Opinions of Saturday, 28 October 2023

Columnist: Mawuli Zogbenu

'Cobra meat'

Mawuli Zogbenu is the author Mawuli Zogbenu is the author

What is the use of jeans trousers if it is not torn or dirty before one wears it? It is the reason we must take life easy. All the people took life too seriously didn’t change the world; they developed medical complications. Don’t be like them, be like me. Hahahahahaha! Friday has come again and Christmas is greeting us small small.

Ei, they say breast cancer is still a big health problem for our women and some men too o! Did I hear that about 2,900 cases are recorded annually? Early detection is the solution to managing and controlling it o, our women especially. Please allow us the men to be checking for you every morning.

Even if you don’t have a partner who can check, some of us are available and can be of help. Women are dying from the disease and men, let’s be of help, for free though but please let us not make it result in population explosion.

The population keeps increasing and my suspicion is that some men are ‘borning’ by heart anywhere they find themselves. Some of these men, I was told, are some long distance travellers driving across the country from border to border. They should be careful the ‘footprints’ they keep leaving behind anytime they make stopovers and sleep over in towns where some of the women become so vulnerable.

Even if they should leave ‘footprints behind’, they should be able to tell the women whose bellies they leave the ‘footprints’ in their full names for easy future identification. Many of these ‘victims’ don’t know the names of some of these drivers and end up giving car numbers and inscriptions on their car windscreens as names to the children they have with them. It is common to have names of children such as ‘Adom wor wim’, ‘GQ 1745***, ‘Jah Bless’, ‘Let Them Say’, ‘Yesu Mogya’, etc. I met ‘Jah Bless’, a young innocent girl recently. She is a very beautiful girl but does not know her father.

According to her, her mother who used to sell fried yam by the road side was impregnated by a driver who stopped over and spent the night there but never saw the man again. Her mum apparently only remembered the inscription at the back of the driver’s car: ‘Jah Bless’ and that’s the name given to her since she was born. ‘Car Tyres’ was another small boy I spoke with in one of these popular haulage towns.

He is a truck pusher. It was during my interaction with him that I got to know that he didn’t know his father whose ‘long vehicle’, he had the inscription ‘Car Tyres’ on. As for those whose names are car numbers, plennnntttyyyy! Many of our vulnerable women are struggling to survive and we are taking advantage of them, planting things in them and leaving these children for them to take care of all by themselves and yet we expect our own homes to be happy? Abeg, Karma is there o, yoo.

These rains in October are becoming a serious climate change matter; when you are buying a used car around this time please be careful about how cheap the price may be as chances may be that some of these vehicles might have been submerged in flood waters jamming everything in it o even though it may be looking nice. You should be careful when the price is incredibly low.

You remember that flood in October, 2011 in Accra and how too many people had their brand new second cars submerged in the waters? It is really difficult to get a car back to normal after it had been submerged in flood waters though every part might look intact! I sold one car be like that to somebody in 2011 after the floods and laughed laughed and laughed aaa especially when the person thought the car was in such a good mood and very cheap too.

Only me knew what was in my head. Hmmm! Onipa y3 bad! He drove off excited and claimed ‘the heart (engine) of the car is alive’. He came back asking for refund; e lie bad. We nearly met in court.

One of the things my wife hates most which I like most is when she sees sachet water half used and put back in the fridge. It is even more disgusting at the workplace especially when you can’t trust the mouth that used it – whether smelly or just ok.

But if it is the lips that tore the pure water are the lips of that dream girl in your office whom you cannot propose to bcos you are Mr P.O.P, you’d feel like drinking that half sachet of water bcos, you have a feeling the lips she used in drinking the water is at your disposal now so you can drink that water with ‘feeling’! No be so, hahaaaaa!

Don’t worry; the week is somehow ‘mixed’ up with some kind of expected curfew but we survived it. The way I struggled to get koko and koko sef to drink last holiday er.

Tomorrow is Saturday and let me advise you that when driving, behave yourself. Don’t drive as if you are the first person in the world to drive a car. What is that? Ah! Did you know that in 1909, there were less than 100,000 cars in England and that 10 years later, i.e. in 1919 it increased to 330,000 and in 1929, we had 2,130,000 cars? Interestingly the first country to have made third party motor insurance compulsory is Norway in 1912 because of reckless driving leading to the death of innocent lives? Abeg, make sure you insure your car before getting out of home.

Even my alatsa car which I use as a taxi in my hometown popularly known in the area as ‘Agbozome Wuber’ has comprehensive insurance! Life can be hell without insurance o, yoo! Me i tell you. I wonder how some of these alatsa cars in the villages survive. Surprisingly, they can’t move an inch in the cities! They are so rickety but can carry all the loads in the world and still get to their destination...they still pass the road worthy test la! Hmmm!

Greetings to all my taxi driver friends at Asesewa market and Nunguaa Buade-Tema station route.

Does this thing happen to you once in a while? You are given a bottle of beer that is so chilled to the point of freezing; instead of you asking that it should be left to defrost a bit, you rather say: ‘oh let it cool down small’ when you actually mean the coldness should be reduced small? Cool again for where? No wonder my niece, Adzowavi will say ‘I am coming when she is actually going!

Have the best of the weekend and remember, the best time to do somebody a favour is when it is very very inconvenient for you to do so. That is what brings the real blessings. You remember the story of is it Elijah or Elisha and that woman and the child? Me I don’t remember. To receive more blessings this weekend, send someone mobile money of GHC200 if all you have on you is GHC220! God will bless you.

As we enter this weekend, beware of anybody who keeps saying: ‘As for me I don’t have anything against you’. They will ‘finish’ you before you know they actually do have a lot against you. They are cobra meat! They need to say so as a decoy for you to believe that they are very nice people. Be there! Suro nipa o, ayoo. God keep us all till we meet next weekend so we can swim inside swimming pool!