The taxi driver

Taxi drivers are scared when passing near the Accra Sports Stadium. One has told me, he was driving past the stadium at around 10:30pm when he heard someone running football commen­tary through the nose. What! He levelled the gear to third, fourth and then fifth and fired the accelerator. The car dashed forward in full flight.

Then he saw someone in the dis­tance stopping him for ‘dropping.’ The person looked like a soccer fan. Assuming he stopped and the guy turned out to be a ghost, could he control the steer and not end up in the sea?

He took a split-second decision. After all, ghosts did no harm unless you were responsible for turning them into ghosts. He’d stop and see if the gentleman spoke through the nose. He applied the brake and the car screeched to a halt.

“Take me to Labadi,” the man said, “how much?”

The taxi driver was too scared to answer. He did not know whether the man spoke through the nose or through the ears. Before he could say anything, the man open the front door and sat down. He banged the door hard! The driver wondered whether he was dealing with a human being or someone else; something transcendental. A ghost?

In his apprehension, he mistaken­ly put the gear into ‘third’ when it should have been in ‘first.’

He began moving the car. The wrong gear made the car jerk twice and the ignition went off. His first thought was that he’d picked a ghost who had just turned the engine off.

Wahallahi! Kakusunka!

Should he run and leave the car behind or simply scream for help? He did not know which would do under the circum­stance. He shook like leaf, fid­dled with the gear and sparked the car again. It sparked. The gear was at its right place.

He moved enroute to Laba­di, glancing cheerfully at the man next to him on the front seat. When the man got down and paid for the short trip, the driver said he thanked his stars. Actually he nearly defe­cated in his ‘supporter.’

Next time, he’d not pick an­yone around the disaster area. You wouldn’t know whether the passenger is a soccer fan in external glory, or true flesh and blood who eats salt and bread.

When he told me his story the day I chattered his car, I began thinking about ghosts. I haven’t seen any before and I don’t wish to. I don’t think it would be good for my health.

Fact is, I don’t want my blood pressure dangling like a pendulum. I am a simple man with no worries.

I went to a pastor friend and asked him about ghosts. They do not exist, he told me as a matter of fact. Every ghost is an impersonator, or an imposter.

“My friend get serious” I queried. “People say they see their dead friends, lovers, mothers, brothers, and so on.”

“That doesn’t mean there are ghosts,” he said. “The devil is only playing tricks. He impersonates people, using their faces to frighten others, to make them believe there are ghosts on earth, According to the Holy Scriptures, there are nothing like ghosts.”

“When you die,” I asked, “where will your spirit go?”

“To its Maker.”

“What for?”

“And before then, wouldn’t it hov­er on the earth?”

“What for?”

“So the so-called ghosts are in fact evil spirits and not human spirits?”

“That’s right

“Heard of the stadium disaster?”

“Yeah!”

“They say ghosts are displaying there basaa! You hear them at night shouting goa-a-l! ‘Offside! Penalty! and the rest. Aren’t they the spirits of the unlucky fans who died?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Meaning you are not sure.”

“I am sure dead people don’t shout.”

“But their spirits can.”

“Have your heard one shout.”

“No. But if they exorcise the place and there is no more shouting, doesn’t it means the ghosts have left?”

“It only means the evil spirits impersonating the dead people left. There are over one billion demons and principalities in the world .127 of them can easily be mobilised to be shouting at night to frighten people, to make them believe ghosts exists. That is no big deal for Satan.”

I was not quite convinced. Why would the devil want people to be­lieve there are ghosts if they do not exist?

At any rate if the spirits were exorcised with cows, sheep, and fowls then it was not cost effective. The authorities should have hired the charismatic churches to do the job for them. They don’t need cows to chase spirits away.

The other day members of a church were attending a crusade and carried pestles and mortars on their heads to the crusade ground. I was amazed. I thought they were going to pound fufu mid-way during the programme.

When I asked one lady whether the fufu was going to be eaten with groundnut soup or aponkye nkrakra, she said they were going to pound the devil in the mortars and that it was no fufu festival. “The devil will confess today,” she assured me.

Before long, a man also carried a carpenter’s saw and hammer. He was going to saw Jimmy Satan into two halves; no two ways about that. There, he hammer his forehead and him to vamoose.

Before I left a little boy walked past with ten canes.” we are going to cane the devil,” he promptly announced. “He’d take 100 lashes on his bare-buttocks, then he’d learn sense.

Of course, Christianity is becoming more practical than theoretical. The devil must be attacked physically, battered and pounded. But it might be wasted effort. Christians must learn to speak the word and the devil will flee. As for pounding and sawing and caning, you might as well do it as a produc­tive venture.

Sikama Palava takes this opportunity to express its deep-felt sympathy to the bereaved families of the stadium disaster. Not entirely belated, I hope!

This article was first published on Saturday, June 23, 2001