Cover Girl

Her physical features are artistically accurate. Her skin is flawless, her teeth white, her nails manicured. She wears a daring and unflinching gaze. She will not budge in the storm nor will she squint at the scorching sun. Her posture and composure are intact at all times. Sexy and demure all at once. She exudes confidence, beauty, strength, accomplishment, courage. In her silence no gap is created. Cover Girl is the very epitome of perfection.

I long to be Cover Girl but I know that is only a dream. See, Cover Girl knows no seasons but I do. My seasons are many; seasons of laughter, grief, weakness, struggle, even madness and a few others. They come when the winds change direction. Cover Girl never changes but I am almost assuredly unpredictable. I am strong most of the time but sometimes I cannot be strong; sometimes I just don’t want to be strong. Sometimes I feel that spasm of pain; it makes me cry. When I smile it’s because I am truly content not because the camera is clicking.  

I will never be Cover Girl. I really don’t want to be Cover Girl. The very thought of being perfect is frightening. Yet still I can't help admiring her. 

Courtesy vibesmachine.com

My First Salsa Lesson

I finally made it to my first salsa class. Learning the s-a-a-l-sa had been on my mind for a while now; just couldn’t find the time and space. 

With the aura of enchantment, romance, liberation, enjoyment, exercise, laughter and I sense, a measure of recklessness about it, many looking for an alternative medium for social networking and entertainment in Ghana seem drawn to it in recent years – me included.  I also wanted to make up for my waning desire to keep up with pop dances that I would have mastered in my youth. Having missed classes at my mother’s ballroom dance club when I was younger and there being no Highlife dance class I know of, salsa it had to be. And so it was, last night. 

First unexpected lecture was offered by the security man at the car park even before I got out of my car! He guessed I was there for salsa; he could just sense it. That troubled me a bit. I certainly didn’t want to appear to be out hunting anything. Anyway he proceeded to tell me that he did not like the salsa dance at all. Normally I should have pointed out that that was his friggin business, but he was a nice old man so I let him. “The dance seems to have no boundaries” he said; “dancing couples are all over each other, you know, touching, pressing, holding each other and they don’t stick to one partner!’. Then he asked me to imagine a married woman, say his wife, dancing salsa with another man - his hands all over her. All these questions and statements came with hand gestures and facial expressions of distrust.

Off course I couldn’t imagine his wife and I didn’t know what to say so I said, “really?” He looked at me incredulously and said, “what do you think, when people hold each other around the waist from behind, facing each other, will their chests not meet?” he said this holding his own chest and looking imploringly at me.

I couldn’t tell if he was trying to encourage me to change my mind about salsa but at that point I was both amused and excited about the prospects of salsa dancing, thanks to his eye opener! I shook my head at him and smiled as if to say I understood entirely where he was coming from and told him, it was my first time.  I would like to find out a few things for myself.

But before letting me go, my new-found teacher informed me that salsa nights went on till midnight so if it was my intention to give him something small (that is a tip) I had better do that right away because he wasn’t going to be around after 11pm.  I assured him I wasn’t going to stay that long and left him to watch my car.

I learnt 5 salsa dance moves, twirled around some, danced with more than 5 men in an hour, missed some steps, lost my way a couple of times on the dance floor, marveled at the girl with the big bum and tiny waist float around like in a trance. When the one hour lesson was done, I danced a bit more with the instructor who thought I had a good sense of rhythm and I thought it was relatively easier to follow his lead.  There was some touching, naturally. No pressing and no squeezing, just yet. No one tried to get fresh. The otherwise handsome mixed race guy dumped his daughter for me, complaining that the poor little girl was not taking his lead. Big mistake!

So what can I say? It was new, it was interesting, I didn't stay late but I shall return, I guess.

Foreign Direct Investment and Ghanaian hospitality

Ghana's Seat of Government

Approximately 10 years back

A noisy group all in denim trousers cut to knee length, slippers and fading T-shirts. They entered the restaurant with an air of familiarity, strutted around looking for a table and roughly dragged the chairs to sit when they found a spot. The restaurant owner or manager came out to chit chat for a few minutes and their food was already on the way. I was eating at one of the growing number of spice infested restaurants at the port city nearby so the group seemed not so out of place. They ate their rice quickly with sticks and bare hands and wiped their foreheads and mouths with their arms. I excused them; these looked like seafarers and they would be gone by daybreak, I thought. 

4 years ago

I came upon the intriguing sight of a lone light skinned male with short, shiny but bristly hair, busily setting up shop at 6am as I reached the traffic lights on the main road. Even the koko (local porridge) seller was only just preparing her fire. His small weather beaten white car was parked on the side of the road. Its boot, opened to the traffic displayed his wares - electric irons and kettles. His location showed he knew the city well. The busy Spintex Road runs through a light industrial area littered with estate homes, factories and various enterprises. Many of the growing middle class live along this road. The man moved meticulously and quickly as he dusted the goodies in the car boot. Oriental, I figured as I went past him. Something awful must have happened to him. He won’t be here long, I thought. I drove off and forgot about him till now.

A year ago

I finally accepted that Dumso (the all powerful whose favourite pastime is to switch our electricity on and off at will) was here to stay so I went shopping for a generator. The search for a relatively low capacity, fuel efficient, truly silent original make took me to an enclosed parcel of land about 2 acres big in the city centre; inconspicuous until the rusty metal gates opened to admit a visitor. I drove some 50 metres from the gate to a clearing in the middle of the weedy space where a large metal container and a small house tucked at its side were located. Among the three young men hanging about was my contact.

The container housed some generators so I figured this was a warehouse but I was told it was the showroom of the company, enterprise, or whatever was going on there. “In a month we will have what you want” said the contact. “We stock only genuine KIPOR machines and we are the main distributors of genuine KIPOR generators in this country”, he continued. Just in that moment, 2 Chinese males came out of the adjoining small house. One carried a hot cup of tea. The pair sat down in the porch of the little house, lit cigarettes and began chattering as if to give credence to the contact’s assurances. I think more likely to keep an eye on business.  I couldn’t quite figure out the set-up but I wondered if this alliance was the source of many small generators on sale along the city’s roads. Perhaps a onetime opportunist venture not meant to last, I thought.

Along the way and in between

They constructed roads and built glass edifices with grants from their governments. In the evenings, they sat in neighbourhood pubs and laughed at jokes with the locals - our benefactors. Advertisements on where to find acupuncture services and ginseng products started showing up in the newspapers.

AU Building Under Construction

Soon they were running restaurants from rented houses located in quiet residential areas. The locals wait on patrons and cook; the proprietors stay silent in the inner office or behind the counter. Theirs is to prepare the bill, receive the money and open the door to let you out with a well rehearsed thank you. But the food served in these restaurants taste nothing like those I remember from the Ambassador and Continental hotels in my childhood days. I was a kid then but my friends who travel confirm that food from these restaurants cannot be compared to the real thing. To explain my friends ask me to imagine myself setting up a restaurant that serves one of our native dishes in a far away country. What would my customers know?

Anyway the restaurant business got chocked with locals, Indians, Lebanese, Nigerians, all serving assorted fried rice in addition to their native specialties. That was okay because we made middle income status, we found oil, mining continued and more lucrative openings emerged for those who dared.

Now

They are leaving in droves! Their government has asked our government to send them back home in a humane manner. But why do we have to send them back when they could as well do as they did coming in – by themselves? We are not known to chase the visitor out who came knocking even at the back door. Besides, they have been our friends and benefactors have they not? Their relatives back home say we have turned on them. But why, if that is true have we done that?

A few weeks ago our government deported close to 200 foreigners. It was reported that they were illegal miners, some of whom had turned on our people with guns. Many of our friends were among those that left. Barely a week ago, hundreds of them were being processed at the airport to leave the country. On TV I saw many of them queue to turn themselves in for deportation.

Fascinating turn of events; when did these hundreds arrive and how? If we had known about their arrival would we not have given them a fitting welcome as is our tradition? Or perhaps we did. And why are they leaving so suddenly, in such huge numbers and in such a hurry? We never complained about their presence so why now and why them? Have many other peoples from far and near not lived with us for even longer and our people in other lands?

Maybe it’s not about them. Maybe it’s about something they did. Something even people like us could not contain.

May your Road be Rough!

(I borrowed the words of the title, credited to Tai Solarin a Nigerian educator, simply because I love the ring to it and off course because I read it many many years ago and it stuck) 

A relative of mine, a creative fellow with answers to most of my country’s challenges, came up with his latest idea recently. He thinks “we as a people” – this is one of the favoured lines in national debates - should derive more value from our culture and traditions. As far as he is concerned traffic offences will be a thing of the past if we replaced the police on our roads with barefooted and bare-chested men in raffia skirts, shiny little pot bellies, faces painted with white chalk leaving the eyes and armed with little clay pots filled with water and leaves and tiny bells hanging around their necks. Any time a person run the red lights these people would only sprinkle some white powder in the air after the offender with a wand. Off course this got us all laughing.  This chap is never short of outlandish ideas we said; he is the same person who declared a conviction that the tropical sun did something devious with our brains (the consequences of which reflect in our development) and so if he became president his first and perhaps only policy would be that each person would wear a hat at all times in our country. Still, thinking about the angry driver honking like crazy behind us for not driving through the traffic lights as they turned red, we wished his suggestion could actually work!  

I came across a newspaper report a while back that got me thinking; perhaps my relative’s idea is not so farfetched. The nation’s leading daily reported on Wednesday February 27, 2013, that a pressure group called People with Convention of Principles (POWCOP) had appealed to the judiciary at a press conference to consider introducing the “traditional curse” in the court system “to help find lasting solutions in the adjudication of cases at courts”. The group held that the current situation where persons before the court are made to swear on the Bible or Qur’an gave these persons the opportunity to tell lies and that bribery, corruption, etc were on the increase. Obviously, the bible and Qur’an are not working for them as effective tools for getting the truth out of people and so they advocate the introduction of the “traditional curse” in every sector of government. To drive home their point, they cite the example of the on-going challenge to President Mahama’s election as president and suggest that the curse system would be the simplest in determining the truth.  

It seems that “as a people” no matter our religious beliefs, we so believe in the power of curses and fetish pronouncements. That should not surprise anyone. Depending on the packaging the effects of these things are believed to be instantaneous or long term, spanning generations. They also do not discriminate as to the target; that is if it is meant for the father and for some reason the father misses it, the son, mother, girlfriend or whoever is just as good a target. What other punitive system could be this effective? 

I decided my relative had a point when I stumbled on a 2013 report about striking workers who have refused to return to work because of a curse. They are demanding that the curse be reversed before they return to work. I don’t blame them! Kwakubonsam and his likes are about.