1 — Why Don’t You Get a Househelp?
Charlene Aduma stood in Dariah, her younger sister’s, living room with her hands clasped behind her back and her eyes staring at a picture of her and her sister some 20 years ago. The image faded and another one taken around the same time, and probably the same day, came into view. This one was with all their families together at the Movenpick Hotel pool. Charlene moved toward the frame looking to pause the photo before it faded into the next one. …
1 — Tell Me What You See
Nurse Amena wasn’t rough with Mavis, but she was missing the tender touch one would usually associate with a nurse. Mavis had to remind herself that this was Ghana, and one could never assume the expected. She had been posted in the Netherlands for a couple of years prior, so that must’ve contributed to her unrealistic expectation of her country's people. She’d been back a few months now, her program with the Dutch Development Agency, also known as RVO, having ended as expected. …
Dawn in Dzorwulu was always a dazzling affair. The orange hue from the horizon reflected on its many high-rises a transcendent cool of colors. The blushing pink of the Adu-T building for fashion, blue of the towering Stanbic Bank heights, and jade from Green Ventures’ blocks were but a few standouts on the Main Street.
On the street level, pedestrians made their way to their daily business, acting as the fillers in this geometric glass work of art. Every so often a mob of runners would march pass, soldiering through the middle of the road. …
1 — Unmasked
Hand clenching the mask stuffed in his pocket. His eyes staring at the object at hand. The fence, just as high as it had always been. The security cameras, as ever, blankly staring. The structure itself, a triangular prism. Rigid. Compact. Black. Between him and the task, an oasis. Glimmering. Luring him in.
He pushes it to the back of his mind.
The sun glaring. Pebbles of sweat trickling down his tensed face. The heat, unrelenting. The dust, suffocating. Behind him is failure. Behind him are stretches of paved road back to his village. Bare. Grey. Inhuman.
…
In Ghana, there’s a popular saying someone says to a not-so-close friend when you see them in town looking fly and living good. Like “Chale see you, your money come!” The usual response would go something like “oh nah,” and dismiss the earlier claim that in fact “the money hasn’t come,” at all, or if it has, it hasn't come as much as the other guy. Then it’s all laughed off in the brief moment's lightheartedness. This piece isn’t on my issues with small talk content in Ghana, but the hidden meanings of the term “Your money has come.” What…
God, I am bound to you infinitely.
There is a tether that ties heart and soul together. An intangible substance that gives us our meaning. This substance goes beyond what we call bonds. Or what science can proclaim to us. No matter how much we are made to think ourselves not part of you, the more I begin to see how I am. That we are.
This morning I woke to the Sun as I would any other day. There was a warm glass of water on my bedside table and sitting innocently by it was a tiny white tab…
Chapter 1
The waves are a force of change. Eternal. Magical. Ferocious. Instantaneous. As it had been that day. Long ago it seemed to me. I, reliving that memory being played back in my head or databa- whichever one it is, I am not so sure. What I am sure of, was the power of the wave; when it collapsed around me, and twirled me in its wake, and I was little more than a smoothened stone in the short shore of the sea. Sun on top, lazily humming, my body laying in a heap, languid but alive. …
Chapter 1
“See. This thing we de do, we go fit collect all the people dema money, you understand. Then put some money here, some there, for the business inside. You understand. Then when people see that de money work, we go slide am into some hot soup for we to chop. You understand! Goat pepper soup!”
“Aye goat pepper soup! Uncle you be senior plus! Aye, but see-see. If de people no give us all the money how we go do am?”
“Ah! Dat is why there is risk, dat is why we are using Shareefa. She is the…
Chapter 1
Well, he wasn’t HIV positive. Non-reactive, it said. His eyes scanned the page for more. For it to say something that would give him impetus. Charge.
Then giving it further elaboration, the result made him feel quite alright about himself. But was alright good enough? There was a nagging at the edge of his brain that wondered why it didn’t do more than that. If he wasn’t HIV positive, then what was that nagging worry?
He had drawn his blood for testing in the morning and for the rest of day a grey fog formed over his head…
It seems cliché to write about something that really shouldn’t need writing about in an ideal world. But we are living in any thing but. And probably never will. Seeing that everyones’ idea of an ideal world is different. Even among your closest friends the minutest of details can set off a chain of preferences that do enough to create a fundamentally different ‘ideal world.’
At the core of everyone’s preference is set of complex values that are dynamic and always being challenged and/or changed. Values is very much the motivation for this work. That there should be a sensibility…
Ekow Manuar
The stories we tell have a life of their own and they work between the realm of what is real and how we conceive that reality.
