June | 2021 | Diatribe to my tribe

Traffic was insane this weekend! And Accra traffic on a regular day is already no joke.But with Ghana hosting the 59^th Heads of States Meeting, I should not have been surprised. I had not bothered to read what those potbellied, half-senile old farts were meeting about this time. Covid? The Single currency for Ecowas? Mali ? Who cares. Really? How does that help me any of us? Especially since they haven’t even been able to manage their own problems back home.

Accra traffic - courtesy of Accra Traffic Update

Many parts of Accra had come to a complete standstill as promised by the communiqué sent out by the Ghana Police earlier. Motorists were advised to find alternate routes. Thank goodness for Google maps and the meandering bypasses led by trotro drivers whenever there was traffic…. I have learnt a few of these over the years.

I find it terribly sad that our lives are always inconvenienced because of mismanagement, corruption, disorganization, just blatant incompetence and we are left on our own to figure out alternatives. This sums up a lot of our problems as a nation. No electricity? That’s on us to find an alternative solution like generators AKA “I Better Pass My Neighbour”, inverters, rechargeable lamps. Bad roads? Those that can, invest in a 4×4, look for land where there is a decent road and pray a big man moves into the neighbourhood so it’s maintained. No water? Get a borehole, harvest rainwater, pay for water to be delivered weekly etc. The list is endless and tiring! Our politicians don’t seem to care! And we are sadly being run and have always been by a bunch of kleptocrats who are part of a Kakistocracy. I totally understand why people want to marry for papers or give birth to kids at all cost out of this cursed land. A meeting of heads of state from many failed nations in Accra to discuss how to solve regional problems. That’s a hoot! Since they are all doing so well in their fiefdoms.

Let’s forget the half-senile old farts and get back to my weekend, shall we? I have no idea what demon possessed me to go meet friends this Saturday morning, but I did. I was late for the meeting as was pretty much everyone else because we were stuck in traffic and in my case, for a good couple of hours. On my way back home around the palace mall area, a motor rider, whom I had seen in my rearview mirror earlier, drove in between my car and a small van. The space was obviously not big enough for even a bicycle to squeeze through but this smart ass decided to wish his motor bike between my car and the small van. I heard the saddest sound ever as my front bumper was ripped off! The rider looked back, as my mouth opened in horror, confused and still processing the most stupid move I had ever witnessed on the road. The rider just shrugged, weaved through two cars and rode off happy with himself to have escaped invectives and no doubt some hefty slaps, if I’d had my way. I felt so crestfallen not to have been able to unleash the kraken within, on him. I mulled later, on what I could have done differently. As for the rider, from my experience save for the slaps, and possibly confiscating his worn-out Boxer bike, there would still have been no joy when it came to righting the wrong he had done. I parked on the side of the road, adjusted the bumper to try and keep it from dragging on the street as I continued heading home, thinking of the money that I had to suddenly cough up on Monday morning to fix this mess. On the way, I saw motorists narrowly avoiding pedestrians and those accursed riders coming from the left, the right, overtaking from both sides in the full glare of the police. I thought earlier this month of the statements by both the the Minister of Interior and the IGP after the bullion robbery.

“What we should know is that the criminals continue to change the modules and we have to be changing with them and the police is doing all it can. We have not lost control. I always want to emphasise that, we need to go to neighbouring countries to see what is happening there, but we are not in the same league with them.
We want to do better than we are doing now, but believe me, Ghana is safe; that is why all the other countries are running to Ghana.”
The Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery

I’ve already forgotten the details of the IGP’s statement just that it was an equally useless one where he basically compared Ghana to other countries and said the only place that does not have crime is heaven.

Of course, In any right-thinking country both officials would have resigned for such stupid comments but here in Ghana we will find an alternative route, keep them, and manage the problem…. until we go to another country and see or to heaven!

And how was your weekend….mine was sucky through and through!

This weekend promised to be exciting and it was! Thanks to Auntie Coro, I haven’t been out as much as I used to. I have sadly, become hooked to tv shows that are of no value to my hungry life in Accra. Binge watching Lucifer, Hemlock Grove and other mindless series have yet to put food on my table.

I had decided years ago, not to listen to an old man who implored me not to go into farming. According to him, farming was tough and with my day job it would be near impossible to be a successful farmer.

Thanks to this bad combo of Covid and Netflix I have found myriads of excuses not to go to my farm and this Saturday a surprise visit revealed what I feared would happen. My farm was on the brink of collapse. The Moringa crops had still not germinated and the factotum who served as my farm manager’s excuse was lack of rains. He essentially blamed God for our failure.

I patiently waited for the eejit to explain the major and minor rainy seasons to me for the umpteenth time and calmly reminded him that his excuse was 2 months old – I had since ‘borrowed’ an 18 feet water hose from my parent’s place and brought it to the farm. I pointed out where the said water hose was stored plus the overhead water storage tank, I’d had installed. According to him the water hose had been in storage for so long, that it was irreversibly knotted. I then proceeded to spend the next half hour with him and two other farm hands to unknot the labyrinth-like water hose. All the while, I made a mental note to do better. I had been warned that the worst thing I could do was to be an absentee farmer…but hey that’s me. I just love rediscovering the fucking wheel.

I felt so down with the situation on the farm I ended up Netflixing and chilling with some comfort food I bought on my way home to drown my sorrows.

Man, this grownup thing called life sucks, big time!

The next day I had a seventy-year old’s birthday to attend at a small catholic church in Weija. I had not been to church in a while, was fashionably late and had to sit outside.

The money from the Catholic coffers had obviously not reached this church. I was later told by a staunch catholic that these days it was every church for himself. I did enjoy the service tremendously and was really glad about the camaraderie extended to me as a first time worshipper there. As is wont of me, I made an empty promise to donate something to this church when I was one-day rich and famous. I took several pictures with the seventy-year-old birthday girl on my pretentious I-phone 12 Pro Max that had put a dent in my farm budget.

From there it was off to Serenity Beach at Kokrobite for a sumptuous meal. I stuffed myself silly and was positive I had gained 5 kilos by the end of that debauchery. Eating and drinking with friends and family made me happy and depressed at the same time. I thought of life and seventy years. Would I finally have a Moringa Plantation by then? Would I be obese with nothing but broken promises and empty dreams – I drank a few shots of WoodFord reserve (Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey) to drown such sad thoughts.

And for only the third time in my life, I hijacked that bottle of whiskey from the party and went home to continue drowning my sorrows.

I had a call from my farm manager to tell me in an annoyingly happy voice, as if he was the rainmaker, that it was now raining at the farm, and yes he will continue planting the Moringa seeds the very next day. I silently thanked God for rain and drank to the health of my seventy year old aunt plus other good things life had to offer.

Don’t you really hate those weekends where the Universe is obviously sending some deep message but your head is clouded by whiskey and not able to make sense of it? No? Just me then?