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Too much of everything
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I was curious when I read in a foreign magazine that great writers are normally smokers. I kept thinking whether that was true of Sikaman writers, because I know quite a good number of brilliant writers in this country who are not locomotives. But I may be wrong. Probably they puff when I am not looking, or only when they are writing. When they stop writing they cease to be smokers.
According to the article in the magazine, the cigarette ‘helps them to think’. It is not because their minds are stimulated by the nicotine, but the fact that just holding the stick between the lips, puffing smoke, exhaling through the nostrils and tapping away the ash just keep them forming ideas
Before long, they would be seen scribbling away as sticks of cigarette get burnt into ashes. And society judges them the best writers. That’s quite interesting, isn’t it? And one writer actually confessed that he couldn’t have been a successful novelist without cigarettes.
Well, that’s the world. What is generally harmful to people is said to be beneficial to others after all. It is just like booze and sex. Alcohol destroys the liver, can damage brain cells, induce hypertension and cause social problems.
But alcohol is such that when a total ban is placed on its production and sale in Sikaman, there is likely to be a coup d’etat within a week. Who doesn’t drink, anyway?
Civil servants imbibe alcohol to cure their financial malaria. A husband will take it if he wants to go and insult his mother-in-law for interfering in his marriage.
People charge their brains with alcohol when they are going to collect debts from stubborn debtors. Students take it when they are going to collect their results slips.
Go to the pastors, catechists and reverends and ask them to confess their alcoholic improprieties. Some of them will be sincere and justify their alcoholic dispositions by quoting direct from the Holy Bible.
Timothy was advised to take a little alcohol for the sake of his stomach. But ‘little’ can always be subjective, and that is the loophole that is normally exploited by resident clergymen.
In any case, they can always give the excuse that they have ‘kooko’ and that a famous herbalist had made some concoction for them.
They’ll tell you that it is unfortunate the herbs can only work in alcohol, and that they can’t help doing with it.
When the evening meal is fufu, the holy-man must increase the dosage for an obvious reason – appetite.
But alcohol is most helpful in some spiritual and charismatic churches, when the Holy Ghost can almost be seen moving among the congregation. During such an occasion, the sermon must be extra-lively and the ‘preacherman’ must ‘charge’ to loosen his tongue, to improve the sweetness and quality of the sermon.
“Begone Satan! Begone! “He’d cry out, probably mistaking Satan for the Holy Spirit. He’d taken a bit too much of the stuff and when that happens, you can be sure of an ecclesiastical disaster.
The theme of the sermon will completely be ignored and the drunken pastor, now extra-lively, will start preaching on how to fight the thief who wants to relieve you of your salary. Too much of everything is bad, is the saying.
SIDE DRUM
Take food for instance. Well-cooked, finely spiced food is always delectable to the human palate. But when you take in an overdose and your stomach becomes like a good side-drum and distended, then you are likely to have a nightmare. You’ll start dreaming about cows chasing you here and there and you’ll jump out of sleep to avoid a cow’s leg crashing into your face.
But too soon, you’ll relapse into sleep and start a new dream; seeing yourself falling into a bottomless pit. You’ll scream and someone sleeping in the same room with you will wake you up.
“What’s happening to you?” he’d ask.
“Oh nothing. Just a dream”.
Anyhow, sooner or later, the real symptoms of over-feeding will start showing. You’ll start passing wind indiscriminately and your room mate will start requesting for oxygen lest he suffocates.
“Did you eat too much last night?”
“Yes, the banku was superb, so I took double-dose”.
“I see!”
Yes, your room mate has truly seen. Henceforth, he’ll start timing you. When he sees that you’ve over-eaten, he’d try to avoid the room and sleep on the veranda. He cannot afford to die young.
Coming back to cigarettes, it is generally acceptable that smoking cigarettes is harmful to health, and the Surgeon General has always confirmed it on cigarette packs. Quite paradoxically, doctors are the most inveterate smokers.
In Sikaman, smoking is a habit to some people, but because of poverty they can’t afford to become chain-smokers.
They can afford at most six sticks a day and that is quite moderate. So in effect poverty is saving them from cancer of the lungs.
The prevalence of lung cancer in the developed countries is due to the fact that chain-smoking is a normal phenomenon.
The more you smoke, the more vulnerable you become to disease. MODERATION is, therefore, the solution because habits cannot easily be done away with altogether.
How dare you tell Kofi Owuo, alias Death By Poverty, that he should go to toilet to off-load without taking along cigarettes.
He once told me, “Although I’ve vowed to be poor all my life, I won’t stop smoking. Jot keeps me going. When I get my favourite brand of cigarette and I don’t even get food, I’m okay”.
Yes, Kofi Owuo, a former classmate of mine, took the Oath Of Poverty several years back. But he can always afford his ‘jot’ because without it, he wouldn’t live long. “If I don’t smoke one day, you’ll see me at the mortuary”, he told me.
Perhaps, it is only when there is a total ban on the cultivation of tobacco, its production and distribution that the world will really know that it cannot do without some vices like smoking.
There will be an immediate uproar. Millions of people in tobacco farming, processing and distribution will lose their jobs. Addicts will go haywire and start a riot. Soldiers will take up arms against incumbent governments
The old men who are addicted to snuff (asra), alias rural cocaine, will embark upon a countrywide demonstration.
The snuff keeps them going. When they take it and sneeze hard, they feel good. They may develop cancer of the nose, but that’s nobody’s business. It is the business of their own noses.
I’ve known people who will vomit if they don’t smoke after eating. Some take cigarettes to release tension and others smoke to keep them happy. So which is which? To stop or not to stop!
THE typical itinerant salesman in Sikaman is a herbalist. He is normally a slim macho with the capacity to perambulate the expanse of area covering the triangle of Accra-Tema-Ashiaman. In short, he can walk a total of 60 miles a day, marketing a product that cures every disease, including poverty.
The door-to-door herbal pharmacist advertises his product by word of mouth. He has nothing to do with the Food and Drugs Board (FDB). After all, his concoctions do not feature on FM stations.
Those herbalists who cannot walk to propagate the herbal gospel, liaise with drivers of mass transportation and their mates. They are, therefore, given the chance to sell their products on Benz buses that ply the routes.
Normally, the herbalist starts his sales message with a prayer and Bible study. He asks the passengers to bow down their heads in supplication to God the father, the son, the Holy Spirit.
When a herbalist asks the passengers to close their eyes and bow their heads, Moslems on board naturally feel offended. They feel that the herbalist has no right to assume that every passenger is a Christian. They think such an assumption is an affront to Islam.
So a Moslem on board will raise the hand for a point of order. He’ll remind the herbalist that it would be in his own interest to mind his language.
“Be careful the way you address people in a public place. Not every person here is a Christian,” he’d state assertively.
Of course, the herbalist will promptly ignore him, but would all the same “watch” his tongue. Who knows whether or not the Moslem brother is inspired by Quoranic zeal to defend the tenets of Islam to the hilt?
When he starts saying, “Wallahi!” and “Inshallah!” it could be the beginning of proclaiming Islam as supreme, a point which must be driven home with talibanic precision.
So the herbalist must tread carefully lest he steps on fire.
The herbalist could even add a measure of mirth to it all, by announcing that Christians on board today have very interesting company on the journey, but that should not detract from the business of the day.
The Moslem brother will weigh the words carefully and offer a wry smile.
He must be careful the occasion does not degenerate into the use of semantics and proverbial oration to deride his conviction that public utterances must be mindful of religious sensibilities. He has made his point very clear and expects that it is taken in good faith in the interest of a peaceful journey.
The herbalist will now open the New Testament and preach salvation, stating clearly that salvation can come only through Jesus Christ and NOBODY else.
The Moslem brother will now start twitching his moustache. The visible and almost revolutionary reflexes of his upper lip can be an indication that sentiments have begun superseding reason, and the outcome could well be tragic now shift uneasily in his seat.
The time has come for him to also express his right to the religion of his fore-bears. He’ll put his hand into his pocket and rise to his feet. The time has indeed come!
This article was first published on Saturday, September 9, 2006
When the cause of a particular problem like sickness, disease, sudden illness, a social issue etc. are not known, it stands to reason that resolving it becomes a huge challenge.
Citizens would understand the government when public announcements are made to the effect that government is trying to find a solution to the issue, even though it is taking a while for it to be resolved because citizens are rational beings.
On the other hand, if the solution to a particular issue is known to everybody but the government for whatever reason, is dragging its feet in resolving it, citizens become frustrated and begin to lose trust in their leaders.
One such issue is the heavy traffic along a section of the Kasoa – Odokor road. A short stretch of bad road between the traffic light at the Weija Government Hospital and the entrance to the entrance of the overhead that leads to the N1, is the cause of the problem but nothing is being done about it, day after day, week after week, month after month. Thus is clearly unacceptable.
Another issue that requires urgent attention is the lack of pavements along a lot of streets in parts of the various Municipal Assemblies. Exercise is a prerequisite for long life and healthy living and for those of us who it has become a way of life, this issue of people putting up structures right to the edge of the drains beside the roads, are making life difficult for us.
We are compelled to walk along the roads, putting our lives at serious risk. Pedestrians should never be compelled to compete with vehicles on our streets and roads. Roads and streets are made for vehicles and pavements are made for pedestrians. That is the norm. Any attempt to normalise a situation where pedestrians are mingling with vehicles is insanity.
It is the road regulations that makes it so and therefore district or municipal assemblies are to take responsibility and ensure that spaces for pavements are not encroached upon. Citizens have rights that must be protected by their leaders and making pavements available to pedestrians, is one of them.
When we hear of teachers having sex with students, it appears it is something recent. It is not a new phenomenon. It has been there since Adam. Perhaps this issue is getting much attention due to the proliferation of social media. It was an open secret in times past when Teachers were in relationships with female students and some married them immediately after completion of school.
Some teachers were also known to be having unholy interactions with female pupils but due to the times that these acts occurred, human rights issues and the awareness around it, allowed such unscrupulous teachers to get away with their crimes.
Now we are in a different era and so a Headmaster is now in hot waters. He is alleged to have raped about 19 female students and as usual, some officials tried to cover it up and are also in hot waters and their actions or inactions in the matter are under investigation.
Why the man has been allowed to roam freely without being arrested is simply mind boggling. It appears that the law applies differently, depending on who you are. This issue came to public attention sometime in August this year, yet the police had not arrested or invited this man for question regarding the rape allegation.
It has come out that he is a Constituency Secretary of the ruling party and the question in the public domain is that, is it because he is a political figure that is why he is still walking around without questioning? I believe in the rule of law so let us hold our breadth and let the proper thing be done.
The police must however be seen to be active in this matter. God bless.
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