Useless Column: 'Should a wife write a WILL?'

Problem no dey finish o. You want to go to school. You finish. You want a good job. You get it. You want a spouse; you get one or more when you are luckily unlucky. You want a child(ren); you have them. You want an iphone; you get it and then, you feel like watching TV and leave your phone on the table somewhere. You come back and cannot find the phone.

You ask your spouse: ‘have you seen my phone?’ and she or he asks back: ‘where did you leave it?’. If you knew where you left it, would you even ask her or him about the whereabouts of the phone? Don’t worry’ it is an African thing.

You ask the kids of the whereabouts of your expensive phone and they don’t even have an idea what you are talking about as they are looking at your face like ‘pong-piiing’ – not bothered. You give up and go to sleep…worried. You have a nightmare just because of your yet-to-be-found iphone.

You wake up in the morning and decide to have heavy breakfast. You heat your ‘yesterday’ groundnut soup to eat some banku with. You fetch the soup and feel a weight heavier than that of the goat meat you expect. It turned out that the meat was your iphone soaked in the soup. The kids apparently kept it overnight for you safely in the soup for it to be charged well well. Matter close! Problem no dey finish. You can’t do your kids foko!

Have you ever slept and dreamt that a lion is chasing you? That is normal! But when you dream that you were the one chasing a lion, that is day-mare, not nightmare! When you ever had a dream like this, please check the last time you washed your pillow case or dried your pillow in the sun. (100% chances are that the dirty pillow case is the cause of your ‘day-mare’ which also has a high propensity to give you unrepentant flu and catarrh. How can you chase a lion? Only dirty smelly pillows can give you such dreams. I just discovered this last Wednesday.

When green plantain ripens, its name changes. I have two male dogs in my house: Shagi and Risky. These dogs were very calm when they were puppies but have become very wild now that they are old. They are able to pave their way through the house gate and go out to chase ‘girls’, I mean female dogs. They don’t even use protection o. In fact, I fear they may get HIV soon; those dogs. They like different different ‘girls’!

Nowadays their ‘girls’ come to my house to have fun with them. Strange! Instead of my dogs going out to look out for ‘girls’, the ‘girls’ now come to my house to chase my dogs apparently because they too don’t care about family planning. Very soon my neighbours would start demanding dowries from my dogs and I would be the one to pay.

Recently I noticed that anytime the owners of these dogs are passing in front of my gate, my dogs would be backing in a very funny tone to scare them off. This keeps happening till last Saturday when a neighbor came to me to complain that she thinks one of my dogs has impregnated her dog.

I’m not surprised but how would I know if it is my dogs that are responsible for such pregnancy, I quizzed. She was like, her female dog always comes to sleep in my compound and return at dawn hence her prime suspects being one of my dogs especially Risky, maybe both. In fact, her problem is that her food is not sufficient to take care of additional dogs.

‘Weytin concern dog with family planning?’, I asked her sarcastically though followed it quickly with an apology. She didn’t get that angry but only laughed and went her somewhere. Me too I left while telling her that as for my dogs, let her dog born first and when we go for DNA test, then we can establish the paternity that indeed my dogs are responsible.

The name of her dog is ‘Tiger’. Like I have said before, I wonder why one would choose to name a dog ‘Tiger’ if he or she could actually get the real tiger if that is what they really want.

That is the reason I named my new dogs Shagi and Risky and now see what they are doing to me. It’s sad some irresponsible human beings are like that and borning by heart without taking care of the fruits of their waists. If you are a man, be going round and be borning by heart!

As I am typing this, a message just appeared on my phone from Mr Agyemang, my neighbour and it reads: ‘Mawuli, please warn your dogs o, yoo’! The amazing thing about my dogs is that anytime they see me on the phone on the verandah and I am smiling, you would see them also smiling too. Could it be a case that they are learning from their master? Truth be told, have you ever seen a dog smiling if not a cartoon?

Why do some people always want to please society han? I have a friend who was so desperate to get married but with bad character like mine. Anytime it got close to exchanging the rings, something would happen – the woman would either back out or there would be a discovery of an unpleasant something including sneezing without covering his nose.

He once suggested his liking for the wedding ring. He was compelled to do the unthinkable – to wear the wedding ring like that. After all nobody would know he is not married. What matters is that society would recognize the fact that he is married and that comes with some unnecessary respect. No be so? I still wonder who he is deceiving, perhaps himself.

So they say there is something called WILL. Honestly to date, I am yet to see how it looks like. When my father was about to die, he needed to write a will. He did his best to list them and my brother, Abraham started writing them out in an exercise book:

‘Two olonka of millet in the barn are for you, the watchman’s abolo bag is also yours. Putu, the potato farm that hasn’t seen rain since last June is what is yours, Korshi and to you my stubborn son, Mawuli, the bicycle at Torski’s repair shop shall be yours forever. This is my will”. My irons that I have been using to do my laundry stuff, should be the family legacy for any member of the family who wants to take laundry as a business’

My old boy did this to us la aah! Fortunately he didn’t die. He lived to have his will back to sender (himself)!

Whereas his friend, Azalekor had mansions, businesses and cars for his children, these were the things that oluman left behind. The day he was actually about to die for good, nobody was interested in what he would say until my Sister Dovi got interested in just having his last words of wisdom and perhaps some treasure hidden somewhere; who knows. There could be surprises.

Indeed there was a surprise. She had the last will of my late Papa – “I have a jumper sewn with ‘teliga’ material in my ward robe; give it to Korjo, your eldest son”. Jumper as a will? This old man paaa, but for the fact that he gave education er, hmmm! Anyway, his position was that we should go and fight over degrees, not houses.

At the time of his death, he was left with only one tooth as toothache would not allow his teeth department to stay and function. Anytime meat formed a major part of his dinner, we rejoiced because the oldman was handicapped! At least boys would chew meat leftovers. That formed part of his will.

Up till now, I have still not made a will and I am sure many guys don’t have one. I heard it is important because you may think your siblings love your wife and your children once you are still alive! Pretend to be dead small and see. But why does society think that men must be the first to die?

So the important question is: should a wife write a will?’ Me, I don’t know o!