enough insulin to cope with blood sugar, or is not producing insulin at all. The result is a debilitating disease with several compli­cations that can lead to death.

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To combat the disease, one has to be put on diaonil or daily insulin injections supposedly to manage the disease, not to cure it because according to medical gurus, it cannot be cured.

Natural therapists have a different and more progresso-radical view. They say diabetes can be cured and they are proving it every day of the week. Happi­ly, medical doctors who develop diabe­tes are now coming for natural therapy, albeit under the cover of darkness. Today, there are many living testimonies of a natural therapy cure for the deadly ailment.

I was really sad about a silly attempt to frustrate the efforts of a well-known Texas-trained naturopathic physician who has toned down the orthodox medi­cal chorus that diabetes is not cur-able. Many of his patients who had been on insulin for years before seeing him are off it.

The medical crusade is a veritable one, and the good news is being propa­gated by those who have seen the light. Dr Kwesi Ofei-Agyemang’s success story is one that needs to be told from the roof-tops. But ask me, how is he being frustrated?

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On October 28, 1996, a diabetic patient of Dr Ofei-Agyemang had her sugar level checked. It was 6.1 mmo1/1. After treatment using naturopathic methods, she became well and was asked to check her sugar level again at a laboratory (name withheld) on 6-11- 96. Surprisingly, the lab recorded 13.3 mmol/l; meaning that her situation had worsened by far.

When she brought the report, Dr Ofei-Agyemang was sceptical about it. The patient was supposed to have recovered, or at least was recovering. The level could, therefore, not be 13.3. He rushed to the laboratory to demand an explanation.

When Dr Ofei-Agymang queried the report, the technician said he was sorry and added that he’d investigate the error.

Meanwhile at another laboratory where he sent the patient for another test to cross-check the earlier result, the patient’s sugar level recorded a low 2.9 mmo1/1, a correct reflection of her improved state of health.

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The doctor was furious for a very good reason. If he had taken the earlier lab report seriously and continued treat­ment to further reduce the patient’s sugar level, the patient would have sunk into coma and possibly died.

“This is not the first time this is happening,” Dr Ofei-Agyemang told me in an interview last week Friday. When I send my patients for tests, some lab technicians deliberately don’t return the correct results just because they know the patient is attending a natural therapy clinic.

“I see it as a subtle attempt to kill naturopathy in this country aside other hidden strategies that are being adopted to sabotage it. They are all out to create a wrong impression in the minds of pa­tients that they are going to the wrong place for treatment when in fact they are at the right place.”

Other attempts include doctors warning their patients never to submit themselves to natural therapy whenever the patients suggest they want to try it, knowing well that orthodox medicine isn’t helping them.

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Look at something else like this one. After Dr Ofei-Agyemang had cured one patient of a disease and placed him on a diet of fruits and vegetables, the patient’s brother (a doctor) advised him to quit the natural diet regimen and to eat plenty of meat and all that has to do with balanced diet.

So the patient quit the natural diet and ate meat to his fill. Before long boils broke out all over his body. Apparently, the body was rejecting the unnatural diet which had become toxic to the body following the spell of natural dieting.

FAILURE

I have been thinking about this diabetic cure controversy for some time now. I was compelled to ask the natural therapist to explain how naturopathy could possibly tread where orthodox medicine has woefully failed as far as a cure to diabetes was concerned.

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He explained that a defective pan­creas only needs to be revived through selective manipulation, diet and urine therapy to make it function again. If de­fects in other organs of the body can be corrected, there should be no medical reason why the pancreas should be an exception, he said.

“What other doctors must know is that once our methods are different, our results will naturally be different,” he said. “What they are supposed to be saying in fact is that ‘according to orthodox medicine, there is no cure for diabetes.’ They should stop saying there is no cure for diabetes because we are curing it. If they doubt it they should come here and see things for them­selves.

“Our methods are natural and include colon irrigation, deep tissue massage which is more effective than physiotherapy, diet, some fast and manipulation, and urine therapy. There is no way any disease can survive a combination of these methods.

Cancerous sores and all kinds of chronic ailments have been cured, dia­betes inclusive.

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“We just rejuvenate the dormant pancreas and it starts producing insulin. Unless the pancreas is cut out through surgery as a result of cancer, we have ways of making it work.”

I spoke to one of his patients, Jamison Ocansey. He was sick of diabe­tes and has been on herbs of all kinds, insulin and dioanil for more than a year. His sugar level fluctuated between 9 to 17 mmo1/c. After treatment, his sugar level is between 5.0 and 5.9 mmol/c.

“People don’t like this method because of the urine that is included in the method of cure,” he said.”I used to feel the same way but as I’m now cured, I’ve an entirely different opinion. Let me also thank your paper Weekly Spectator. It was an article in it that made me come here, so keep spreading the message.

“I used to be very weak and couldn’t walk. Look, now I am as strong as a bull. I eat well and I’m happy.”

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The doctor has cured various types of diseases at his clinic which is 100 metres north of Holy Gardens or Lido, Circle, Accra. What I believe would help us all is that the medical authorities should investigate these cures and come out openly to claim or disclaim them.

Those who are off insulin would also give testimony. That way, natural therapy can become more acceptable and there would be no point in anybody trying to frustrate efforts at entrench­ing it as the better substitute that has no side effects. It should in fact be the ideal complement to orthodox medicine and not an adversary as people want to portray it.

This article was first publish on Satur­day, November 16, 1996

Merari Alomele’s

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The problem is that, if you have too much sugar in your blood (hyperglycemia), you risk falling into coma. If your sugar level is also too low, a terrible coma awaits you. You just can’t un­derstand the malevolence associated with the disease so you have to keep a balance.

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 It is great to be young

 If I had the power, I believe I may be tempted to remain a child forever. We used to hear statements it is great to be young when growing up.

I did not really comprehend one anybody would wish to be like me, a small boy and not wish to be an adult like my Dad. Those were the days that the family did not sit around a dining table and your Dad’s meal was set up on a small table at a particular spot in the hall.

When I observed the amount of meat that were given to my Dad and what was given to me, l definitely wanted to grow up quickly to also become an adult. Therefore to hear some adults occasionally declare that it is great to be young, was some­thing I could not understand.

My reasoning was that, adults were enjoying a lot of benefits and so for any adult to even consider the possi­bility

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When I grew up however, I have come to appreciate that saying that indeed, it is great to be young. Growing up as a child, all l looked up to was the next day to come as I go to bed. When I woke up, l had no worries about what I would eat before going to school.

Where the next meal was going to come from was not my concern. All l had to do was to make sure that I go to school, study hard and pass my ex­ams and ensure that I am within the first three, in my class. There was no worrying about school fees, chang­ing of school uniforms or clothes in general, something I cannot run from now as an adult.

I now have to provide for some people now and I can now fully un­derstand my Dad’s comment that it is great to be young.

Christmas time was a very inter­esting and exciting time as a child because new clothes were provided for me and my siblings. I recall one Christmas period when I was provid­ed with a suit. It was a memorable occasion in my life as it was the first time I wore a suit.

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I felt very proud wearing the suit and with my new shoes to match, I felt great walking with my friends as we moved from place to place. When a new academic term begins I always looked forward to having a new school uniform. How much it was going to cost or how it was going to be provided was not my concern at all. It was taken for granted that I will get a new uniform at all cost.

I always had a good night’s sleep with the exception of those days that I was suffering from malaria and I had quite a number of such malaria attacks.

Recently my last born jokingly said “Daddy, do not think that I am not going to take money from you when I grow up oh. Even when I get mar­ried and have children, do not think you will be free. I will still collect money from you because you are my father”.

I burst into laughter and said “It is great to be young”. At the moment, her needs are provided by me and until she completes school and starts working, I will continue to provide for her needs. There have been mo­ments that I wish I were a child once again.

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I recall an incident involving my little girlie as I affectionately call my last born, when she pushed a piece of chalk into her nostril and we had to take her to the hospital, and wondering how it was going to come out. While her mother and I were worried at the hospital, she did not seem bothered and in that moment I wished I was a child. When the nurses finally got it out, I was so relieved and she was just smiling, obviously not worried as I was. Indeed, it is great to be young.

NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNA­TIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’

By Laud Kissi-Mensah

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