The children started bombarding Gladys with questions from the moment she got home around seven.

“Mama, where is Sarah? We haven’t seen her the whole day.”

“She went to spend a few days with one of your uncles in Accra. She will be back in a few days.”

“One of our uncles? Which uncle? I never knew any uncles in Accra who would invite us to spend time with them.”

“You don’t know all your relatives, my dear. I think we should do something about that.”

“But how can Sarah leave just like that? Mama, this is not fair. Is she not our sister?”

“I’m very sorry, my dear. As I said, she will be back in a few days.”

“As for me, I don’t understand at all. You are living in your house with your sister, then one morning you wake up and she’s not there. And when you ask, they tell you stories. Maybe we won’t even see her again.”

Simon got home around ten. Gladys was preparing for bed. He noticed her swollen eyes.

“What’s the problem, Gladys?”

“David Asante called this afternoon. He said that Sarah was with him. And the kids are demanding to know where she is.”

“Ei! But how did she locate him?”

“I think she found his number in my handbag after I told her his name, and called him.”

“I see. This is certainly troubling. But Gladys, there is also a bright side to it, isn’t there? The guy is her father. He was bound to come for her sooner or later. I’m sure he was just waiting for the right time. And now that he has found her, he will assume full financial responsibility for her.”

“I knew you would say that. You are now able to avoid any responsibility. But don’t forget that I told him that he was not the father, and he seems to have accepted the situation till now.”

“That’s a ridiculous statement. He certainly didn’t accept it. He must have assessed the cost of fighting you for custody, and decided to wait. He may have even been advised by a lawyer. And let’s face it, Gladys, what we did was wrong. Very wrong. You must accept the fact that your main motivation for taking Sarah away from him was revenge. Revenge on him for ending the marriage. And such behaviour always goes with punishment. I don’t want to blame anyone for my problems, but you don’t steal somebody’s child and expect life to deal leniently with you. Let’s accept the situation. Let’s eat humble pie. In fact, I would even go as far as saying that we should go and apologise to him. Immediately.”

“You must be crazy, Simon. All that beer has gone to your head. Don’t you have any pride, as a normal human being? You can go up there, crawl on your knees and beg for forgiveness, but don’t expect to find food waiting for you when you get back.”

“Shut up! You proud, selfish woman. It’s always about you. You are so proud and selfish. Let this be the last time you insult me, okay? I do not bring enough money to help with the family upkeep, but have you counted the cost of your insults on the children? Do you know what you do to your children’s emotions when you insult their father before them constantly? Listen well. Tomorrow morning, we are going to David Asante’s house to apologise for our behaviour. Our stupidity. We leave at five. Call him, or get someone to give you the directions to his house. And pray that God will forgive us for what we did to the innocent girl and her father, and change our difficult circumstances here.”

Betty knocked gently on the bedroom door. Adoma asked her to come in.

“Madam, Steven says there are two people at the gate who want to see you. They are Simon and Gladys.”

“Whaat!” David said.

“Let them in,” Adoma said. “Offer them seats, and water. We will be with them in a few minutes.”

Some fifteen minutes later, David greeted and welcomed them.

“I will go straight to the point,” Simon started. “My wife Gladys and I are here for one main reason. We are here to apologise, without any reservations, for our behaviour that resulted in depriving you of custody of your daughter Sarah, for over seventeen years. We also apologise, unreservedly, for all the associated hardship that you suffered. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to make amends for our behaviour, so please find it in your hearts to forgive us. Now Gladys, do you have anything to say?”

“I agree with every word Simon has spoken. I am very sorry for my behaviour. I am begging you to forgive me, and Simon, for what we did. We are prepared to do anything in our power to make amends.”

“Okay,” David said after quite a pause. “I, we accept your apologies. All is completely forgiven. The only thing we will request from you is to provide us with all Sarah’s school and other records. That is all we need. But I appreciate your boldness for coming, and your frankness.”

“We are so grateful. We will not take much of your time. We will beg to leave.” Adoma whispered a few words into Simon’s ear, and he nodded.

“Sister Gladys, may I have a word with you?” They moved to another side of the hall. “I was wondering if there’s any issue we could help you with.”

“Well, the problem is that Simon brings virtually nothing home. All is not well at his job, and my salary is simply inadequate. If I could get some capital, I would revive the bakery. It was doing well, but we were using our working capital for feeding. If I could start running it, that would give me another steady source of income.”

“So how much will you need to revive it?”

“Ten thousand cedis, to service the machines, and to buy flour, sugar and other ingredients.”

“Okay. We will give you twelve thousand cedis to fully revive the business and sort out any outstanding issues. And we will give your husband five thousand cedis to help him with what they call one-two-one-two. Let’s go back to our seats.” Adoma whispered back into David’s ear. David went to the bedroom, came back and handed an envelope each to Simon and Gladys.

“Thank you very much, David. We are truly grateful. Well then, we will be on our way.”

“Steven will drop you at the bus station. But before you go, let’s tell Sarah you are here. Or, Adoma, why don’t you call all of them?”

The girls came and stood before them.

“Abrefi and Adaawa, this is Sarah’s mother Auntie Gladys, and her stepfather Uncle Simon. Sarah, they came in to apologise for any mistakes they made in the past, and have promised to do anything they can to put everything in its place. Now, you fully belong here, but we will later find a way for you to interact with your two other siblings. Is that okay?” Sarah nodded, and the couple rose, hugged her and walked to the door.

“Now, Frenchman,” Adoma said as she hugged her husband, “Sarah is fully and truly yours.”

“I noticed,” Simon said as they sat on the bus to Koforidua, “that your envelope was much bigger than mine. Why is that?”

“You should count yourself lucky that I did not snatch it before he handed it to you. Listen, they asked me what they could do to help us, and they gave me the money after I specifically told them that I need help to revive the bakery. I’m going to make sure that it brings in good profit. And they gave you the money to help you fix anything that is outstanding. I don’t think anything is more important than your car. If you can do some repairs on it, you can take the kids to school and back, you can help me with bakery purchases and deliveries, and you can get some respect back by driving to work and back instead of taking tro-tro.”

“I will certainly do that, I assure you. I’m taking this as an opportunity to put our life back in order. I will not disappoint.”

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THE journey from life to death is a musical one. The human corpse knows not what is happening but the soul exists and plays the music of life after death. Sometimes becoming a ghost to frighten and plays the music threat to little children and adults too. Of course, older people are more scared of ghosts than their children; what a shame!

The problem with the dead, at least at the mortuaries, is not a ghostly one, however. It is one of temperature. It is somewhat of a tradition that those who refuse to continue living are detained in custody probably against their will. It is a sort of transit point with extremely low temperatures such that a woman being (human being) can be likened to frown tune.

This is necessary pre-burial procedure and every corpse, no matter the height, social status or volume of moustache must enjoy a full-air-conditioned living status in a transit quarters.

If this is not done and properly too, people in the area cannot breathe. Perhaps if you visit Rwanda, you’ll realise the nasal implications of what I’m driving at. Till this very day, corpses are still floating in rivers, a painful reminder of the stupidity of war.

Preserving human corpses in Sikaman has become a big problem of late. Recently, when Spectator reporters visited the Korle Bu Mortuary, they found corpses rotting. When the landlords of the mortuary — rats — were asked to comment on the situation, they simply scurried away. Fat well-fed rats they were and had practically no respect for anybody. These days, even rats don’t respect.

Last week, the Mirror also reported that 200 dead bodies “have been crammed into refrigerated chambers meant for 72 at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, because there is nowhere in the capital that has room for preserving corpses.

As you can imagine, the situation is such for the dead bodies to move about for fresh air and that, certainly, is against the freedom of movement, which is a violation of the Constitution.

According to the report, the Police Hospital cold room with a 30-sleeper capacity has also been jammed with 60 bodies and Ridge Hospital which takes only six has been forced to do with 12. In effect, some of the corpses are ‘perching’. Many of them are in fact gate-crashers.

When it happens this way, identifying corpses for burial becomes a problem. One problem is that the corpses are notorious for changing their positions without obtaining permission. This has to do with the mortuary-men though.

After they’ve fixed your corpse and you’re gone, immediately another corpse arrives and the owners grease palms and your corpse will be moved to Siberia and the new candidate put in its place.

The next time you come to check whether your corpse is in good condition and enjoying the breeze, you are certain to find it in an entirely different place, a place you won’t like. If you’re not lucky, you’ll find it outside the freezer, an indication that you didn’t apply grease to the required quantity.

So what it means is that you have to be constantly greasing palms to avoid the problem of your corpse being made to participate in the game of elimination by substitution. The day you take away your body for burial, you also cease greasing palms. And all these would not have been the case if there were ample space and every corpse is offered the “one-man one-seat” VIP treatment.

There are many factors that contribute to the over-population of corpses. And one of them is that Sikaman natives do not want to bury their corpses in good time. Some wait for well over three months because the family has not even agreed as to whether the corpse should be buried, much more where it should be buried.

It is surprising that these things go on in spite of high mortuary fees. If every deceased person could be buried at most two weeks after death, the congestion will greatly reduce. But this will never be so in Sikaman.

A funeral committee will be set up with special powers to legislate, if not decree on how the corpse should be decorated, how many cartons of beer and gallons of akpeteshie must be bought, which brand of coffin must be procured and whether the corpse should be laid in state with a punk haircut or with sakora.

And suddenly, someone who has never worn a decent pair of trousers all throughout his life appears in a three-piece suit, but refusing to smile. Obviously it is not happy about the posthumous sartorial award. Why didn’t they give him the suit when he was alive?

Before the funeral committee finalises plans, the mortuary bill hits 2800.000 more, and this will surely be paid. What vanity, a pathetic instance of the vain gloriousness of the Sikaman mentality!

In Northern Nigeria, as I’ve once said; the Hausa’s don’t have time for this ‘nonsense.” If you say you’re dead, you’ll be given a grace period of three hours to wake up and apologise for your pretensions. After three hours, no one gives you extra-time.

Fact is that the situation is not synonymous with that of a game of soccer. You’ll be buried pronto and that ends it.

In some parts of the world, mortuaries are not necessary except for autopsy purposes. Corpses are cremated and people subscribe to it because of the belief, however misplaced, that when a body is cremated the soul finds immediate solace and heads straight to its maker.

In Sikaman, cremation has never been given any thought for the very fact that it is not part of our way of life. To burn man like khebab is not the Ghanaian’s idea of an obituary, so the problem of mortuary space will persist.

Another fact is that in this country, even when it comes to dealing with dead bodies, the state handles the matter, which in fact should not be the case.

Elsewhere, mortuary matters are dealt with by licensed private companies. And corpses are better treated by undertakers who are paid for the job. Corpses are bathed, put in polythene and decently preserved.

In our mortuaries, corpses are treated too indecently. The ‘mortuary-men’ do not even have the courtesy to say ‘good-morning” to the dead bodies. At least they deserve a ‘hello’ and, “Have you had a nice sleep? Looks like, you’re having a headache. How about trimming your moustache a bit.”

Private mortuaries! Isn’t it time we had them and left the rats to their arrogance at the over-crowded government hospital mortuaries?

This article was first published on Saturday, December 10, 1994

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