Features
Do Sikaman Mothers deserve their day?
Sometimes children forget that while they were in the belly of Mummy, Daddy was paying the bills. So it isn’t Mummy alone who bore the child. Daddy contributed a seed and funded the bills till Mummy was sent to hospital to produce the baby.
When the baby is brought home bouncing, everyone congratulates Mummy, not Daddy. At this point in time Daddy doesn’t count. After all, what is the big deal about settling ante-natal and maternity bills? And what is money compared to labour pains?
Certainly, a Mum’s woes do not end with the delivery of a kid. Breast-feeding, sleepless nights, sick baby, cry baby cry, too much stress handling a tiny human being. The man’s woes also do not end unless of course, the man is a cockroach.
And if he truly is, Mum will surely tell the kid when he grows up. “Your daddy isn’t a daddy,” she’d say. “He is a cockroach! When I gave birth to you, he saw another woman and followed her like a he-goat. The bastard didn’t look after you!”
SWEET
So it comes to Mother’s Day and the kid is forever grateful o Mama for making a human being out of the seed of an idiot. She prays for Mum! Sweet Mother!
Come Father’s Day and everyone wonders whether a day like that exists. Very little publicity on JOY FM. Fact is that JOY doesn’t particularly believe in the day, but offering some sponsored airtime to interview people about their daddies would just be fair.
And for the sake of honouring one’s father, no one ever said anything ugly about Daddy. I am still waiting to hear something like this.
“While I was lying in the belly of my Mama, my Daddy took off with the woman who is now my step-mom. My Mum is a wreck all because of my Daddy. He beat her, neglected her and finally divorced her. On this occasion of Father’s Day, I wish my father will roast in hell at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ!”
Fact is, it isn’t all fathers that deserve accommodation on hell’s barbecue stand. Some fathers are really fathers – caring, supportive, grooming, educating and putting you on a firm academic ladder. Only about 20 per cent of men are irresponsible and warming up for hell if one exists.
And who says all mums are mums? In some communities, any woman who is lucky to hit 65 years is automatically branded a witch, not because she is a witch, but because she is supposed to be one. If she isn’t a witch by 65, then what is the use of her old age?
So you’ll find very terrifying reports of grandmothers who are accused of causing accidents by remote-control, mothers making their sons-in-law impotent, or if they are lucky half-impotent, or removing the wombs of daughters-in-law.
Go to Gambaga and you’ll be welcomed to a witch’s camp. When you clock 60 and your eyes get a little red, you are certified and gazetted a witch and banished to the camp where you’ll one day perish. Backwardness?
WINE
On Mother’s day last Sunday, I remembered my mum who is no more. Very noble lady who saw me through university when my Dad was on pension. I took dark wine in honour of her and blessed her.
My kids asked me what the family would be doing on Mother’s Day, “I have no mother!” I replied. But they had a Mum and they wanted something done for her. I got interested.
“Will you pound fufu for her?”
“Yes”, they said.
Okay! I also said for once, I’ll go to the kitchen and prepare the soup. I ordered a large whole chicken, assembled the garlic, peppers, spices, tomato (fresh), tomato (paste) and got to work.
I undertook surgery on the chicken, washed it nicely and put my- self to the test. Generally I’m not a good cook. When I was in Legon, my girlfriend taught me how to cook sweet potato pottage using fish and palm oil, and I have not forgotten the skills. But preparing Mother’s Day chicken soup was quite a challenge.
I needed advance catering skills.
Half way through, I realised I was burnt in three places and decided that enough was enough. I wanted to give up, but wouldn’t that be untoward? I plodded on and mixed things together and fixed the cooker fire on ‘medium.’ I left the rest to God! He knows best!
When it was done, I plucked out a piece of chicken to sample. I enjoyed it! But I needed to get the nod from my kids! They will be doing the presentation to their Mum to honour her. If it was badly prepared, it would be dishonourable! “Over to you Edem, Emefa, Eyram and Elom” – the Four Es!
DESERVE
The question is do mothers really deserve Mothers’ Day? It was when I witnessed part of the delivery of my last-born child that I started respecting women.
I was at work when a call came “Your wife has been sent to clinic. She is in great pain.”
I was confused and just could not continue what I was writing. I tried to concentrate without success. I packed out and headed for the clinic. I wanted to meet the new child and touch it. But nay!
My wife was lying on a bed groaning. “The doctor says the baby is not coming so he’d have to send me to the theatre if it doesn’t drop by 8:00 pm.” She was sweating like nobody’s business.
I went home, took a hurried bath and returned and witnessed the labour of my wife. It was frightening and horrifying. She couldn’t lie and couldn’t stand. She had been injected to induce labour and the baby just wouldn’t come. I regretted having made her pregnant.
Mothers really deserve their Day!
This article was first published on May 15, 2004
Merari Alomele’s
• A mother’s woes do not end with the delivery of a child
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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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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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