Yaa Amponsaa, the most beautiful woman in Ghana, ever!

It was one of the very first Gramophone records I ever listened to. It was called Yaa Amponsaa.

The version by Sam (almost every Ghanaian guitar band has its own) told the story of a very beautiful woman whom Jacob Sam [Google: Sam/Kwame Asare], the best singer of the 1930s, wanted to bed very badly.

He lamented that he could not approach her because she was a married woman!

This is how Sam serenaded Yaa Amponsaa's beauty:

“Her neck is like that of a pumpkin!” (In Fanti: ne kon tse de adenkum!)

"The hair on her head is like silk strings!” (Ne tsri nwi tse de srekye ahoma!”)

And Sam urged her “to get divorced” so that they could “become lovers!” (Gyae aware, ma yentwe mpena!)

That wasn't much of a proposal from Sam, though, was it? He wasn't offering to marry her after she got divorced, but rather to become her lover. Why did he make her an offer that was patently inferior to the marital status women cherish so much and which she already enjoyed?

I have often wondered why Sam did that, and it has occurred to me that he knew something that not many men are aware of. You see, when a woman divorces her husband because she has entered into a relationship with another man who is not her husband, the guilt and partial regret associated with divorce create a thrill of their own, which makes the new relationship far more thrilling than marriage! Adultery is, in other words, an advertisement for hot passion!

So, Sam was inviting Yaa Amponsa to enter such a relationship with him in order to enjoy such an ecstatic romance as she'd never thought possible.

Anyway, many people are aware of this state of affairs between men and women, and I know a woman who was so enamoured with the idea that she named her beer parlour "Gyaware.”.

I don't know whether she gave that name to her place because she wanted to encourage illicit love affairs to take place there. But I did see quite a few married guys come there with women who were definitely not their wives! So, whether she intended it or not, she was definitely providing a locus for such affairs.

Now, although I describe the woman's establishment as a beer parlour, it was actually only an empty space under a mango tree that stood in front of her house. She’d arranged a few chairs under the shade of the mango tree, and a very select clientele—never more than five or six people—used to gather there on a hot afternoon, drink very cold beer, and exchange gossip. as they sipped their beer.

At one stage, the place assumed great significance in the lives of its customers because the clueless military government that was in power at the time suddenly made it impossible for the breweries to obtain adequate import licenses to bring in the inputs they needed for brewing beer.

The situation gave birth to a phenomenon called kalabule, whereby the salesmen of the breweries, instead of selling beer directly to the breweries' long-standing customers, sold their product to their friends and relatives and the friends and relatives of their friends and relatives. Beer/provisions procurement became, in short, a matter of “connection”!

The secret “donations” made to factory salesmen by this myriad of grateful middlemen enabled some to become very rich, for they could literally dictate the price at which they wanted to sell. Pieces of paper called “chits” signed by salesmen changed hands at lightning speed, and each time a new owner acquired such a "chit," a little markup was added to the normal price of the beer. No one complained: there was an understanding between buyer and seller that these were market prices of the day and that the so-called “controlled price” was a theoretical figure that existed in the mind of some military “commissioners” (as ministers were called).

However, despite the willingness of the buyer and seller to transact business according to the market price of the day, anyone caught selling above the “controlled price” could be brutalised and prosecuted, and his goods could be seized. All of which succeeded in making beer-drinking almost a cult thing.

Of course, all this intrigue was possible because, in the humid heat of Accra, there were times when a thirsty beer addict would pay almost anything to get a beer. The longing for beer merely epitomised a large number of frustrations that dogged most people's lives in those days! There was also a shortage of petrol, soap, toothpaste, milk, sugar, and toilet rolls! Certain men could only tolerate these shortages by downing a pint of chilled beer. And that was the most difficult thing to find!

I can’t describe the lengths to which my friends and I sometimes went in search of beer.

We went to clubs that were not members; I got to know that there were bars in Accra with such quaint names as “Sapporo” and “The Other Place.”

I once suffered the humiliation of sitting for an hour, without any good result, in the living room of a lady classmate of mine whose husband was a major beer distributor. She ignored me like someone she did not know! Every minute I spent at the place brought me self-reproach, for I could have married her, and she knew it!

What made the economic situation more galling for us was that, whereas beer and other things were not being imported in adequate numbers, the soldiers who ruled us were using our scarce foreign exchange to give import licences to their girlfriends to import things like VW Golf cars! The public vented their anger on any woman seen driving a VW Golf. Such women were called Fa-wo-to-begye (“come-for-it-with-your-bottom!”)

We at the “Gyaware” club were not above telling salacious stories to one another about the existing ”whorish” socio-economic system.

“Have you heard the latest? Someone would ask.

"What now”?

“Colonel so-and-so has built a four-bedroom mansion for the beautiful wife of Mr. such-and-such, who used to be a big man in the deposed government!”

“Who told you that?”

"Why do you think the husband has been kept in prison for so long?”

"Have you heard?”

"Heard what?”

“They say the head of state visits a fetish priestess every Thursday! Meanwhile, the priestess has become the largest distributor of cement [or something similar] in the country!”

"Have you heard?”

“Okay then, fire away!”

(GUY LOWERS HIS VOICE) “A 'First Lady' wanted to go to Makola Market one day, but her driver was not around because he had been sent on another errand. She then threw a tantrum, called the Department of State Protocol, and gave them a tongue-lashing.

"Madam, I am sorry, but there is no car available... Oh, please wait a minute … Madam, there is one car left."

"Well, send it? What are you waiting for?”

“It will be on its way, Madam!”

“And do you know what the car was? The state ceremonial Mercedes 600 used to carry visiting heads of state!”

(HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)

“She went to Makola Market with that.”

“Yes, and the market women booed her!”

(HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)