Mawuli Zogbenu
Did you know that the crab does not bite or sting or pincer with its claws? I don’t even know the exact English word used to describe how the crab grabs your finger and mia it o. But I was told it is not the intention of the crab to mia your hand o but it is only giving you a handshake! If you don’t mind, you can go to the market and ask to buy a crab that can give you a handshake; the big one some.
Please before I write anything at all today, everybody tell me where I can get a 14-inch black and white TV to buy even though I know you are not reading this. One…two…three! Let’s go er! I mean the one you need to strike at the back to get the signals clear even if you lived at Kanda. I am getting ecstatically emotional now and in fact frustrated.
I searched for this TV to buy to keep in my living room for sheggey reasons but it is nowhere to be found. Gone were the days when in total desperation, we only settled for the sounds if you were lucky. After all, the visuals were less important than the audios. Sofo Dazi, Obla, Shocase in Ga. Ei you remember Mr Mensah and Nuumo Morborbi?
What about Chili and ‘Rainbow Speaking’ featuring in showcase in Ayigbe? Or Ghanaman, David ‘Don’t Talk’ in Thursday theatre? Didn’t we love these guys, bwoy! The programme most hated by most of the youth at the time and the local folks was…so you didn’t know it is ‘Torking Point’? I am surprised Talking Point is one of my favorites today since I have grown beard and have some plenty mouths to feed at home and side Chics to pray for in different locations behind ‘locku-door’!
We were not really interested but prayed for Torking Point to end quickly so we could watch what? Oblaaaa…aaaa….Oblaaaa. Oblaaaaa eni woara ooo! Awwwwwww! Great great days they were!
I am feeling nostalgic now and I feel like going to say hello to the Director at the top of GBCC and Gana Television. GBBC laid a very solid foundation for the media landscape, I opine. This is what I think oo, not what you think. Which one is your problem? GBC 3f3m GBC 3f33mmmmmmmmmmm! You remember? Before the birth of Radio Gana and all the other names some of which include Obonu3…eegb333! If you have never watched a telenovela dabbed in Ga-Dangbe on Obonu TV, then you are missing out. ‘Oy3 samina lo’, asks ‘Tsatey Lorenzo of Mexico’. Then Atsw3 Orlando of Syria responds: ‘Okeey menor?’. Obonu33, this place has become laloooooo! Hahahahaha!
Watching TV those days, I used to also use the opportunity to also do some ‘extra curricular activities’ like peeping through the wretched windows to see my Uncle Ganyaglo and his wife in the act. It became my hobby. Even if there was no serious TV programme, I had my own programme – go and watch my Uncle and his wife enjoying! The day I was caught er, beating be what! That day koraa, it was my fault. I was giving them fans as they were ‘fighting on the bed’.
Uncle turn, Auntie laugh and cry at the same time’! Oooo ‘marriage will be sweet paa’, I told myself. That was when I told myself that when I grow up, I would marry a waakye seller because my Uncle’s wife was a waakye seller and I used to watch her ‘moving to the right in the name of Jesus…and my Uncle will move to left in the name of the Lord!
So growing up after school, I bought a gas cylinder. That’s a big advancement from kropot to gas. That night, I couldn’t sleep. You know that feeling that goes with buying a new item.
I used to insult people like that (‘article’) and sometimes rattled my grammar at the way we believed the Obroni spoke it…’Asuri suri kontonmire’. If you haven’t spoken this kind of English before, then you attended a montesorri! This kontonmire slangs was purely for cyto guys like us where we used to sing: ‘ a lion, a lion; a lion has a tail (and then we would hold the head). It has a big head (and then we hold the waist) and a very big head and guess what we held….nothing!
I was so excited by the gas cylinder that very late at night that every single minute I would go and take a look at it. It was a single room with a small window. The ventilation was not good enough but how for do!
I had a beloved who would spend the night with me. She was happy I was that ambitious. If buying a gas cylinder was an ambition, no wonder I am still where I am! God is good!
So on Valentines Day, she came again to spend the night. In the middle of the night, I would light the gas cylinder small, take an admiration of how the flame lit and put it off again. I continued doing this. Not knowing, I was suffocating my girlfriend who would have loved to catch a good sleep on a Val’s night. The room was very hot, I suwear. Why not! A village man and the way he fancies things. Ayigbeman has bought a gas cylinder and cooker.
The next item I bought was my dream gadget – a TV set. Forget about its ‘vegetation’. You expect that I tell you it’s black and white, the one with the brand called ‘Pressident’. You remember? Sometimes because we wanted to do ‘afforestation’, we would put a blue polythene in front of the screen! Ei, Ewuradi, yea y3 bida oo! It was easy to get a coloured tv just with a blue polythene, the one with which you used to cover your ‘stuffing chairs’.
Seriously is there anything like ‘stuffing chair’? Please find out and let me know. As for me, I don’t know anything, everybody knows! Because it is new, I would switch it on in clockwise fashion, made sure I watched every programme till I hear ‘shhhhhhhhh’. The sound that greets the end of transmission at the end of everyday!
But you know, even today, when you buy something new that you really cherish (perhaps apart from your spouse), small time, you would take a look at it! I bought a brand new car and for the first four days, I would go and hide in it and put the AC on and be playing music while the engine ran and the car remained motionless! Wasting of fuel! The things we can admire! After a while, I got fed up and that was it.
I have just insulted Samuel Tindanbil in my head o. Hahahaha One of the best human beings I have ever come across. Very selfless and extremely knowledgeable. He is the only one who sees the positives of things. When one hundred people advised me against allowing my mother-in-law to come and live with us and take care of the children, Sammy was the only one who told me about the positives and trust me, I took his advice and I am the happiest son-in-law as far as my relationship with my mother-in-law is concerned. She gives no problem.
She takes care of the kids and disciplines them when they misbehave. When she is around, it gives me the opportunity to go to town and roam aaaaaaaa because I know she, together with my wife are a guarantee for the safety of my children. Anytime she travels for say a funeral, I become helpless as changing baby diapers becomes like a thesis on a PhD programme on Atomic Energy.
Tell Sammy something negative about someone and he tells you, ‘and so what? Human beings including you yourself have your own negatives too’. As for that my friend from Tongo near Bolga, his type is uncommon.
Let one million people tell me to take a decision to the ‘left’, once he comes in to say ‘No, go to the right’, I take his and it has always worked for me. He hardly looks at the logics of things when dealing with human beings because he believes by so doing, you would clash because we humans are complex beings and using logics to manage us can be some way. Do you have a friend like that? Be that friend wae!
Sammy eeeey, I don’t know why I am talking about you today like that. Happy birthday to you though I know it is in October when they born you for Osramani in Kete-Krachi!
After writing this abstract, I want to sleep and if you have a problem with that, go on your knees and pray to God to help you wear your mask ooooooo, Bobie! I am going to sleep anyway! Hahaaaaaa!
Happy Valentines weekend!
