The saga of the dancing kiosk

IN every society, there are people who please themselves and do things their own way, whether people will talk about them or not. Check out the man who, by some good fortune, came by some money to purchase a beautiful Benz bus. Instead of becoming a bossy transport owner to whom daily accounts will be rendered, he decides otherwise.

He hires a driver but no driver’s mate. He becomes the mate himself and the bold inscription on the back of the bus is ‘MAN NO FOOL’. Of course, he does not rank himself a fool. He has long observed the way drivers collaborate with mates to play Kwaku Ananse tricks with daily accounts. He is far and above such tricks.

What about the married man who decides to enforce the principles of division of labour? Early one morning, he decreed that he would start doing the daily market shopping all by himself because he suspected that his wife was “tearing chobo”

This domestic tyrant had, a month before this unilateral family decree, arrogated to himself the power of the kitchen ladle. According to him, he was not feeling the chop-money’s worth in his stomach and, therefore, decided to overthrow his wife and establish a new kitchen regime.

He declared himself the chief cook and the wife a steward. He told his enquiring friends that he was forced to take the stringent measure because whenever his wife fetched the soup, his share looked like that of a prisoner although he is the one who “moves the chopmoney”.

He calls his actions “domestic pragmatism” and when the wife completes the cooking, she arranges the plates and bowls and calls out to the chop-money man to come and fetch the soup and allocate the meat.

Also, consider the noble ways of a man and wife who have a kiosk in which they sell their wares. Because they cannot carry their goods home back and forth everyday, and taking care not to be burgled, they decide to sleep in the kiosk every night although they have a house.

Last week Tuesday, they were fast asleep when the rains started. Deep in slumber, each one of them began dreaming he (or she) was dancing in a jamboree. It was indeed a real boogey, but two people side by side and dreaming simultaneously about dancing was too mysterious on a rainy day to be true.

When they came around and opened their eyes they realised that is was not a disco night, after all. The kiosk in which they were sleeping was rather water-borne and was doing the Michael Jackson dance, tossing up and down enroute to the abode of death. The magnificent dream dance turned out to be a Music-For-Your Dancing Kiosk.

Unfortunately, the dream dancers did not die in the floods. They lived to tell their story. They were one of the fortunate ones who escaped death by the skin of their teeth. Others were not so fortunate with water.

Death and Mourning!

It turned out that on that Tuesday, 24 residents of Accra were sentenced to death by water squad. It was a pitiful experience for many when the rains, the heaviest in 59 years, destroyed property, drowned human beings and animals and precipitated the worst traffic jam that ever hit the capital.

I was at home when Radio GAR (no longer GBC FM) announced that the situation was quite precarious and that the flood action was happening live Circle, the Odaw River overflowing, blah, blah, blah! Well, when you live in a planned city like Tema, you see rain but not floods and boogeying kiosks.

Neck Insurance

I had gotten dressed up for work but the announcement made me take off everything and got firmly tucked in bed as the rain drizzled even at about 9:30 a.m. having fallen from 11:00 p.m. the previous day with such intensity that I was surprised Tema was not inundated.

When I got to Circle the next day and saw the extent of damage, I was overawed. I heard people had to transform into human transport, carrying people in waist-deep water across for a fee of ₵500. Luckily I wasn’t around to be carried. I would have been charged ₵1,500 because the carrier would have had to first, insure his poor neck against dislocation since my weight is quite helluva! In any event of injury he would have tossed me into the water, anyway, to save his neck. You joke with your neck and you’ll die young!

When I got to the office on Wednesday, it was a mess. Workers and labourers were carting out soaked material and drying the offices. I had left my office radio on the carpet floor and I guess it did a bit of swimming before it was rescued. When it got dried a bit, I tried it and it cackled to life.

Jesus Christ, the radio must be holy-ghost filled. Perhaps, it walked on the water. I was so glad and tuned in to BBC, hoping something would be said about the floods in Sikaman. Nothing! Only Bosnian Serbs and their atrocities and that kind of boring stuff. People killing themselves and never stopping,

And it came to pass that Mr Nat Nunoo-Amarteifio, the AMA boss, came on the air later on to undertake a post-mortem of the disaster. Among other things, he talked about the level of the sea and lagoon rising to meet the floods. As for that explanation I was not convinced at all, but I won’t comment

You see, one veteran journalist whom I respect so much because of his prophetic genius, is TOM DORKENOO. He is, a man from whom I often take counsel because of his experience in life and journal-ism. Whatever he predicts comes to pass and recently I suggested that he should establish a church so that he could prophesy both day and night.

Uncle Tom as he is fondly known, wrote an article in his column two years ago, enumerating in graphic detail, reasons why Accra is a disaster area as far as floods are concerned, concluding that if the authorities do not take radical steps in tackling the drainage issue and allied problems, we must expect deaths and disaster in all forms and ramifications.

A year later, people died in the floods. The dose was repeated this year with 24 people losing their lives. Many have lost their animals and property and have been thrown into debts they can never redeem.

It is not enough for Nunoo-Amarteifio to come on the air to talk about actions he wants to take concerning the drainage system and unauthorised buildings. He should get down to work and see to it that everything that is contributing to the yearly floods is tackled appropriately.

If he is in doubt, he should look for back copies of the ‘Weekly Spectator’ and scan for Uncle Tom’s article. Tom is a man of the environment. He has talked extensively on floods and earthquakes.

Yes EARTHQUAKES! How prepared are we?

This article was first published on Saturday, July 15, 1995