RAMADAN 'AMADAN 'To all my muslim peeps...and non-muslims...

RAMADAN ‘AMADAN’
Alhassan loved the God but hated the Priest. He dreaded the Ramadan fast, but loved the feast. So when the Ramadan fast was outdoored amidst blissful Arabic singing, resounding dondos, biting masquerades and an engine-roaring motorbike carnival, Alhassan swore by the buta to fatten his slender frame by sparing neither the thinnest steak nor a drop of koko. No one would have to know.

The fast started, escorted by its usual loathsome spitting, long faces as well as sac-clothes and ashes had they been available. Alhassan’s mother had cited the large drum of koko near the detached kitchen opposite the toilet, and had instructed that the koko be drunk only at dawn before five. Good idea! Just beside the large drum of koko were fat chunks of grilled mutton and beef. Better! Nobody understood why this year’s Ramadan had Alhassan grinning bizarrely, until…
Alhassan always led the pack to the mosque. He would wake up early, adorn himself in his most colorful boubou and sip slightly on just a tiny cup of Lipton, without bread. When asked why, he would say in adorable piety: “Food for the soul, not the stomach”.

His mother was overwhelmed by such transformation. However, Alhassan’s father, Alhaji Abdul Rahaman glared suspiciously at his son with knitted brows. After all, he was the product of his loins. Alhaji had fallen off his bicycle three days prior to the Ramadan fast and sprained his ankle. Where he fell no soul knew, but all that the neighborhood saw was a limping Alhaji with legs strapped in bandage, pushing his new 18 speed index shifting Next Powerclimber towards his home.

The beautiful local drug store dealer, called Rose, put him on antibiotics, and advised him not to fast during this Ramadan, and Alhaji banged his head against the wall for that. He had wanted to fast, to ask Allah for solutions to the strange plague befalling his livestock and pray for increase. His wife consoled him dearly, particularly at night. So Alhaji finally agreed to abstain from fasting.

Alhassan did well for the first three days, visiting the mosque religiously and sticking to his Lipton tea. Then disaster greeted him one afternoon. While kneeling to pray, Alhassan unconsciously let out a loud fart which temporarily disrupted the prayers. He quickly grabbed his cap, darted from the mosque, with a hand holding his robe lest it swept the floor, and the other gripping his buttocks tightly.

“I think he is running…” his mother tried to explain his son’s unruly act.
But Alhassan burst into peals of laughter when he got to his home. He headed straight towards the kitchen, careful not to wake his sick father up. But a few yards to the shack where the koko and meat waited patiently to be eaten, Alhassan thought he heard some cutlery clink. He froze, waiting for the worse to happen. Either his father was in scooping some food, or some nosy chicken had found its way in there. He hoped it was the latter. After a few seconds, neither chicken nor man came out, so Alhassan blamed it on the wind. He crept into the kitchen. In fact, he could not explain his flatulence, but did he even care? He let out a loud fart, which was as smelly as it sounded. Alhassan laughed at his own folly. When he could not stand the stench of his fart anymore, he grabbed the fire-fan and bellowed the stench away, fanning the air vigorously. Alhassan had barely finished fanning when the rattling sound from his anus sounded again. This time the stench was worse. But he cared less. He drank and chewed to his fill, wiped his mouth clean and headed for the mosque.

En route to the mosque Alhassan noticed he had left his cap in the kitchen. Damn! He had to get it. As he swayed with his tummy full back to the house again, picking little chunks of meat from his teeth with a broomstick, Alhassan thought he heard the noise again. Guess it is the wind again, he thought.

He crept into the kitchen, grabbed his cap and let out the most deadly fart ever. The stench surpassed the Korle Lagoon’s. Then, suddenly, as though by lightening, the local drug store dealer, Rose, emerged from behind the large drum of koko, naked, angry, with her breasts cupped in her hands.

“What kwraaa is this. Small boy, look at the smell in your stomach. I have been suffering here for the past twenty minutes. Alhaji, next time get a hotel!” She grabbed her clothes and barged out of the compound.

Alhassan was mummified. His father emerged from underneath the kitchen table, wearing nothing but a face of discomfiture. He wanted to ask where the bandage around his father’s leg was, but he turned away shyly, for the nude shanks of a king is not a sight for children.
Till date, Alhassan has kept sealed lips over this issue. But he and his father have a nick name their mother would probably never understand. His father thought him a fool for masterfully escaping the fast and letting out such stinking gas, and he thought his father stupid for….Ah well!

“Amadan…amadan”, they would howl at each other across the compound. However, since it happened in the month of Ramadan, they prefixed it.
“So you made the cutlery clink, not some chicken or the wind,” Alhassan would tease.
* Amadan= Ga epithet for fool

By N.M.Thompson

Tears of the Wind

She yelled out of a terrible dream when the clock struck 4. “ooh, its morning already. I have to get the girls ready for school.”

She hurriedly finished her chores, woke her husband up and had a warm bath. It was time to play mummy once again.
“Wake up girls, it is time for school and we don’t want to be late”. Little Naa was carried in her sleep while Ayikai took her mom’s hands and they were marched straight to the bathroom.

“Mummy my toothbrush,” Naa yelled “Mummy my sponge,” Ayikai joined in the exasperating chorus . In about 20mins, the kids were ready for school but they had to go take breakfast while she got ready for work.

She was ready to leave . “Alright girls, let’s get going”. She waited for minute but heard nothing. She moved to the dining and realised the girls had neither a taken a sip nor a slice.

“Naa, Ayikai, won’t you eat your food,” she asked. Naa, the youngest of the girls ran to her and hugged her. She looked really sad, “mummy, I don’t want to go to school today. Please don’t make me go.”
Ayikai also joined in the hug and said: “It’s ok Naa, go eat your food and I’ll take care of you when we get to school ok.” They both sat with their sad faces and ate their food.

She was running late for work. Daddy was already in his car but the Taxi driver who sends the girls to school had not arrived yet.
Just when she brought out her phone to call him, she heard the sound of a car pull into the house. “Madam, I make sorry waa for my lateness,” he said. “My car dey worry me sorry, Fa ts3 mi, ense bio.”
As the taxi started moving out of the compound, Naa and Ayikai waved their parents goodbye.

She got to work late, organised a Press Conference for her boss and before the conference was over, the day had ended. It was 4pm and she had to pick her kids from school. She called up the Taxi driver and asked him to go pick up her kids from school.

She got home at 7pm and her kids were nowhere to be found. “Where are the girls”, she asked her husband through rattling teeth.

“I went to the school and I was told you had asked someone to come pick them up with a taxi so I assumed they were with you at work,” he replied.

The taxi was supposed to bring them home, she yelled as she angrily brought out her phone. After four times of calling, the Taxi driver finally answered, Madam my car spoil oo , I dey come. Your pikkins dey fine, then he ended the call. Nothing annoyed her more than his perverted version of the pigeon language.

She tried to call the line again and this time a strange voice picked the call, hello maame make you stop dey call, you no go see the pikkins again
, the strange voice said but before the call ended, she heard her daughter screaming and crying.
Oh my God, she shouted as she fell to the floor.

“Daddy, our kids have been kidnapped”.

Her husband quickly picked up his phone and called the police. My two daughters have been abducted, he told the police. Few minutes later, the parents where at the police station to put down their statement. The Police inspector then deployed dispatch units to go search for the girls.

Suddenly, Goose pimples rained all over her body, she remembered the terrible dream she had that morning.
In the dream, she was playing with her kids on a road which appeared to be covered with snow when a strong wind blew and carried the two girls away. But as she yelled for help, the girls kept smiling and waving goodbye. That was when she woke up.

She fell to her knees and broke down in tears. “I’ve lost my babies, they are gone, I feel it in my soul. They are gone,” she wailed.

“It wasn't you,” she told her husband, “it was all me, it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have allowed them to go with the Taxi driver. Please forgive me.”

Her husband hugged her tight and as the tears rolled down his cheeks, he murmured, it was never your fault, I will never blame you. God gives and He takes away. I need you to be strong for me.

A couple of days later, the Taxi was found with body parts in the boot. The police together with her husband identified the part and confirmed that the body parts were that of the kids.

The driver was apprehended by the police at his hideout in no man’s land. He is to appear before a court on the counts of abduction and first degree murder.

What happens to this murderer is up to God and the court.

What happens to the family –the mother and father- is another story .


By Nii Ogbamey Tetteh (@ogbameytetteh on twitter)

MANIAC DEPRESSION- A POEM...OR MOVEMENT...OR WHATEVER YOU CALL IT

MANIAC DEPRESSION

Sexed curtains humping

Clock pointers banging

Ceiling fan chirping

My heart drumming;

My shadow a ghastly ghoul

Glass clinks, tips over; a dreaded drool

I go naked, my bells dangling

Between my thighs, its shriek deafening

Its weights vein-splitting

Its sight blinding

Hell and I in stern combat

I fry in my own fat

In just one bitter taste

Love turns to hate

My socket squeezing my eyes

My lips cold ice

My kiss one of death

Gone in one last breath

My world swirls, my bliss abridge

I cut, blood gushes, I fall and relish

My bumpy life; a lumpy porridge.


Michael Thompson
PS_ This piece is by no means a panacea for maniac depression. Just seeks to creatively personify certain into haunting concepts, a feeling which usually overwhelms people suffering from maniac depression.

By Michael Thompson

Tomorrow- a recital

TOMORROW….a recital

Tomorrow is the vanquish of sorrow and sweet bile

Tomorrow is the vanquish of apartheid, neo-colonialism, the Nazis, its rank and file

Tomorrow is undefiled

Tomorrow is the vanquish of anguish languishing in the uncertainties of our dreams,

Tomorrow is my dream, your dream, our dreams

Tomorrow is the vanquish of painful penury bursting at its seams

Tomorrow is bliss, as it seems

Tomorrow is when liberalism, capitalism, socialism would all just become isms

Tomorrow is without criticisms, or screaming placards on prisms

Tomorrow is the alpha and omega of revivalism

Tomorrow is the vanquish of sin recorded in capital initials

Tomorrow is the vanquish of homosexuals locking lips in unholy nuptials

Tomorrow is the resurrection of Bob Marley and Ray Charles

Tomorrow is our chance

Tomorrow is the confederation of the Pope, the Arch-Bishop, the Imam, and the Presbyterian

Tomorrow shall amalgamate the carnivore, the glutton and the vegetarian

Tomorrow makes a youth of an Octogenarian

Tomorrow is an alien

Tomorrow is the vanquish of all ‘bush’, ‘some damn insane’ as we have ‘been laden’ by their negative
synergy

Tomorrow is the vanquish of the proliferation of missiles, and atomic energy

Tomorrow is the vanquish of our elegy

Tomorrow the Apocalypse shall see its demise

Tomorrow shall realize and not antagonize

Tomorrow shall tell no lies

Tomorrow is not a cavity

Tomorrow is a reality, my reality, your reality, our reality

But Tomorrow’s road is no mirth

For tomorrow is life after death.

By Michael Nii Thompson

He Lives In Me

I AM Albert Atta Dodd, two years ago I was diagnosed of having a very serious heart condition and that heart transplant was the only way out. Around that same period, Albus Atta Dodd, my identical twin brother, was also diagnosed with leukemia. Even though we are identical on the outside, we are totally different people in many ways. “I would rather die than endure all that pain in chemotherapy” he said, when he was diagnosed. While Albus liked jazz, classical music and R&B, I loved hip-life, reggae and dance hall. Albus was a very calm, slow to anger but I was erratic and got angry easily. He loved slim and God fearing ladies and I admired ‘bad girls’ with huge booty who loved it rough in bed.


In my case my doctor told me I badly needed a new heart and that if I did not get one within a month, something bad could happen. Consequently, he put my name on an emergency list. The situation was getting bad and when the heart was not coming, I became so very disturbed. One night, I had a call that Albus had been rushed to the hospital. When I got there, he was in a hospital bed and he looked very pale, with his hair almost gone. I broke down into tears, something I had never done since I became an adult. He looked like he was already dead. “I was going to lose my life and my only brother was also dying”, I said to myself. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my chest, and within a couple of seconds I blacked out. When I was resuscitated I felt so weak and tired, and could not breathe well, so I called for my doctor.

He told me that my heart had become so weak that he was not going to allow me to go home or walk around. I quickly asked him about my twin brother and he told me that he was ok, and allowed me to speak to him on phone.

After 2 months, my doctor came running to me one early morning that he had found me a heart, and that I was to get prepared for surgery. The operation went well. After two weeks, I became worried because I had not heard from Albus so I asked the nurse to take me to his ward but she refused. When the doctor arrived and I asked him of my brother, he told me that I had not recovered enough and that I needed to recover fully before I could see him.

I started to feel uneasy about his response. That evening I bribed a male nurse, who was on night duty, and he took me to my brother’s ward. When I got there, his bed was occupied by another patient so the nurse took me back to my room. After I was discharged, the doctor told me that my brother left me a letter. “Where is he” I asked with anxiety, but he told me to read the letter, adding that "all the answers you needed are in there." It read: “Dear Albert, let me explain why I had to do this. You were at a point of death at a time where my heart was healthy. And because you needed it to survive, I asked the doctor to give mine to you as soon as he realized it was time for me to die, so you will at least have your life back and my heart will be beating inside you. We will then be one.

I hope you understand that it was the right thing I did. While the doctors think only one of us had to live, I think both of us can live but in one body. I will always be there with you. From your loving brother, Albus”.Those were my brother’s last words. It’s been two years since, and anytime I think of him, I have a feeling he is inside me. My life has completely changed, and I now like most of the things Albus used to like. I am as calm as he was and any time I talked to people who knew him, they keep telling me that I sounded and behaved like Albus. The only logical explanation for that is his heart beats inside me.

By Nii Ogbamey Tetteh (@ogbameytetteh on twitter)

Will I ever remember?

I took my girlfriend to my grandfather’s house on Valentine’s Day four years ago. I wanted to surprise her so much that I had everything plan out well.

The House had been empty since my grandparents died but I made sure that the house was always in good shape. I loved music a lot as a boy and as a result, my grandfather thought me to play the piano. On his sick bed he kept telling me “Alex, I want you to take good care of yourself and my grand piano when am gone. Make sure you keep it clean and practice always.”

Esi, my girlfriend, loved Kwabena Kwabena’s songs so much that she would stop whatever she was doing to listen anytime his songs were being played. I wanted to propose to her that night so a week before, I got one of Kwabena Kwabena’s albums and started listening .I learnt to play most of them on the piano.

That night when we got to my grandfather’s house, we had a candle light dinner and then watched my favourite movie ‘A walk to remember’. Esi then decide to do the dishes and went to the kitchen. “This is a perfect time for the surprise.” I told myself and walked to the grand piano. I placed the lyrics of the song I was about play on the piano and started playing the prelude.

Esi upon hearing the song dashed into the study where I was, the look in her eyes was so romantic when I started singing. In the middle of the song, I stopped and asked her to marry me. To my surprise, tears started to run down her cheeks, she hugged me and answered “ Yes.”

On our way to a boutique two years after, to select her wedding gown, we had an accident. I woke up two days later in a hospital. The doctor came in to see how I was doing and asked for my name. “My name, I don’t remember anything” I answered. The doctor explained that I was involved in an accident and as a result, I hit my head hard on the ground. He told me I was suffering from amnesia and hopes I will recover.

The doctor later introduced me to some people as my parents and asked me to go home with them. My parents told me all they could on our way home and mentioned the wedding, I felt like a formatted hard drive.

A few days later my wife to be was introduced to me, she was beautiful. I asked her not to worry because everything will go on as planned. We got married but at my wedding reception something strange happened. I requested for a live band and when the band started playing, I had a strange feeling to go play the piano. I asked the band to stop playing and when they did I walked to the pianist and told him I wanted to play something to for my wife.


After touching the keys, it came to me; I remembered sitting behind a piano hence I started playing. My wife after some time came sobbing. She told me the song I was playing was the one I play the night I proposed to her. “The Kwabena Kwabena tune I loved so much. Do you remember anything dear?” she asked and to her disappointment, I told her no.


We have been married for the past twelve years, we have two kids and my piano skills are back but I still don’t remember anything about my life before the accident.


“Will I ever remember” a question I keep asking myself.


By Nii Ogbamey Tetteh (@ogbameytetteh on twitter)

Nandi the Sacred Bull- Ode to Kama-Sutra

Parvati's teeth shone like magnet, the corners of her mouth curved,

and Lord Shiva's balls were moved

Her eyes arrowed his heart and pierced deep inside, a sharp lust pacing its side

So sharp Lord Shiva pulled

Nandi back so hard, for he himself was hard,

For a man’s manhood cannot be schooled

Come home with me, Parvati, and let’s make love lithely

And so they left, smiling at the sun and even Nandi mooed

Parvati’s fabric hid something full, fleshy, throbbing

And Shiva’s hand massaged her cadaver , tendering

Her lips slit open, so did her stands, and a whimper

Made her senses, save her sensual, lapse in deep slumber

Lord Shiva snaked through the slit and slid inner

Inner…Inner…then another whimper

Craving than the former, louder

She flowed downhill and outer

Watering her gates, altering her shapes

Lord Shiva hit her roof or so, and a whisper

Beseeched both mercy and more….another

Parvati’s god at the fountain of her slit, responded to its stroker

And there was another slide..inner…outer…inner…outer

Nandi the sacred bull eavesdropped, recorded, and carved Kamasutra…

….(to be continued)….

By Michael Thompson