Features
Of predictions and a happy new year

For Fifty-two weeks, my pen has been dancing. Precisely, for 3,654 days, my pen has been on its toes doing one jig after the other, keeping this column warm and smiling. My pen, however, developed flat-foot when I was commissioned to cover the National Debate in late August and early September. After three weeks, this column boomed back to life with WOES OF A SIKAMAN JOURNALIST.
And who says journalists in the territory of gold do not have woes? If they are not married before 1991, they can no longer marry. None of the male journalists can afford an engagement ring if he relies solely on his pay. Anyhow, it would be a disaster to remain a bachelor. Remember MARRIAGE PALAVER of MAY 26. ? I wrote:
“Before my friend Kofi Kokotako became a married man, he was an eligible bachelor in his own case. He had gone to the bank clutching his briefcase to withdraw some money. To open the briefcase now in the full glare of fellow citizens of Sikaman would amount to revealing his marital status without being asked to.
“Not to reveal contents, he opened it slightly and poked his fingers into the upper compartment to retrieve that hell of a cheque-book. He was furious at it, and in this fit of anger, coupled with a little awkwardness, the entire briefcase lost balance and over-turned. Lo and behold, disaster had struck Kokotako.
“……Scattered far and wide were palmnuts (about one olonka in quantity), plantain, cassava, pepper, tomato, fish… and four crabs that sought instant refuge from their predicament.
The crabs now sped in different directions to seek political asylum in the nearest territory. They had nearly gone out of breath in the tight briefcase… Kototako (a bachelor) had wanted to prepare palmnut soup that would last him some three days.
Such an incident is likely to happen to a bachelor journalist in 1991 if steps are not taken to do something about their income. I also have another prediction for 1991.
Most Guinness and beer drinkers will shift compulsorily to become faithful patrons of local bitters –“peters.” The mahogany brand which is reputed as best for kooko and waist-pains will become the favourite of high class executives whose sedentary jobs and lack of exercise make them develop locked waist. It is far cheaper too.
This reminds me of ALCOHOL ADDICTION &THE X’MAS COMATOSE.
“To go the local-gin way is quite understandable …the alcoholic economy of equivalents shows that the alcoholic horsepower of GH¢40 of akpeteshie (raw) is equal to that of the one bottle of beer which costs GH¢240.”
Mind you, it is 320 in some bars today. 1991 one is the year for lotto-stakers.
They will see the kingdom of money. I had a dream on this, and the dream was entitled LOTTO PALAVER:
“Ever since this episode, Korkorti has become a lotto addict, a lotto forecaster, a lotto magician, editor in-chief of a lotto paper and chairman of the Sikaman
Lotto Winners Association (SLWA), I hear there is also an association called the Sikaman Lotto Losers Association (SLLA).”
I predict that many journalists would join one of these associations in a desperate bid to increase their incomes.
The incidence of rape will not decline in 1991 because punishment for rapists are still not deterrent enough. In PUNISHMENT FOR A RAPIST, it could be read:
“.A castrated rapist is no danger to organised society. Fact is that he can bark but he cannot bite. Even a strip-tease dancer can no longer arouse him. And sooner or later, he would become so fat and oily that he’d be more famous as a superheavyweight than as a dreaded rapist… l am against castration, though.”
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) will take drastic steps in 1991 to stall the incidence of LEAKAGES AND ACADEMIC DYSENTERY.
“Dear Sir, this very paper you are marking is under massive leakage, and I know that people are going to blow it paaa. But as for me, although I also had all the questions, I am as daft as a live sheep. My father has no brains whatever in his big head. As for my mother, the least said about her, the better. And as you know that a dog does not beget a cat, I was born an idiot.
“So when I got the questions, I didn’t know what to do with them. Will you please therefore consider and pass me too. Otherwise, I alone will die of academic dysentery. Thanks for your usual cooperation. Yours faithfully…”
Dear reader, what do I have for FASHION CRAZE IN SIKAMAN for next year:
“If by the year 2,000, you enter into an office of a managing director, and you see a bearded man complete with thick moustache dressed in kaba and slit, don’t be shocked. He is still a mister. His only problem is that he is abreast with the times.”
Partly due to the ‘GOLF’ crisis and its attendant worsening of national economies, the incidence of corruption in Sikaman is going to escalate dramatically and many will be brought to book. THE CORRUPTION SAGA offered the following:
“The spotlight of criticism is so much centred on the police that the corrupt practices of doctors, teachers, civil servants, customs officials etc. are never known.”
Indeed, in 1991, the lid over the corruption soup pot is going to be lifted and the contents revealed to the general public. Keep abreast with press reports. There will be an attempt to ease the housing problems in Sikaman. Landlords, as a result, will become more liberal with the rules and regulations as said in HOUSING IN SIKAMAN:
“Second set of rules and regulations. Thou shall not cook koobi or momoni in the house, because I (the landlord), am allergic to such unholy smell; no singing in the housing when the landlord is enjoying his siesta, no tenant must laugh like a rich man; you are allowed to sneeze only on Sundays and public holidays.”
Incidentally, I am in need of accommodation (not less than two large rooms) and would welcome an offer in Accra, where the advance payment would not be above sea level.
Confidence tricksters, are likely to triple in number, regarding their profession as a lucrative alternative to armed-robber which attracts the death-penalty. However, burglaries will not die out as CRIMINALS AND GULLIBLE NATIVES meet face to face:
“However, as the thief nearly gets to the top, the man takes courage and with all his might, pushes the ladder off his window. The criminal lands on his back, and barks like a dog although he is a perfect human being.”
“But he is also professional. He quickly wakes up from the tragedy, wipes the sand off his face and hair, carries the ladder over his broad shoulders and trots dizzily away to plan another strategy.”
THE DAWN PREACHERS are going to increase in number as the aluta on satan continues unabated. But, “… the preachers must realise that preaching against fornication alone will not help stop the spread of AlDS for instance because people are always going to mate anyway. So, after preaching against fornication, the preachers must go on to educate their hearers on the deadliness of the AIDS, how it is spread and what precautionary measures to take.”
My name is still a mystery to readers. The pronunciation especially. Many think I am either a Zimbabwean, Namibian, Tanzanian, or Rwandan. Some say I’m a refugee journalist. So very amusing.
On June 17, 1989, THE NAME UNDER SIEGE appeared in the “Spectator”.
I went to a clinic sometime back and a nurse came to mention names so that we could form a queue before seeing the doctor. She hesitated so much over my name. For good three minutes, she tried and failed; she frowned, coughed, fidgeted and nearly passed wind before she managed to croak; Mary Lomotey.”
“… I went to collect drugs from the dispensary. A Hausa man was the chairman of the department. He looked at the name and nearly collapsed when he ventured mentioning it. “Ferari Alomeli,” he fumbled out terribly. I immediately wondered whether he was suffering from river-blindness.
“Haven’t you gone for treatment,” I asked him smiling.
“What treatment?” he retorted, rather perplexed. “For river blindness.”
“What are you talking about,” he asked quite
angrily.
You’re seeing Merari and you’re calling it Ferari.
Ferari is a name of a car, so l thought you were a victim of river-blindness.”
You’re a fool to tell me that,” he yelled at me. Till this day, ALOMELE IS still pronounced by some people “LIMELIGHT” but I’m not quite bothered. What I’m bothered about is the financial mourning that took place during X’mas, and what most people are going to face in January.
And till then I wish all lovers of my column a happy and prosperous New Year.
This article was first published on Saturday, December 29, 1990.
Features
Attempts to kill natural therapy?

Anyone who has the devil’s benediction of getting sick of diabetes and jaundice at the same time would surely blame an experienced witch for his or her palaver. Fact is, the combination is a dreaded one with the form and visage of an obituary.
The bio-chemical analysis of the unholy combination is, however, within arm’s reach. Diabetes doesn’t tolerate sugar and jaundice can’t get cured without glucose (sugar). The two diseases are therefore irreconcilable under any medical condition. They are just not of the same womb!
So the terrified patient has to choose between two styles of dying: either curing the diabetes or dying of jaundice or curing the jaundice and falling into a diabetic coma en route to a cold room transit. The next available plane is destined for the cemetery, meaning the world no longer has any business to do with you.
Now, forgetting about pathological combinations and narrowing the focus on diabetes, one can still crumble in fear. The reason is that diabetes as a disease is not a benevolent ailment. We can understand this because it has never been philanthropic in any sense of the word. It demands its pound of flesh, and that is often worth a human life.
The problem is that, if you have too much sugar in your blood (hyperglycemia), you risk falling into coma. If your sugar level is also too low, a terrible coma awaits you. You just can’t understand the malevolence associated with the disease so you have to keep a balance.
TREACHERY
I am writing this piece because of the sundry sinister attempts of treachery, overt and covert, being subtly perpetrated to kill Natural Therapy which claims a cure for diabetes. The claim is completely at variance with the assertion of orthodox practitioners who believe that diabetes can only be managed, but can never be cured.
Basically, diabetes occurs when the pancreas is not producing enough insulin to cope with blood sugar, or is not producing insulin at all. The result is a debilitating disease with several complications that can lead to death.
To combat the disease, one has to be put on diaonil or daily insulin injections supposedly to manage the disease, not to cure it because according to medical gurus, it cannot be cured.
Natural therapists have a different and more progresso-radical view. They say diabetes can be cured and they are proving it every day of the week. Happily, medical doctors who develop diabetes are now coming for natural therapy, albeit under the cover of darkness. Today, there are many living testimonies of a natural therapy cure for the deadly ailment.
I was really sad about a silly attempt to frustrate the efforts of a well-known Texas-trained naturopathic physician who has toned down the orthodox medical chorus that diabetes is not cur-able. Many of his patients who had been on insulin for years before seeing him are off it.
The medical crusade is a veritable one, and the good news is being propagated by those who have seen the light. Dr Kwesi Ofei-Agyemang’s success story is one that needs to be told from the roof-tops. But ask me, how is he being frustrated?
On October 28, 1996, a diabetic patient of Dr Ofei-Agyemang had her sugar level checked. It was 6.1 mmo1/1. After treatment using naturopathic methods, she became well and was asked to check her sugar level again at a laboratory (name withheld) on 6-11- 96. Surprisingly, the lab recorded 13.3 mmol/l; meaning that her situation had worsened by far.
When she brought the report, Dr Ofei-Agyemang was sceptical about it. The patient was supposed to have recovered, or at least was recovering. The level could, therefore, not be 13.3. He rushed to the laboratory to demand an explanation.
When Dr Ofei-Agymang queried the report, the technician said he was sorry and added that he’d investigate the error.
Meanwhile at another laboratory where he sent the patient for another test to cross-check the earlier result, the patient’s sugar level recorded a low 2.9 mmo1/1, a correct reflection of her improved state of health.
The doctor was furious for a very good reason. If he had taken the earlier lab report seriously and continued treatment to further reduce the patient’s sugar level, the patient would have sunk into coma and possibly died.
“This is not the first time this is happening,” Dr Ofei-Agyemang told me in an interview last week Friday. When I send my patients for tests, some lab technicians deliberately don’t return the correct results just because they know the patient is attending a natural therapy clinic.
“I see it as a subtle attempt to kill naturopathy in this country aside other hidden strategies that are being adopted to sabotage it. They are all out to create a wrong impression in the minds of patients that they are going to the wrong place for treatment when in fact they are at the right place.”
Other attempts include doctors warning their patients never to submit themselves to natural therapy whenever the patients suggest they want to try it, knowing well that orthodox medicine isn’t helping them.
Look at something else like this one. After Dr Ofei-Agyemang had cured one patient of a disease and placed him on a diet of fruits and vegetables, the patient’s brother (a doctor) advised him to quit the natural diet regimen and to eat plenty of meat and all that has to do with balanced diet.
So the patient quit the natural diet and ate meat to his fill. Before long boils broke out all over his body. Apparently, the body was rejecting the unnatural diet which had become toxic to the body following the spell of natural dieting.
FAILURE
I have been thinking about this diabetic cure controversy for some time now. I was compelled to ask the natural therapist to explain how naturopathy could possibly tread where orthodox medicine has woefully failed as far as a cure to diabetes was concerned.
He explained that a defective pancreas only needs to be revived through selective manipulation, diet and urine therapy to make it function again. If defects in other organs of the body can be corrected, there should be no medical reason why the pancreas should be an exception, he said.
“What other doctors must know is that once our methods are different, our results will naturally be different,” he said. “What they are supposed to be saying in fact is that ‘according to orthodox medicine, there is no cure for diabetes.’ They should stop saying there is no cure for diabetes because we are curing it. If they doubt it they should come here and see things for themselves.
“Our methods are natural and include colon irrigation, deep tissue massage which is more effective than physiotherapy, diet, some fast and manipulation, and urine therapy. There is no way any disease can survive a combination of these methods.
Cancerous sores and all kinds of chronic ailments have been cured, diabetes inclusive.
“We just rejuvenate the dormant pancreas and it starts producing insulin. Unless the pancreas is cut out through surgery as a result of cancer, we have ways of making it work.”
I spoke to one of his patients, Jamison Ocansey. He was sick of diabetes and has been on herbs of all kinds, insulin and dioanil for more than a year. His sugar level fluctuated between 9 to 17 mmo1/c. After treatment, his sugar level is between 5.0 and 5.9 mmol/c.
“People don’t like this method because of the urine that is included in the method of cure,” he said.”I used to feel the same way but as I’m now cured, I’ve an entirely different opinion. Let me also thank your paper Weekly Spectator. It was an article in it that made me come here, so keep spreading the message.
“I used to be very weak and couldn’t walk. Look, now I am as strong as a bull. I eat well and I’m happy.”
The doctor has cured various types of diseases at his clinic which is 100 metres north of Holy Gardens or Lido, Circle, Accra. What I believe would help us all is that the medical authorities should investigate these cures and come out openly to claim or disclaim them.
Those who are off insulin would also give testimony. That way, natural therapy can become more acceptable and there would be no point in anybody trying to frustrate efforts at entrenching it as the better substitute that has no side effects. It should in fact be the ideal complement to orthodox medicine and not an adversary as people want to portray it.
This article was first publish on Saturday, November 16, 1996
Merari Alomele’s
‘
The problem is that, if you have too much sugar in your blood (hyperglycemia), you risk falling into coma. If your sugar level is also too low, a terrible coma awaits you. You just can’t understand the malevolence associated with the disease so you have to keep a balance.
Features
It is great to be young
If I had the power, I believe I may be tempted to remain a child forever. We used to hear statements it is great to be young when growing up.
I did not really comprehend one anybody would wish to be like me, a small boy and not wish to be an adult like my Dad. Those were the days that the family did not sit around a dining table and your Dad’s meal was set up on a small table at a particular spot in the hall.
When I observed the amount of meat that were given to my Dad and what was given to me, l definitely wanted to grow up quickly to also become an adult. Therefore to hear some adults occasionally declare that it is great to be young, was something I could not understand.
My reasoning was that, adults were enjoying a lot of benefits and so for any adult to even consider the possibility
When I grew up however, I have come to appreciate that saying that indeed, it is great to be young. Growing up as a child, all l looked up to was the next day to come as I go to bed. When I woke up, l had no worries about what I would eat before going to school.
Where the next meal was going to come from was not my concern. All l had to do was to make sure that I go to school, study hard and pass my exams and ensure that I am within the first three, in my class. There was no worrying about school fees, changing of school uniforms or clothes in general, something I cannot run from now as an adult.
I now have to provide for some people now and I can now fully understand my Dad’s comment that it is great to be young.
Christmas time was a very interesting and exciting time as a child because new clothes were provided for me and my siblings. I recall one Christmas period when I was provided with a suit. It was a memorable occasion in my life as it was the first time I wore a suit.
I felt very proud wearing the suit and with my new shoes to match, I felt great walking with my friends as we moved from place to place. When a new academic term begins I always looked forward to having a new school uniform. How much it was going to cost or how it was going to be provided was not my concern at all. It was taken for granted that I will get a new uniform at all cost.
I always had a good night’s sleep with the exception of those days that I was suffering from malaria and I had quite a number of such malaria attacks.
Recently my last born jokingly said “Daddy, do not think that I am not going to take money from you when I grow up oh. Even when I get married and have children, do not think you will be free. I will still collect money from you because you are my father”.
I burst into laughter and said “It is great to be young”. At the moment, her needs are provided by me and until she completes school and starts working, I will continue to provide for her needs. There have been moments that I wish I were a child once again.
I recall an incident involving my little girlie as I affectionately call my last born, when she pushed a piece of chalk into her nostril and we had to take her to the hospital, and wondering how it was going to come out. While her mother and I were worried at the hospital, she did not seem bothered and in that moment I wished I was a child. When the nurses finally got it out, I was so relieved and she was just smiling, obviously not worried as I was. Indeed, it is great to be young.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
By Laud Kissi-Mensah