“It is the poverty- Stupid!” That is how Danquah Institute’s Gabby Otchere-Darko captioned a recent publication. It is not the most honourable of things to befall anybody. Poverty affects the way you walk; it gives you a laughable, depressing swagger. It defines your vocabulary, so that every morpheme that forms the meanings of your words is necessarily poor. It is always on your lips, because it is etched on your mind. It is stupid.
Otherwise, why would a talented gospel musician dig deep into the inner recesses of her sad past to serve us a cocktail of very poor tales that would make an award-winning pessimist chuckle, and maybe cry? On a recent Doleres Frimpong Manso show, Cecelia Marfo, the gospel songstress with the authentic baritone male voice, made poverty look too poor when she proclaimed that she was so broke she didn’t wear panties. She would further tell listeners that she stunk because she couldn’t afford to buy soap to bath. She and her kids had to beg for food and clothing. When she ate meat, it was all bones.
That’s news alright, but it may not be newsy. It may fall into the template of your usual rags to riches story, except that in her case, she actually wore rags and stunk like the woman with the blood issue in the Bible. Even the most fastidious media critic would not fault News One for reporting information that had been aired on radio for public consumption. But any careful critic may want to know why Cecilia is reported as saying she still doesn’t wear panties, when clearly the ‘non-panting’ period belongs in her past. If News One wanted to cast the title in the historic present, then they succeeded in making history present indeed. Cecelia may now be wearing sexy Victoria secret lingerie or other expensive Gucci G-strings. On a good day, she may want to try an Amani thong.
Still, it is interesting how an adult Ghanaian would overstep the bounds of womanly modesty, to dish out such an uncomfortable piece of news about events that took place in between her legs and around her bottom. Students in second cycle institutions used to call it ‘antipe’ or ‘free range’, and often those who were fingered were not the respectable gentlemen. There was often no information on antipe girls. Their free range would have been a target for those naughty boys who would pose under the staircase for quick snapshots. Naturally, Ghanaian ladies are careful in divulging such private information to another girl, but Ante Cece found it convenient to put it on radio for our ears.
Cecelia’s may be an unputdownable rags to riches story if it were a book, the kind we associate with Chris Gardner or Og Mandino. But the near graphical and dramatic presentation of her poverty may rob her story of an important moral value. The danger in disembowelling such unprintable details is that while folks are happy to look on the brighter side of the Pursuit of Happyness in Chris Gardner, and relish the successful salesman in Mandino, they may find it difficult to think of Cecelia past her panties. It has happened before. It is not the same as a politician confessing that he used to do drugs.
On the other hand, KSM may win a lot more fans for making public his son’s wee smoking habit and the daughter that he never knew. There is a way to package filth so that it doesn’t look filthy. She didn’t wear panties for nine months. How does it sound?
Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin, Ottawa, Canada
quesquesi@hotmail.co.uk bigfrontiers@ymail.com
