Features
Chicken country or what?
Policemen and journalists have never been good bedfellows. Fact is that they’ve never trusted each other. Policemen have been accused of withholding information from journalists when they need them for their hot front-page stories. “Please, we are still investigating the case and cannot give you any information until it is completed,” a police detective-inspector would tell a journalist who wants to hit the head- lines.
On the other hand, policemen also accuse journalists of allegedly misquoting them, such that when the policeman, for instance, tells the journalist that the thief stole a black goat with a beard, the journalist would add a little colour and write that the thief stole a goat with a moustache.
According to Detective-Sergeant Mensah, the thief was very athletic and smart. He scaled the wall and stole the black goat which had a thick moustache. It was not immediately known whether the moustache resembled that of Saddam Hussein or not”.
The point of controversy here is whether the policeman really mentioned that the poor goat had moustache or a beard or both.
Anyhow, the journalist can defend himself. “It is impossible for any living thing to have a beard without a moustache. So, certainly the goat really did have a moustache that has never been trimmed, according to reliable sources.”
I wonder what the marriage between a policeman and a journalist would be. If the policeman snores too much, the angry journalist would threaten, “Tomorrow, I am going to do a feature on you for snoring dangerously at midnight without seeking permission from the Inspector General of Police (IGP). I’ll also ask the IGP to reduce the size of your nose, so that when you snore the room does not shake again”
And the policeman would counter, “I am going to lock you in the monkey-house for sneezing like a stubborn goat. It is a breach of public peace and you’ll be prosecuted. See me at the charge office immediately you’ve finished preparing breakfast.”
This kind of marriage does not easily dissolve. On the contrary it lasts forever. They understand themselves, after all. If for anything at all, aren’t they in similar professions? The journalist stays the night to get a piece of news into the following day’s paper. A policeman also patrols the night.
And aren’t both of them poorly paid? Both also have the same likes and dislikes. The journalist is permissive to gifts called ‘Soli’. Some policemen are also addicted to receiving gifts. I don’t know how they call theirs. In any case, blessed are those who receiveth but giveth not.
But who says the police do not give? In recent times, the police have become magnanimous, especially to journalists. It is surprising because they do not quite trust themselves.
For some years now, the police have, once in a year, invited journalists from the various press houses to wine and dine together. It is often like a wedding ceremony for two somewhat incompatible eligibles. Whether the police are the groom and journalists the bride is yet to be ascertained.
Such yearly get-together at the expense of the police is very healthful to the relationship between the press and the police. The police have the opportunity to discuss their problems with journalists and vice versa and each understands the other to make for a good marriage. For better or for worse.
This year’s get-together took place last week Friday. The police were well-prepared but alas, it turned out to be a disaster.
The police hosted some journalists of New Times Corporation at Country Kitchen, a popular Accra restaurant. But tragically enough, Country Kitchen was a big disappointment.
The Police Public Relations Officer set the ball rolling: “Ladies and gentlemen we’ve invited you here today like we did last year to sit over lunch and get to know ourselves better. We will tell you our problems and you’ll tell us yours… We want the relationship between us to be very cordial so that we can co-operate and rely on each other during the course of our duties…”
A waiter was supposed to be serving drinks to about fifteen policemen and journalists.
A whole Country Kitchen had only one waiter at the time. A smallish-looking chap, probably a recent JSS graduate, finely attired in white top and black trousers, looked a bit punkish and obviously over-worked.
He took our orders for drinks and it took almost an hour for some of us to get ours. When my Editor had his, I asked him whether there was only one waiter in such a well-known restaurant.
“I don’t know what is happening here,” he said. He was sipping his beer; he’d had his quite early and my throat was parched. I wanted to ask him whether I could pour a glassful of his beer and reimburse when mine came, but others were looking my way so I shut Police my beak.
Many of us were hanging on and the chatting continued. My editor spoke extensively on the ways the police and the press could work hand in hand.
Meanwhile, the drinks were not coming. Then the 3.00 pm waiter, sweating now gave me my beer, more than forty minutes after he took the orders. He now took orders for the food.
Earlier, the top policeman had announced that everybody could choose any dish from the menu, irrespective of the cost. Quite generous of policemen, isn’t it?
It took more than an hour-and-a-half to get one of us a plate of fufu and light soup. Many ate rice and chicken with chips and salad, and practically everybody was starving before the meal came. The police boss was all the time apologising “Ladies and gentlemen, there is a little hitch, please bear with us.”
Of course, we had to bear with our hosts because they were policemen and not cooks. When after two hours my Editor had still not had his food, he asked whether this was Country Kitchen which advertises that you could just ring from anywhere and you’d be served immediately.
Someone commented rather ironically that they could serve you immediately you rang. However, when you come to their premises you’ll have to wait for more than two hours. That was COUNTRY KITCHEN with that same tired boy serving the food, no one to help him.
I looked at his face and reckoned that he himself was very hungry. Perhaps he’d taken only koko and bofrot in the morning. He was clearly tired, over-worked, over-exploited. Customers were indeed getting impatient.
“We hold your foot sir,” my editor told the police boss. “What is actually happening?” “Please, bear with us.”
Yeah, it was a Friday and the editor wanted to go to the bank, otherwise the week-end would be wahalla for him. We had arrived and got seated at about 12.35 p.m. and he had to get to the bank latest 3:00 p.m. By 2.50 p.m. his order had still not come
He couldn’t tell his hosts to go to hell and that he was leaving. It would have spoiled the marriage and the honeymoon. So by 3.00 p.m., the editor had long completed his beer and was still waiting for the food while the bank doors were being locked.
I wonder how he survived the week-end. I will ask him. At last, everybody was served, me last. It took more than two hours to serve me just rice and mutton. I don’t know whether they now have to grow the rice at the restaurant before cooking it for the guests while they wait.
Yes, the food did come, but Harry Reynolds, a colleague of mine was shocked to see something in his. What! What he saw is unprintable. When you see him ask him. The food had to be replaced.
All through the meal, no water was served, not even ordinary water. After the meal, no water was served either. It was such an embarrassment to the Police. The proprietor, I must say is actually messing the place.
Some of us who couldn’t eat there required takeaways, and that took an extra hour to organise, with the same boy at it, almost out of breath now.
As we filed away from the place to board the bus back to our workplaces, the journalists looked into the eyes of the police and police looked back into our eyes wondering whether this indeed was the legendary Country Kitchen.
Probably it wasn’t but sure it was written there. I looked at the inscription and I thought I read COUNTRY KITCHEN. I began to feel dizzy. I read it again. I saw CHICKEN COUNTRY after all, but the letters kept changing
I asked Harry Reynolds. Is this Country Kitchen or Kitchen Country or Chicken Country? Or What? “Go and ask your friend Kwame Korkorti,” he said.
By Merari Alomele
Features
The Tema palaver
There is a legend about what Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah wanted Tema to be like.
According to the prophets of the pre-coup era and those who claimed to have known the Osagyefo’s plans, Tema was being gradually developed to become a model city, a workers’ paradise, not a Chinatown.
Today if you see the Meridian Hotel, you’ll think it has just suffered from a bomb attack. Kokotako recently told me he was sure the once elegant hotel was suffering from a virus infection.
Tema, it has been said, was meant to be a thoroughly planned heavenly-city under a presidential blueprint to be eventually decorated with two border posts. You couldn’t enter using bush paths and grasscutter routes. No rat-catching gimmicks!
According to the sages of those times, non-residents of the city on a visit would have been required to go through a bureaucratic and medical procedure.
First you’ll have to produce your passport cum visa, or a travelling certificate, lassez de passe or carte identite (identity card). Your forehead would have to be examined by an expert to make sure you are not a magician. No magical shows in the city. No Kofi Larteh!
You’ll also be required to produce a medical certificate to prove that you’ve been vaccinated against yellow fever, typhoid and poverty. You don’t come to the city to become a beggar. No way!
In a nutshell, the city was meant to become the model city of West Africa, the Vatican of Sikaman; a state within a state, a wonderland of no mean accolade.
The 1966 coup was a national tragedy although Ghanaians hailed the coup. To the Osagyefo, it was a personal tragedy. His dreams of a glorious harbour city, for instance, with its night-time glow and daytime glitter were washed away as the sub-machine guns rattled the signal of the advent of Ghana’s woes.
Nkrumah probably lamented the coup for one main reason that Tema would never be what he visualised it to become. Some people say the tears he shed were laden with an anathema, a bit of which has probably been visited upon Tema.
Yes, visit Tema and you’ll see vestiges of the old plan, now adulterated and totally confused with gross lack of maintenance, irregular development, over-flowing manholes, dark streets at night, beggars, and people who would have been denied access to the comforts of the city, had the Osagyefo been alive.
Tema is no longer for workers. It is now a free-for all, a boiling pot of all ethnic groups like fufu-eating Ashantis, butter-smearing Fantes, akple-eating Ewes, kontomire-swallowing Akwapims, khebab-roasting northerners and Brong self-imposed exiles who would eat nothing apart from unripe plantain. Very delicious, you know.
The shoe-shine boys are in their hundreds and wayside chop bars especially at night are common feature. You’ll be glad to meet an ex-seaman at a drinking bar talking about the good old days when Black Starline was indeed a national line. You’ll notice a retired seaman by his swag for the unmistakable seaman trademark in the gait.
Tema of today is famous for its brand of Pidgin English. It is next to the Nigerian version which is acknowledged by linguistic experts as the cremé of pidgin. Not good for SSS students, though.
The city is also famous for its high cost of living. Those who come from Accra and Kumasi to live there often pack bag and baggage after a few months and run away without anybody chasing them. Sometimes they leave their jackets behind. Life is no joke.
If you can, however, stay in Tema for over five years without suffering from financial constipation, then you are qualified and baptised to live in the ‘hard’ cities of the world including Hanoi, and Bombay. As for Mogadishu, I doubt it. Sometimes you have breakfast once in two weeks and that’s not a cheap situation. You’ve got to bow.
Surprisingly those who live in Tema and have got used to the rough weather don’t want to live anywhere else. They love the city, the breeze, the pidgin.
Today, the new SSNIT flats are giving the city a new class just as fast as the deteriorating conditions of the Tema Development Corporation (TDC)-owned houses are de-beautifying the city. No maintenance whatsoever and the corporation is beset with problems and matters that need redress.
At this very moment, the Tema Tenants Association (TTA) and TDC are at each other’s throat, in a dangerous horseplay that can degenerate into something else. The corporation intends to sell its rented units, meaning that if you can’t buy the house you’re living in, then you’ve got to quit and probably go to your hometown for good.
So whether you are a rich business tycoon or a mandated church mouse, you have to, within three months from now, make ready over three million cedis for the place you are occupying.
There is, however, an alternative. Poor tenants who can’t afford the outrageous prices will from October 1 pay 300 per cent on rent. A single room will now cost 7,000 cedis per month.
Members of the tenants’ association who are ready to take to the streets in protest have accused TDC of having woefully failed as a landlord because it has not maintained buildings it is supposed to maintain.
Some of the buildings are in a real mess.
The association has called for a commission of enquiry to investigate the matter to ensure that propriety and neglect no longer become good bedfellows and also to enable the poor worker and his family to have a place to lay their heads without being intimidated with outright sales and high rents.
The Tema Development Corporation (TDC) itself has a lot of things happening in there, the public would be very much interested in knowing. Many things in fact.
I’ll revisit the issue sooner than you’d expect. Watch out for the bombshell!
This article was published on
Saturday, August 6, 1994
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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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