Wealth cannot be sexually-transmitted.

I have taken my time to dissect the sad incident involving the 20year-old level-300 UPS student and her taxi-driver boyfriend; and I consider it very much unfortunate.

This sad episode has happened, largely due to the intent that we Africans, particularly Ghanaians, often go into ordinary relationship with. I'm saying "ORDINARY" relationship because what I see around these days cannot be classified as "PRE-MARITAL" relationships, but rather profit-seeking Enterprises.

African culture

It has become the norm for people to go into relationships with the sole intent of reaping financial/material results. Relationships have now become thriving enterprises and this is where those who end up as losers, after investing so much, actually end up committing heinous murders.

For example, if you are young man and you happen to hop into and taxi or ‘trotro’ and luck happens to elude you on the day and you find, let’s say, three or more other passengers who happen to be female friends,then,automatically,your planned estimate budget for transport fare will,instantainously,be increased by 300% or more. Personally, I have never boarded a public transport with a female acquaintance, and she has paid for my fare. The reverse has always been the case.

English culture

On the contrary, the very first white Brit I dated during my years in England, thought me a lesson. On our very first date, we went to a restaurant in a taxi, and when we arrived, she went into her purse, brought out some cash and handed it to me so I would top it up to pay the taxi fare but I refused to accept it because I found it extremely strange.

After eating at the restaurant and the bill was brought to us, she again went into her purse and brought out cash covering 50% of the cost and I only had to top it up. But again, I refused to allow her to make a contribution to the payment.

On our way back home, she was to be dropped off at her parents’ house before I was taken home. And when the taxi arrived at their door and she was just about to step out of the car, she dropped 50% of the charge in my breast-pocket. Again, I found that behavior extremely strange so I took out the money and threw it back to her while the taxi was in motion.

Just 5minutes after arriving home, I had a call from the girl's mother inviting me for a dinner the next day. I found it very strange because the woman wasn't that excited about the fact that her young beautiful daughter had fallen head-over-heels with a young energetic man of colour [African].

I showed up for the dinner, and while at the table with all their family members present, the woman said to me "Justice, first of all, I know what you do for a living; I know you don't deal in drugs and for that reason, I don't expect you to bear all the cost when you go out with Sonia [her daughter].Secondly, this is England, and this is not how we live".

Apparently, her daughter had told her all about my refusal to let her [Sonia], pay part of the expenses we made during our first date. So I told her that, as an African, our cultural norm dictates that the man pays for such expenses when he takes a lady on a date,but,they saw my sense of reasoning extremely incomprehensible and reiterated the fact that "well, this is England and that is not how we live".

What is prostitution?

Now, some our ladies might be tempted to come up with the question: “why won’t we make demands on the men, when all they also care about in a relationship, these days, is just the sex which is completely devoid of care and affection”? And the answer to such a question is very simple: Prostitution is defined as “EXCHANGING SEX FOR FINANCIAL OR MATERIAL GAIN”; and I pray our ladies don’t even dare posing such a question in the first place,because,that will be exposing them,inadvertently,to public ridicule.

The real purpose of sex

Simply put, a relationship which has absolutely no intent of ending up in a union between a male and a female in a matrimony, under absolutely no circumstance, should it be transmogrified into a profit-making enterprise where anyone feeling cheated would be driven to the point of absolute insanity of committing murder.

Ordinary relationship between two consenting adults must be firmly rooted, only, in pleasant companionship, with absolutely no absurd commitments, and that,sex must always be treated as a sacred means of pro-creation, and not a source of ordinary 'KAKA-PIEW-PIEW' [instantly reckless] pleasure trips.

Justice Abeeku Newton-Offei

E-mail: justnoff@yahoo.com