Shouts to all of you from Obimanso. Ya fi mo paaa. We miss you more than you miss the boys and girls you left us with last year. Please my name is Kwame Gyan. Whiles here, we have politely pieced these guidelines to make your stay as effortless as catching a bus in Obimanso instead of the hustle of catching a trotro.
1. We know you are here. We know it when we see you. Please spare us the huge signboards directing us to you – the accent, the long boots, the overly short clothes, and the needless ‘innit’ and ‘ya know wha I mean’.
2. The guys, when you come and start to deal with your Ghana girls, have common sense and don’t spoil the market for the rest of us. Don’t mess our sex lives up with your two-week misbehavior. You are here for two weeks; we are here for 52 weeks and change.
3. The girls, please let me tell you – there are very very very nice girls here paaaa walahi. So if you think you will come and flex us saaaa be steady wai. After all you are here for 2 or 3 weeks so what’s the point in stretching us for 2 weeks giving us just 2 or 3 days to enjoy the fruits of our perseverance. Gogo yourselves and let us show you GH loving papa paaaaa.
4. The boys, again, be careful you hear? We won’t tolerate those your things where you come and use our girls and leave without saying good bye. The least you can do is to leave them all your Cedi notes and add some five £1 notes.
5. Don’t come and tell us you miss green soup, or akple or tuo zaafi. No one asked you to travel. If food was important to you, you would have stayed.
6. Stop acting like the sales attendants at Primark and dem shops do not know you by face and name. Stop that habit of comparing the prices of everything you want to buy and disturbing us about costs. Massa, it’s not as if prices of things are low everywhere you in your Obimanso. Do you always enter a designer shop? Fior.
7. Every year we talk about that your irritating Yankee or British accent that you bring into this town. See, lose that accent before you enter the Ghana airspace. No, in fact, lose it at the immigration of the country you are coming from before you get onto the tarmac. See, we know you ooo. We know you can speak to us pepeeepe so don’t come trying to do that rubbish. What! For the last time, once again, before you come here to speak English in a way that will have us asking you “pardon, pardon, pardon”. See, Kofi Annan stayed in New York longer than you but he spoke normal English. In fact, if you start that your nonsense accent, we will insult you.
8. If by now you don’t know, let me remind you: the temperature from where you came from is anything between -2° and 9° and tins. Here, you will be lucky to get 24° at night. Yes, same as when you were born here and the last time you came to town. So stop it already.
9. I beg ooo, some of our ladies will still ask you to pay the taxi fare or Uber or Taxify when they visit. You will also pay for the return trip. Does not matter if she came to pick up the things you bought her from Obimanso or she had multiple orgasms while you probably had none. Oh and if you want to get ‘some’ again, don’t you dare tell them that the girls in Obimanso don’t do that.
10. Please Ebony passed sadly. Her manager recruited her replacement even when her body was still warm. The New Ebony is doing all she can to be relevant. Please support her. She has some naughty songs out there, and she does not like wearing bra and has one of those pointed nipples that push out of blouses so check her out.
11. Don’t make up your mind that you are coming to use anyone here. We have already taken that position. Be the one to be used. Or we can agree to use each other, no wahala.
12. Please stop ordering us to wait for you at Kotoka International Airport (KIA) a whole two hours before the projected touch down of your flight. You know you have been doing this almost every year or once every two years and we don’t like it. Even if we don’t meet you, have you forgotten the way to your homes? Hoh!
13. Still about Airport, be careful what you say about our brand new, state of the art Airport. We like it a lot paaa, even if Schipol and Heathrow and JFK make it look like some small ordinary airport.
14. Please when you get into town, leave your jacket and winter boots in your house until you are dressing up to head back to KIA and away to wherever you are doing your ‘any work’. We know the weather back in your abrokyire is cold but don’t be a villager to wear fur coats in our 32° weather. Eye nkurasesem paaa. And yes, it is hot here.
15. We know you are making money in Obimanso. We also know that you pay plenty tax. And some of you still owe the visa contractor who did your connection for you so your cash level no shada dey up. Don’t come and spend all the money you have saved buying champagne in clubs and spreading people like your father is Mugabe or Dangote. If you do the too known and go back, we won’t send you kapreba. Yoooo!
16. If you bought something for someone last year and you come and you see him or her still wearing it, you don’t need to shout and say “eei you are still wearing these jeans I bought from Next? Efata wo paaa ooo”. Please, we know you still have jeans you bought 5 years ago. We know before you left you wore clothes saaa until they were tired of alterations so stop that nonsense. You like that!
17. As we told you last year, and the year before, we are not villagers like that oo. You can’t buy as £2 and $5 shirts and tops and expect us to roll on the floor in excitement. We know it when what you give us is cheap. Oh we will say thank you. But don’t expect us to behave as if you just gave us a Saville Row suit or an Armage cologne.
18. Please we know what the exchange rate is. We know. We don’t need the needless reminder. We also know that you know the exchange rate. Stop the too known and come and melt your euros and pounds and dollars in peace. Stop that!
19. News flash: Takoradi too has a Mall. Yaaaaaayi! And yes, yen bredas and sistren rushed into the mall as though there were expensive freebies to be given away. We thank God there was no stampede.
20. While you are here, remember that in Ghana, whatever the government says, the opposition must oppose, and they must not necessarily oppose with suggestions.
21. Every year we tell you this but some of you have made your ears as hard as Francis Doku’s forehead so you don’t listen. We will keep saying it. Please don’t forget your malaria prophylaxis else your gluteus muscle will have to bear the pain of artemether in a G25 needle without an analgesic; your only consolation will be” sorry 3y3 wo ya? Kafra.. Kafra.. 3b3 k) wa.
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By: Kwame Gyan
