Finally Egunje...

finally i have confirmation that the police are likely to be the same across west africa. well they all accept 'egunje'. i had my first run-in with the law since coming to the host country. i was on the phone and made a wrong turn. a policewoman spotted my mistake and signaled that i should park. she asked if i had seen the signs on the road which would make that turn illegal. i told her i was on the phone and that i didn't know the area very well hence my mistake (mind you this was the truth). she asked for my driver's license and i handed her my international driver's license which further corroborated my story. she got into the car and asked me to keep driving to their station. i was to be booked to appear in court on traffic violation. the look on my face told her i certainly didn't need a criminal record in a foreign land.

at the station she brought out the booking papers then after a while passed me to a male colleague without writing anything. i began explaining afresh my mistake and really i was sorry for breaking the law though not intentional. it was pointed out that ignorance isn't an excuse. well the bottom line is that passing me to a male colleague was a way of helping me out. seems the guys are better at collecting egunje than the women (ie only in the host country because its still fresh in memory how i was 'obtained' by a policewoman back home – another story). anyway, with this new policeman we spent ten minutes discussing about my offense and skirting around the real issues. eventually, he told me if i had anything i could just drop. being no expert at giving egunje especially internationally i had to get some tips from the policeman on how to put the egunje in my international driver's license and pass it on.

bottomline, i parted with some egunje and was allowed to go. now the difference i found was in the approach. all through the 'ordeal' the policeman and woman were very polite. the policeman didn't 'demand' for egunje rather asked 'nicely' almost embarrassingly. he didn't also specify the amount of the egunje which put me in a quagmire because i was forced to err on the side of caution. by home country standards i paid peanuts to get out of that one but then again by host country standards i may have paid too much. i was grateful anyway, better this than, trying to explain to a judge why i had to come all the way from my home country to break their laws. lesson's learnt : always use a taxi when you are going to an area you are not familiar with.

Still no Twi (pronounced Chui)

i don’t know what to say. i haven’t written here in a long long while. well life happened now i’m back for the moment. i can hardly remember a lot that has happened well there’s one shocker that won’t leave my memory almost immediately. after my blast of a christmas holiday i came back to host country and got the shocker. the security light in my front porch was on, there was thorn carton covering my car, my wannabe picket fence was all painted, and the house itself was painted. i saw a note sticking out of the front door and for a moment i feared the worst. an eviction notice! it turned out to be just the water bill. well i have heard nothing but horror stories when it comes to landlord – tenant relationship so my shock was in the fact that my landlord (landlady to be precise) had carried out all the minor repairs and repainting that was promised in passing. my security light in question had gone bad because of the leaky roof and i had more or less given up on it but that detail was taken care of and the house was painted and i couldn’t but think this kind of stuff happened only in my host country.

the landlady (God bless her) considers the house her investment (which it is) and so keeps it in good shape without prompting. i suppose that’s how things are supposed to be. ok so i am going into my third year in my host country, sadly i still don’t speak twi but there doesn’t seem to be much change in the people. still waiting for the oil (black curse) to begin flowing to see if my host will change and become more ‘militant’. my only problem with my host country i would say is their politics. there are things which coming from a country like nigeria , i would consider petty they tend to take seriously. i guess they have fewer problems than we do. the other day a former minister and an incumbent were having diatribe on radio over an issue of thorn carpeting in the residence reallocated to the incumbent which was formerly occupied by the ex-minister. in home country that wouldn’t be a problem at all, the incumbent would quietly ask for renovation allowance which will be equivalent to building three fully furnished four bedroom apartments. if you doubt me consider the renovation of the vice president’s house which gulped some 7 billion naira. probably they were throwing in two helipads and one mini-airport.

still on their politics, there is a constant passing of blame back and forth by the current and previous government. ndc – npp. there’s a lot of complaint that current government is doing nothing (how that is possible beats me, i think their mps need to do industrial attachment in our national house of assembly which passed one bill into law recently after 3 years in existence). anyway, my own non-partisan take is that the current government like a lot of governments which took power during the recession are just unlucky to have taken over during the slump. they’ve had to generally make the best of a bad situation. so the government has turned bad guy because out of necessity they’ve had to raise some tariffs. i now have to pay 50 whopping pessewas (roughly 60 naira) from a mere 5 every time i pass the toll gate. thankfully, they don’t wait for their roads to degrade totally; work is almost complete on the spintex road. i can do my trips into accra for free with the only price i have to pay is patience and fuel (lol). my take on the increases is that there is little to complain about, i mean they get service the tariffs are to ensure that it improves and the government doesn’t buckle under the subsidy.