Months ago, I met a certain man who was impressed by an article I published. He showed interest in my writing passion. With his background in business management, he offered to guide and assist my book project, because he was excited about the plan. (Self-publishing a book is more of a business than an art of writing, by the way).
First, I needed to register a publishing company – the genesis of all these adventures. He was willing to facilitate that for me, without me going through the bureaucracies and the hustle. I handed him a registration fee of 100 cedis, even though the Registrar General Department charges less.
Since January 2016, I have been waiting for him, or my certificate or my cash, but it appears one or all of them need some more time. I will spare you the details of how much efforts I have put into retrieving the money or reaching the gentleman.
Just as is expected of anyone with a grievance to seek redress in court, I won’t hesitate to drag this swindler into a witness box. But he wouldn’t answer my calls, he wouldn’t make himself available if I need to serve him a summons. And since he has unfriended me on Facebook too, I will just talk to the wind, and his conscience.
For the purpose of this exercise, we will refer to him as EKAJ or Kwame, interchangeably.
Let’s do this quick, Bra Kwame…
Jesus Christ, who has brought you this far, in whose name you practise Christianity and morality came to earth; carried the sins of you and me, suffered more than the kind of distress you pulled me through, saved the world from destruction, defeated Hell, and proverbially built a temple – all these he achieved in only three days. The man even did all these in one weekend. But it has taken you more than three months to either produce a registration certificate or refund 10 slips of ordinary 10 Ghana cedis.
But we won’t pin this on Christ. The man has got enough nails in him. This one is on you!
Have you ever tightened a guitar string really, really slowly past the point it can handle the strain? It makes this weird sound like a scream, which is very much uncomfortable to the ear. I am literally screaming now.
So I found a place to deal with this matter. It’s a big chamber up there in your head! And God made you yourself – you Kwame; the judge in this court. That’s your conscience! It’s that thing that kicks in when there’s no logical reason to behave the way people want you to.
This is where I arraign you – you get to play it like a home match, plus you are the referee too. But now that I don’t trust your good judgment, we could do some renovation of your sense of right and wrong, shall we?
For a person of your calibre to have engaged in an arm-twisting tactics like this, I am finding it difficult to put your name and ‘integrity’ in one sentence, unless it’s for purpose of satire or sarcasm. I ask you what 2 plus 1 is and you spent the whole day telling me it’s not 35? Are you kidding me?
Away from that metaphor, the greatest harm you caused was the lesson you taught me in more than 5 months instead of merely passing me a note with the inscription, ‘Trust No Man’. Seriously, you could have said it instead of acting it. That would have saved you and me the call credits and the lorry fares. Honestly, you can be boring sometimes, especially on this one.
So as not to sound too ungrateful, we could take a moment to forget about the vices and focus on your virtues. You are impregnated with wonderful ideas, a lot of which I have tapped. I surely wasn’t going to mar an opportunity of learning a great deal of knowledge from a person of your capacity.
So it was worth the risk. But, sorry to burst your bubble: you certainly weren’t going to fulfil all the numerous promises. They were too good to be true, especially when you kept leaving behind trails of suspicion every now and then. As for Registrar’s office, I was frequently making my checks only to confirm you hadn’t made a single appearance in their congested hall.
You think I’m trying to moralise this issue? Yes, exactly what I am doing.
Seriously, if this was an attempt to slow me down or slug me from doing what I wanted, you should be disappointed because I did whatever I intended anyway. By divine grace, I have been able to complete this registration and my organisation is making good strides already. How did it ever occur to you I will be sitting waiting for donkey years? Sir, you really thought I was sitting aloof waiting for you build all those castles in the air?
Any idea where I can get a big, ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner? Actually, that’s just a euphemism for ‘Shame on you! You lost!’. Damn! I rather lost. You actually have my 100 cedis. My bad!
But that really is the problem with mistrust – we get it from those we trust. It’s like how we catch sexually transmitted diseases from the people we get intimate with. We can’t help it, we can’t stop loving or making love.
People do not know that a lot of painkillers we take to kill pain rather cause rebound headaches. It is not only strange but also interesting to have aches as a side effect of painkillers. People like you only make this physiology so clear that we don’t even know what to take when the next headache strikes.
Mr. EKAJ, I thought you are supposed to be sustaining business ideas and not suppressing them. Everybody blames government officials for being hopelessly corrupt and making our lives sour but nobody knows that you, EKAJ are a part of the problem. See how a small amount of money has caused you so much humiliation.
You treat my dreams with contempt without expecting a God of justice to advocate? You should remember there’s a place called tomorrow, where all that we shall be doing is either beating our chest in pride or bowing in shame. Well, if we have made some good progress and your conscience is already slapping you, you may want to bow in shame now, instead of waiting for tomorrow.
Anyway, I take this opportunity to invite you to my book launch on June 4.
Author: Patrick Fynn (www.patrickfynn.com)
Twitter: @PatrickFynn
