Cattle Crossing

Beware of using the road in Tamale

Elsewhere you look left, look right

And left again, then cross briskly

Not here, not in Tamale.

Here you look left look right

Look back look front look sideways

And begin all over again

You do it once you do it ten times

You’re still no nearer to finding space

No one stops here no one pauses

For another to use the road

Not even if you were a centenarian

On three legs or a toddler at the crèche

 

The motorbikes are the real menace

Right way wrong way

Walkways sideways

Way behind you way across you 

Way in front way all round you

Like butterflies in a flowering field

All other road users are in their way

Pedestrians are but sheep

Walking mindlessly across the way

Motorbikes cannot stop for sheep

Even to use a zebra crossing

When the cars stop for the sheep

The motorbikes will run you over

Asking if you were a zebra

And double curse you

In heathen tongues!

 

Everyone is in our way

Even the scanty traffic lights

Though the children daily sing:

Red means stop.

Amber means get ready,

Green means go go go!

Yet it is only a nursery song

Sung by mindless toddlers

All riders in Tamale know that

Green means go

Amber means go faster

Red means go fastest!

Nothing can stop us

Even the makeshift speed bumps

Fail miserably 

Only when we hear a loud:

C-r-a-s-h!

And blood runs on the dusty road

Do we pause to ask who did wrong?

And quick fingers flick on or off trafficators

To try and prove our innocence

 

We could do with more police officers

On and off the road

But they are mysteriously absent

In a city of a million beings

And we hear them only when

They manage to do something silly enough

To get all the bad publicity there is!

It is a nightmare on our roads in Tamale

And a double nightmare to use the zebra crossing

Only the cattle force us to stop 

Whilst they stroll across, like Di Asa dancers

Not minding our blaring horns

I love the cattle crossing in Tamale.

 

Tamale 

28/01/2023