Christmas at Kwadwokurom (1)

“YAW, what is it like to get drunk?” I asked Yaw Charles.

He was about ten years older than me. But more important, he had worked for five years or more as a “taxi-mate” in Accra. So I considered him to be a very “experienced” person who could tutor me about the important things in life. Like girls. Or drink. What I really wanted to ask him about was how to get as girl, and if you got one, how you went about “doing it”.

In our circles, everyone talked about “doing it” with a girl, but no-one ever specified what “doing it” was like. I would get Yaw to stop being shy and tell me, but I would start with the “drink” issue, which wasn’t quite so laden with notions of secrecy.

In deciding to ask him about getting drunk, I was taking a risk, for I’d never seen him drunk. For no reason at all, other than hero-worship, I was sure he would know what getting drunk was like.

For a 12-year-old like me, the world of drink was full of mystery. You saw people sitting at a palm-wine bar drinking all day. They would tell stories and laugh and laugh and laugh. But as time wore on, their arguments sometimes become heated and they would shout at each other.

Nevertheless, no matter how acrimonious their encounter might be, they would always come back the next day and drink and laugh. What is the drink made them behave with such careless unconcern about the contradictory manner in which they conducted themselves?

Yaw Charles pondered on my question. Then he said, “Small”

[for “Small Boy”, his pet name for me]

“Small – as for drink, no-one can tell you what it does until you have taken it yourself. I could say you would be made happier than you were before you drank a calabash of palm wine. But not everyone stops at one calabash of palm wine. Some go on and on and on until they like the stuff so much that it turns them into a nuisance to everyone else.

“Even a tiny amount of drink drives some people morose. They would remember that they had lost their mother, or father, or wife, or good friend. Some may even cry.

“But the worst effect of drink is to make people quarrelsome. For instance, I know a chap who will drink palm wine, get drunk and stagger home, and then tell his wife that the food she had taken trouble to prepare for him was “not delicious enough!”

“Not sweet enough, eh?” the wife would ask scornfully. “And how much money did you give me to cook the meal with, eh?”

“I gave you one shilling [the equivalent of maybe one Cedi in today’s money!], and if my mother were alive, she would be able to make me a better soup with it!”

“Your mother, eh? Do you know how much money your father gave to your mother to make you that soup that was so “delicious”?

Yaw Charles paused at this and his face took on a cunning look. He continued, “This question from the woman would be a trap, but the man wouldn’t know. So he would boast that as for his father, he had so much money he that ‘he could give my mother enough money to make a soup that four other women combined could not have made!’”

“The the woman would look at the man scornfully and say, “So you think the measly one shilling you gave me….”

“At this stage, the man would most probably beat up his wife for being insolent and making him remember the deaths of his mother and father; or for being an ungrateful witch who not only didn’t allow him to earn enough money to buy the things he wanted, like a new cloth!

“If the man touched his wife, she would immediately pack her pots and pans [known as nkuku-ne-nkaka in imitation of the sound they made during the packing process] and go back to her family home. However, on the very next day, the man, after the drink had worn off, would go and beg the woman’s father and mother to intercede on his behalf to come back to his house! “It was the drink!” he would bashfully confess”.

This wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted Yaw Charles to say at all! I wanted him to say that taking a drink was an adventurous thing – almost like going to Accra to watch films in which you could hear the film stars talk! I wanted to hear, as well as see Roy Rogers, Buster Crabbe, Bob Steele and Tarzan at the “talking cinemas” in Accra, such as Cinema Palace and Opera.

For in those days, the only cinema we saw was brought in our town in a smoky, rickety truck by a fellow called Ataa Joe. We did laugh heartily at the Charlie Chaplin “short” comedies his machine showed, but we longed to be able to see the “talking films” we had heard so much about from the lucky people who had experienced the fruits of advanced technology. Such as talking films!

(TO BE CONTINUED)