Features
The ‘wahalla sikaman teenage girls’
THESE days wives are very careful when recruiting house helps who are also called maids or maidservants.
In the past, such recruitment exercise took into consideration that a maid must be beautiful enough to brighten the home and to impress visitors with her charming smile and good shape. In a nutshell, the more beautiful the maid, the higher the status of the family.
Wives soon came to realise that the beautiful servants were causing too many problems for comfort. The beautiful maids with their swinging waists and provocative curves made their husbands restless. Susceptible husbands suffered from romantic jitters and could not sit still.
The men just could not help admiring the darling maids. Some just couldn’t keep their eyes off them and swallowed saliva in yearning.
In probably four out of five cases, husbands could not resist the devil’s temptation. It all happened when the wives travelled to a funeral or a crusade.
The longer the crusade, the better.
Unwilling maids were influenced with money, threat of dismissal or “common raps” and they condescended to allow their masters taste the forbidden fruit.
Some maids, in the process, overthrew their madams and announced their take-over in dawn broadcasts.
Appetite
Wives have become wiser in recent years and now recruit maids they think their husbands wouldn’t have appetite for. But in some cases, they have misfired. When a husband is a typical he-goat and looks like one, he goes after everything that wears a skirt. The shape and beauty do not really matter so long as a skirt is involved.
In any case, a beautiful maid is more likely to cause a domestic upheaval than a plain one, and wives note that point accordingly.
I think with the Children’s Bill, wives can rejoice. They can employ maids below 16 years (the age of consent) so that it would be illegal for their husbands to go sniffing after them. But with the Children’s Bill, there are too many problems inherent.
Today, some girls aged 14 look 17 because of their precocious development as a result of good nutrition or as a product of their peculiar physiological and anatomical make-up. And believe me, some of these young girls inflate their ages deliberately to make themselves marketable in today’s world of sugar daddies and love in exchange for money.
To worsen the problem, some parents do not know the ages of their kids. They just bring forth the laughingly naughty kids and keep no records. “I gave birth to Kwadwo 18 days after the fifth earth tremor hit Sikaman,” a confused father would say.
So Kwadwo or Abena or anybody for that matter can just look into the mirror, study her (or his) face carefully and decide that she must be 16, also because her buttocks resemble that of a 16 year old girl next block.
The law says that girls aged 16 can be courted and taken to bed so long as they consent to it. On the other hand, they cannot get married at 16. So, the law allows a young teenager to have sex and get pregnant at 16 but prevents her from getting married at that age. adzeei!
The law further embarrassed itself by saying that a girl of 16 can marry, after all, so long, as parents of both parties lend their consent to it. So what exactly is this law saying?
That although you are not supposed to get married in effect, parents can influence their 16 year olds to marry even when they are not physically deem it fit? In effect, parents can influence their 16 and emotionally matured for it?
The law must be definitive. If it allows teenagers get pregnant at 16, then the marriage age to have sex should be at 16, meaning that they can legitimately automatically be 16 because ideally, it is only married people who are supposed to get pregnant and bring forth babies.
So if the marriageable age is legally 18, then the age of consent must be 18. Short and simple!! The present law implies that a girl who gets pregnant at 16 has to wait for two years to get married (if her parents do not sanction it). So by 18, the child is two years old with no legitimate father, and the father might have married an older girl and gone off.
Teenage prostitutes
Now, let’s forget about marriageable girls and concentrate on young teenagers who are getting addicted to alcohol. The beer bars allow in girls as young as 14 to sit down and drink anything from raw akpeteshie to large-sized Guinness, otherwise known as “odeeku.”
A girl of 16 can swallow four bottles of Guinness after laying foundation with three tots of gin. And she walks straight and steady. They are the sort of girls who are now fully enshrined in the trade of prostitution.
And you know what? The old prostitutes are not happy with their intrusion. The young teenagers have all the equipment to attract higher bids – “bobby stands”, flexible waist, curves, beauty, style and hip.
So they are taking the bread out of the mouths of the old gang. And the oldies are now using macho to get the youngsters off. In fact, they are beating them and organising men to rape them.
To counteract this, the young girls are heading for mallams to get protection. The battle is joined. Sikaman Palava is investigating.
This article was first published on Saturday August 8, 1998
Public awareness campaigns have successfully cast breast cancer into the global spotlight, typically framed through a uniform lens of pink ribbons, early detection drives and triumphant stories of survival. While these initiatives have driven vital mammography compliance and research funding, they often perpetuate a sanitised narrative. Beneath the polished public messaging lie complex, less-discussed clinical realities and emotional burdens that patients, families and healthcare providers must navigate long after the initial medical milestones have passed.
Moving towards an honest discourse
Acknowledging these untold truths does not diminish the incredible advancements achieved in modern oncology; rather, it humanises the patient experience. Expanding our cultural understanding beyond the simplistic “warrior” trope allows for deeper institutional support, better long-term medical management and genuine empathy for the lifelong journey of survivorship.
When people see breast cancer in movies or awareness campaigns, they usually see a neat story: someone gets diagnosed, goes through treatment, rings a celebration bell and goes right back to normal.
In real life, the journey is much more complicated. Let us break down five “hidden truths” about breast cancer using everyday examples.
Truth 1: The “Post-Treatment Cliff” (Life after treatment)
What it means: Everyone thinks that once medical treatments, such as surgery or chemotherapy, are over, the patient instantly returns to their old self. In reality, that is when a whole new set of challenges begins.
The example: Imagine finishing a gruelling uphill marathon. You cross the finish line, but your legs are still shaking, you are exhausted, and everyone else goes home while you are left trying to recover. Many survivors deal with long-term side effects, such as constant tiredness, numbness in their fingers or swelling, called lymphoedema, for years.
Truth 2: Catching it early is great, but not a magic shield
What it means: Early detection saves lives, but some types of cancer are so aggressive that even a small tumour can behave like a runaway train.
The example: Think of weeds in a garden. If you spot a weed early, you can usually pull it right out. But certain aggressive “weeds” spread seeds everywhere or grow roots so fast that even finding them early does not stop them from trying to pop up somewhere else later.
Truth 3: The long, hard marathon of daily pills
What it means: For many survivors whose cancer is hormone-receptor-positive, treatment does not stop when surgery ends. They may have to take hormone-blocking pills every day for five to ten years.
The example: These daily pills act like security guards keeping the enemy away, but they can also bring troublesome side effects, such as joint stiffness, sudden hot flashes or weakened bones. Because of this, taking the medication can feel like a daily chore that reminds patients of the cancer for a decade.
Truth 4: People we forget about (Men and young adults)
What it means: Public campaigns often focus on older women. Because of this, other groups affected by breast cancer may be caught off guard.
The example: Men can develop breast cancer, too, because they are born with a small amount of breast tissue. However, because some men think it is a “women’s disease”, they may ignore an unusual lump in their chest for months, resulting in a later diagnosis. Young adults under 40 face a different shock, having to worry about fertility, having children and career interruptions right in the middle of building their lives.
Truth 5: The hidden price tag (Financial stress)
What it means: A medical diagnosis brings a heavy second burden: financial strain.
The example: Even with good health insurance, additional costs can pile up quickly, including specialised scans, genetic testing, expensive prescription drugs and taking weeks or months off work to recover. It can feel like dealing with two crises at the same time: trying to heal the body while worrying about bills.
Talking about these harder truths does not mean we should not celebrate survivors. It simply means we need to understand the real, full picture of what people go through.
By Robert Ekow Grimmond-Thompson
SKIP THE QUEUE, TAP THE NEWS
You can now read the Ghanaian Times and The Spectator newspapers from the comfort of your device via TimesNewsPlus.
Join our WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
As soon as a married man becomes infected with the he-goat mentality, he is bound to forget that he has a wife.
It is often a tragedy because he can completely lose focus and generally start misbehaving. He considers his wife a headache, at best a pain in the neck.
The man has got a new girlfriend and is excited. And when he sees his wife, he wonders what she is doing in his home. Maybe she is only a stray dog in need of shelter. And Jesus Christ, won’t she just keep out of the way?
The married man who has gone into extramarital affairs is half the time engaged in mindless fantasy. He is engrossed in devising many ways to please his newfound lover. And if the girl is explosive in bed, the fantasy could spiral into the fourth dimension.
It could be that his wife is basically an “old layer” who can no longer take him to the heavens and back. The girlfriend, however, can take him on a trip into space, meandering through the galaxy of stars, down the Milky Way. It can be an experience of a lifetime.
Normally, after such a trip, the married man will forget that he even has a home and children. He becomes a fugitive.
What he needs is deliverance. So his wife will go to the pastor and tell him that her husband has developed very strange symptoms.
First, the man is behaving practically like a he-goat, sniffing desperately after young women. Secondly, he cannot find his way back home.
The pastor is likely to diagnose the ailment on the spot. He does not need to conduct a blood test to offer a prognosis. “It is the spirit of lust,” the man of God will say. “The Lord is in control.”
Sometimes prayers are effective, and the man heads back home. For very curious reasons, he remembers that he had lost his way. So he returns to his family, wondering what might have been happening to him. So long!
Other times, prayer worsens the case. It is not that the prayers are not being answered. God has only given the lecherous bloke a long rope on his own balls. It is as if the prayers drive him further and further away from the world of reason. For as long as three years, his soul is restless. It is in bondage!
The man forgets that the young girl he has been riding will one day marry and leave him in the cold. That day will surely come.
Now, when a married man is jilted by his girlfriend, he remembers that he has a wife. He had almost forgotten that he went and wedded a woman and called her his wife.
The jilted man will lick his wounds and trace his way back home. His wife would wonder whether he had lost his way. Anyhow, she will welcome him back home.
He becomes the loving husband he once was, and his wife is amazed. What might have happened to her man? Was he struck on the way to Damascus? Or on his way back?
When the man is sober, he will decide to calculate how much he has spent on that useless girl who said she was going to get married to some equally useless cockroach.
He realises that, in the short span of sexual enjoyment and extramarital bliss, he has lost all his lifetime savings, enough to build two-storey buildings.
Last Saturday, some youths who distinguished themselves in various endeavours were awarded at an excellence awards ceremony.
The males should always have it at the back of their minds that chasing women is what brings down both the weak and the strong, the poor and the rich, the lettered and the unlettered.
This article was first published on Saturday, August 26, 2006.
SKIP THE QUEUE, TAP THE NEWS
You can now read the Ghanaian Times and The Spectator newspapers from the comfort of your device via TimesNewsPlus.
Join our WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
