Features
Cocaine and human anatomy
The Journey to London is not an easy one when you’re carrying a pot-belly.
And, if the pot-belly is a fake one, then the carrier must face indictment and explain why his protruding belly must not be properly examined to determine the degree of genuine cargo in it.
As it were, some pot-bellies have been carefully cultivated through regular beer quaffing, reinforced by the evil of indulging in khebab chomping. When you drink beer every day for five years, you are bound to lose your soul, and in its place will be a brewery installed in your belly. It is, however, an honour to have a brewery as a body-part.
And when you are going to London, the immigration officer can readily recognise your belly as one that has either a bubra-background, a star-origin or a club-destination. Immigration officers are now trained to prophesy.
The immigration man is generally interested in bellies, not for the sake of it, but because stomachs have become multi-functional these days.
Yes, the immigration officer is often curious why a belly well examined does not bear the tell-tale marks of beer addiction and yet, the belly carrier also doesn’t sound a likely host to refugee worms. So what is in the belly? Five months pregnancy?
SUSPICION
Normally, a suspicious immigration officer must be careful how he handles the belly of travelling men. With some men, their pot-bellies are their only treasure. So they tell you to handle with care!
“Don’t mess up with my belly, men!” a traveller would say. “Do you know how many goddamn years it took me to build this?”
Apart from belly size, immigration capos also use a bit of psychology. When a man comes by unduly agitated and wants to hurry small through, he is a likely candidate for close examination. His huge belly has no guilder antecedents! What he has inside is dangerous cargo- cocaine or heroin carefully packaged and swallowed.
If the plane doesn’t land quickly at Heathrow for the carrier to discharge, then an obituary becomes inevitable. The digestive juices in the belly and ensymes might be strong enough to digest the covering and leak out cocaine. Death is assured!
So the agitated traveller is chaperoned into a little side room and questioned. The officer would like to know whether there is any drug in his alimentary system.
“Nonsense!” the traveller would cry out. “I am a final year doctorate student in Law. To suggest that I’m a cocaine smuggler is an affront to my noble academic pursuits. It is blasphemous to the God I worship. I am going to see my lawyer to deal with you…”
LABOUR
When the man mellows down, he is given something small to drink to cool his heart. Sooner than expected he begins behaving like a woman in labour, He dis-charges pellets of cocaine, 60 or more.
So suddenly, a man studying for his doctorate in Jurisprudence at Oxford suddenly admits that he is a cocaine courier extraordinaire.
Sometime past, drug smuggling was at its real peak and cocaine seized on couriers suddenly turned into sugar when it came back from forensic examination. So you would wonder why any person in his right senses would either be stuffing his rectum with sugar packages or swallowing pellets of sugar.
Many drug barons were released because cocaine suddenly became granulated sugar, heroin became cocoa powder and various drugs miraculously assumed harm-less chemical formulae. Today, I do not think such miracles are still happening.
However, there are miracles as far as drug smuggling is concerned. First, the baby nappy method of the early 1980s is still in operation. A baby is carried with a wet napkin that immigration officers would not suspect contains coke. Sometimes it is not only wet, but the baby’s pooh-pooh also shows.
Now, the new trick is with snails, a delicacy that people need in Britain. They are stuffed with coke and exported. The yam formula has outlived its usefulness. So people have gone back to the late 1970 crude method of stuffing female genitals and taflatse rectums with coke.
This has necessitated the forcible examination of the orifices of the human anatomy in any event of suspicion.
Now if the stuff is not detected at Kotoka International Airport that might not be the end of the story. When the courier gets to Britain and he is or she starts dancing without being asked to, the immigration guys know that there’s “something in the soup.”
Fact is, every item or substance introduced into the human body must evict after some hours. That is why human waste doesn’t stay in there forever. It must exit compulsorily.
After flying for six hours the swallowed cargo in the belly starts to exit and it must be pushed back, a task that is well-nigh impossible under immigration scrutiny. So the courier becomes overly agitated and starts hissing like a snake. Soon he (or she) must start dancing, hoping that it would prevent the capsules from dropping out.
TRUTH
The African belly dancer is politely invited to enter into small room to free himself from further alimentary torment. That is the moment of truth.
There is no easy way to making money. With drugs, you could earn 30-years in jail. Saudi Arabia, you’ll be beheaded. In Singapore, you’ll be in for life just like in Thailand where Ghanaians are languishing today. Beware of drugs!
This article was first published
on Saturday August 6, 2005
THE typical itinerant salesman in Sikaman is a herbalist. He is normally a slim macho with the capacity to perambulate the expanse of area covering the triangle of Accra-Tema-Ashiaman. In short, he can walk a total of 60 miles a day, marketing a product that cures every disease, including poverty. 
The door-to-door herbal pharmacist advertises his product by word of mouth. He has nothing to do with the Food and Drugs Board (FDB). After all, his concoctions do not feature on FM stations.
Those herbalists who cannot walk to propagate the herbal gospel, liaise with drivers of mass transportation and their mates. They are, therefore, given the chance to sell their products on Benz buses that ply the routes.
Normally, the herbalist starts his sales message with a prayer and Bible study. He asks the passengers to bow down their heads in supplication to God the father, the son, the Holy Spirit.
When a herbalist asks the passengers to close their eyes and bow their heads, Moslems on board naturally feel offended. They feel that the herbalist has no right to assume that every passenger is a Christian. They think such an assumption is an affront to Islam.
So a Moslem on board will raise the hand for a point of order. He’ll remind the herbalist that it would be in his own interest to mind his language.
“Be careful the way you address people in a public place. Not every person here is a Christian,” he’d state assertively.
Of course, the herbalist will promptly ignore him, but would all the same “watch” his tongue. Who knows whether or not the Moslem brother is inspired by Quoranic zeal to defend the tenets of Islam to the hilt?
When he starts saying, “Wallahi!” and “Inshallah!” it could be the beginning of proclaiming Islam as supreme, a point which must be driven home with talibanic precision.
So the herbalist must tread carefully lest he steps on fire.
The herbalist could even add a measure of mirth to it all, by announcing that Christians on board today have very interesting company on the journey, but that should not detract from the business of the day.
The Moslem brother will weigh the words carefully and offer a wry smile.
He must be careful the occasion does not degenerate into the use of semantics and proverbial oration to deride his conviction that public utterances must be mindful of religious sensibilities. He has made his point very clear and expects that it is taken in good faith in the interest of a peaceful journey.
The herbalist will now open the New Testament and preach salvation, stating clearly that salvation can come only through Jesus Christ and NOBODY else.
The Moslem brother will now start twitching his moustache. The visible and almost revolutionary reflexes of his upper lip can be an indication that sentiments have begun superseding reason, and the outcome could well be tragic now shift uneasily in his seat.
The time has come for him to also express his right to the religion of his fore-bears. He’ll put his hand into his pocket and rise to his feet. The time has indeed come!
This article was first published on Saturday, September 9, 2006
When the cause of a particular problem like sickness, disease, sudden illness, a social issue etc. are not known, it stands to reason that resolving it becomes a huge challenge.
Citizens would understand the government when public announcements are made to the effect that government is trying to find a solution to the issue, even though it is taking a while for it to be resolved because citizens are rational beings.
On the other hand, if the solution to a particular issue is known to everybody but the government for whatever reason, is dragging its feet in resolving it, citizens become frustrated and begin to lose trust in their leaders.
One such issue is the heavy traffic along a section of the Kasoa – Odokor road. A short stretch of bad road between the traffic light at the Weija Government Hospital and the entrance to the entrance of the overhead that leads to the N1, is the cause of the problem but nothing is being done about it, day after day, week after week, month after month. Thus is clearly unacceptable.
Another issue that requires urgent attention is the lack of pavements along a lot of streets in parts of the various Municipal Assemblies. Exercise is a prerequisite for long life and healthy living and for those of us who it has become a way of life, this issue of people putting up structures right to the edge of the drains beside the roads, are making life difficult for us.
We are compelled to walk along the roads, putting our lives at serious risk. Pedestrians should never be compelled to compete with vehicles on our streets and roads. Roads and streets are made for vehicles and pavements are made for pedestrians. That is the norm. Any attempt to normalise a situation where pedestrians are mingling with vehicles is insanity.
It is the road regulations that makes it so and therefore district or municipal assemblies are to take responsibility and ensure that spaces for pavements are not encroached upon. Citizens have rights that must be protected by their leaders and making pavements available to pedestrians, is one of them.
When we hear of teachers having sex with students, it appears it is something recent. It is not a new phenomenon. It has been there since Adam. Perhaps this issue is getting much attention due to the proliferation of social media. It was an open secret in times past when Teachers were in relationships with female students and some married them immediately after completion of school.
Some teachers were also known to be having unholy interactions with female pupils but due to the times that these acts occurred, human rights issues and the awareness around it, allowed such unscrupulous teachers to get away with their crimes.
Now we are in a different era and so a Headmaster is now in hot waters. He is alleged to have raped about 19 female students and as usual, some officials tried to cover it up and are also in hot waters and their actions or inactions in the matter are under investigation.
Why the man has been allowed to roam freely without being arrested is simply mind boggling. It appears that the law applies differently, depending on who you are. This issue came to public attention sometime in August this year, yet the police had not arrested or invited this man for question regarding the rape allegation.
It has come out that he is a Constituency Secretary of the ruling party and the question in the public domain is that, is it because he is a political figure that is why he is still walking around without questioning? I believe in the rule of law so let us hold our breadth and let the proper thing be done.
The police must however be seen to be active in this matter. God bless.
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