Village boy Impressions

I am but a pin in this strangling place; A manic world drowning in sensual excess. Yonder lies only shameless opulence, And here, shameful squalor and discontent Where cats eat mice and cheese  And the mice must eat other mice. Each day I jostle with the thousands  In the sweltering noon sun at Nima With hands and breast,  I must heave and cleave, The foundation of new mansions at Ashongman Must push and pull truck and cart Through Kantamanto and Mallam Atta And nudge my way through the  madding crowds At Ashaiman and Agbogbloshie  Till I hear the clink of copper in my pocket  Or see the precious red paper at hand To buy only stale bread and pure water, Pay one macho man to ease myself, And another one to wash, And the rest to an indolent landlord  at Sodom and Gomorrah Whose only estate is the half-rotten kiosk Where at the coming of darkness With my legs as heavy as lead, My muscles sickly with fatigue And all my joints disjointed, I suffocate with eight brothers fro

The traffic on the main road was moving slowly amid the shouting of drivers' mates calling out different destinations. Dzorwulu! Pigfarm! Pigfarm! Dzorwulu! By those coming from Kwame Nkrumah Circle and Serk! Serk! Serk! By those returning from the aforementioned place. Driver mates always have their head and hand outside the window of the door beside which they perch and are constantly calling out the names of the destination of their cars. As our trotro snake eases its way along the narrow New Town – Circle road, I focused on listening to the destinations being shouted by the drivers' mates going to and from Circle. In less than 200 metres, we were at a section of the road adjacent to the Mallam Attah market. Getting through that section of the road was not an easy affair. The noise was deafening. It was a continuous hubbub of running engines, frustrated drivers shouting, horns tooting, mates calling passengers, music blaring from giant speakers, and hundreds of peopl

Accra! kra! kra! kra! kra! Screamed several youthful voices in discordant harmony. Repeating it over and over and over till you hear it in the sound of the radio, the crying of infants, the tread of footsteps, the whining of school children and the chime of your waking dreams! The whole street is engulfed in one rousing cry of Accra! Kra! Kra Kra! Kra! Like fireworks going off. Without a word, I climbed into the trotro in which four passengers were already seated and settled down to wait. The mate, standing in front of the car and leaning against it continued to announce the destination of his trotro – Accra! The ‘loading’ of passengers is usually much faster in the morning but as the day wears on, the numbers get thinner and the trotro takes longer to fill up. It was a quarter past ten in the morning and so I did not expect to wait long. I took my seat at the very back of the car by the window. This is the least favourite seat of most passengers. Besides a few of us, most pe

I wander through every mucky street,  Near where the choked Odaw cannot flow.  And mark in every face I meet,  Marks of weariness, marks of sorrow In the very sweat of every chap,  In every driver's cry for way,  In every voice: in every shack,  The decay of a nation holds sway. Have you read:  The Hustler in the City? How the street-sleepers cry,  Every trader's stall in choking spaces,  And the shirtless truck pushers' sigh,  Ring of the sleaze in high places.  But worse, in the perilous nights I see  How the youthful harlots and hustlers sleep  As the cargo of cursed slave-ships at sea  And chars with shame the conscience deep You may also like:  The Kayayei's Tale