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Doomed to Failure series…. Watch your mouth Alice!
As soon as Esaaba left, Alice called Maureen. ‘Hey girl. What is this I hear about you and Martin? I introduced you to him because you said you needed someone like you to help you set up your processing plant. And knowing that you were already doing well with the sale of fruit juices, I thought he would be a great help. But I hear he’s now more than your consultant. You are always with him, living it up’.
‘Hey, Alice watch your mouth. And what if in the course of business we have become a little close? The guy is good-looking, and so easy to get attracted to. I couldn’t help it’ ‘Well, Esaaba has just been here, and she’s not amused at all. She’s going to put a stop to it’.
‘What’s she going to do? Shoot me? I hope you didn’t tell her about Mr. C and Mr. F’. ‘I didn’t tell her anything. But I was hoping you would tell me what is happening, especially since you have gotten Martin involved in your mess’. ‘You think I did that deliberately? Listen, I have fallen badly for that guy, and if it weren’t for the current, er, financial problems, I would fight to win him. But things are not going well, so I will wait for a while, before letting him know.
For now, I hope to continue seeing him’. ‘Don’t count on it. Esaaba will skin you alive. And let me tell you, Maureen, you were not honest with me. If I knew you had problems with money, that the capital for the processing plant was not coming from you but from two sugar daddies, I would never have introduced Martin to you.
As things stand, you have no money to pay him, unless of course you will find another sugar daddy very quickly. And from the look of things, you don’t have money to continue with the project. But Maureen, you have always been an intelligent, hardworking girl, so when did you get into this sugar daddy thing?’
‘It’s not my fault that I’m pretty, Alice. They are always there, and whichever way you turn, they insist on buying you everything. And just at the time that I really need money badly they chickened out. Idiots’. ‘So what actually happened. How come both of them abandoned you just at the most crucial time?’ ‘They got wind of what I was planning to do. I think they got alarmed by my demands for money. They are both rich, so I didn’t think a few thousand dollars at a time would bother them. I bought the land and made part payment for the equipment, then they froze payments. I didn’t understand then, but I now realise that they suspected that I was either financing a young guy, or preparing to dump them, so they made discreet enquiries and found out I was building a plant, then they cut me off, right in the middle’. ‘Unfortunate, but you didn’t need to get involved with them in the first place. So, will you tell Martin or shall I tell him?’ ‘I don’t have the courage, so please do. Maybe he will agree to help me in the future’. ‘I will call him now, and let him know that the fling with you was doomed to failure’.
Martin stopped at the gate and greeted the security man politely. ‘Brother Martin, good morning. Esaaba is not in yet. She is normally here before eight. They must have been caught in traffic. So please park the car and wait at the reception. She will be here very soon’.
‘Okay boss’. I will wait in the car. I will be making some calls’. Martin had been having some serious thoughts since Esaaba gave her that brief but telling lecture. He wasn’t feeling too bad for having a fling with Maureen. That girl was a real bomb. But he felt stupid for falling for her charms, or tricks as he was realising.
She liked being pampered, but was that because she had been pampered as a child? Until Esaaba schooled her, he did not seem to find anything wrong with taking her round the fancy restaurants, eating all kinds of fancy stuff, when he and his buddies and, of course, Esaaba, were regular patrons of nice Ghanaian restaurants.
Esaaba, of course, had always treated him to delicacies like apapransa, epitsi, etor and others. And how come he had been able to virtually relegate Esaaba to second place, whilst showering time and affection on Maureen? Maureen was certainly beautiful and very charming, but Esaaba was the real queen, easily streets ahead in looks, intelligence and confidence. And she had a lot of time for Martin.
He had come to kneel down and beg her, and promise never to do that again. He saw her get out of the car and walk past his car, heading for the entrance. Then their eyes met. ‘Martin! Is everything okay?’ ‘No, not at all?’ ‘Ei! What’s happening?’ I hope nobody is hurt?’ ‘No, nothing of the sort. I just had to see you’. She walked silently with him to her office, opened the door and offered him a seat and sat down’. ‘I’m all ears. You gave me the impression that something has gone badly wrong’. ‘I just came to say that I am very sorry for my recent behaviour. I am really sorry. I cant explain my behaviour. But please, Esaaba, I was never going to leave you. You mean just too much to me’. ‘Okay, I accept your apology. You really hurt me. But I love you too much, and I know you also care for me, so let’s look forward. But let me ask, what did you see in that girl? Is she better-looking, or better in any other way, than me?’ ‘Certainly not! You know, she was always very flirtatious, pretending she was so vulnerable and needed me around, and all that. I was a little flattered that someone seemed to be all over me, but there was never a time when I thought of leaving you for her.
Please, never think that. I am really very sorry. This will never happen again. I’m glad you brought me back to my senses when you sat me down and lectured me. You know, for the first time I had started working for a client without asking her to sign a contract and making a down payment. I have been very, very foolish’. ‘Okay, you have learnt a lesson, and our relationship is still intact. Let’s look forward’. ‘Haven’t we looked forward enough? Why don’t we do what we’ve been preparing to do all along?’ ‘You mean get married?’ Martin nodded, and Esaaba broke into tears of joy. ‘Let me call my parents.
By Ekow De Heer
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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