My former classmate, Kwame Korkorti, told me recently that the symptoms of modern day diseases like unemployment and rede­ployment can effectively be stopped using herbal treatment. He also con­fided in me that if herbal treatment does not prove effective, then one needs to go the lotto way, to avoid weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Korkorti indeed has eleven and a half years practical experience in how to make ends meet. Although he was famous in the 70s as the best kpan­logo dancer of the decade, he was redeployed as a civil servant not too far back.

Faced with the dilemma of where to invest his redeployment benefits, he took the biggest risk in life. He used half the amount on lotto for four consecutive weeks and lost. He then approached a man called the ‘Lot­to-Crocodile’ who gave him three sure tips, which were arrived at by the dictates of a ‘timing’ plan.

The calculations could not be doubted and the ‘crocodile’ was indeed revered, even feared, for his lotto prowess. Should Korkorti invest the other half of his benefits into the “3-sure” and damn the consequences?

If he lost, it would be a disaster for him. His wife would leave him, and the landlord would serve him with a ‘quit’ notice, and he would become a ‘Son of Man.’ Moreover, his friends would call him the biggest fool in contemporary times.

Investment

To be on the safer side, he told his wife about his investment plans. She flared up and called him an idiot and a fat-head John-Bull. Korkorti, therefore, recoiled into his shell but decided to stake just ¢1,000.

On Saturday, the three numbers were there in black and white. He promptly divorced his wife for having deprived him of millions of cedis.

Ever since this episode, Korkorti has become a lotto addict, a forecast­er, a lotto magician, editor-in-chief of a lotto paper and the chairman of the Sikaman Lotto Winners Association (SLWA).

I heard there is also an association called the Sikaman Lotto Losers Asso­ciation (SLLA).

Although it is the unemployed who are susceptible to the lotto syndrome, the business is also the pre-occupation of people from all walks of life-busi­ness executives, secretaries of state, assemblymen, fetish priests, pastors and evangelists, beggars and koose sellers.

In fact, lotto transcends all occu­pations and professions in such a way that both the rich and the poor are perpetually engaged in making money out of mechanised lotto, VAG-West or Lucky Scratch whose scarcity in the metropolis does not merit the numer­ous adverts on television.

Some people are born lucky and can win lotto 20 times in a year. Others like myself have been born to lose.

The last time I came close to win­ning was in 1983 when hunger in Sika­man was quite normal to the natives. It was the era of famine when man, wife and children had only one hard coconut for supper and got ready to develop jaundice. It was at that time that I got a “2-sure” tip from a very reliable but clandestine source. The mathematical solution of the problem was arrived at by permutation and combinations, backed by calculus and lotto matrices. The two numbers were unfailing.

I told two close friends about it and they staked heavily like I did. After I had kept the tickets safely in a notebook which l locked away in a fortified drawer, I quickly began figuring out a budget based upon the amount l’d win at the week-end.

I planned to purchase one maxi bag of rice, I’ll order yams from Kasoa, beans from Kordiabe and palm-nuts from Larteh. I’ll purchase a table top fridge (since l enjoy iced water so much), a portable sound system and a diplomatic shoe. I apportioned the amounts I’ll remit to my mother, my old-man, brothers, sisters and two friends.

I became so obsessed with this lot­to palaver that I could hardly sleep at night. As the week-end approached, the excitement grew so much that I began feeling quite uncomfortable.

Come 5.05 p.m. on Saturday. My heart started beating violently when the Club Beer advert came clear on the air. It was only seconds away and I would be richest man in a time of scarcity and acute hunger. I dashed for my pen and paper.

The numbers were being men­tioned by a deep-throated announcer: “And now, the numbers… “My heart beat like that of a marathon runner as I wrote them down, my fingers trem­bling. The first three numbers did not include my “2-sure” tips. But I was reassured when the fourth was one of mine.

I was ready to leap into air when the last number called was nowhere near my other number. I had lost, and immediately started thinking about where my supper would come from.

That was the day I vowed not to stake lotto again in my life. Lotto can be a good servant and also a bad master. It has been the fertile ground for some people and the downfall of luckless others. It has made some rich and also impoverished others. It has solved problems in families and caused problems in families.

Anyhow, it is the surest way of getting rich without getting into trouble with revolutionary laws. This is because with lotto, you can become an instant millionaire without dipping long fingers into public funds.

Some people say lotto is a vice. Well I do not consider it as such, but of course, it depends on the angle from which one views the game. Although I no longer stake lotto, I’ll be the last to advise anybody against it. It may be somebody’s saviour, who knows. Moreover, it is a way of taxing people for national revenue without, realising they being taxed.

In fact they pay the tax without force, and some gain therefrom. It has also been a source of employment for many, like lotto receivers and agents.

The only problem with lotto is that it is a time-wasting venture to which most workers concentrate all their at­tention instead of attending to official duties.

Productivity falls, because from the Managing Director to the cleaner, everybody is either busy calculating a certain mathematical progression or discussing the potency of a ‘machine’ number.

True to it, in an eight-hour working period per day, a typical lotto addict uses two hours to think about fam­ily problems, one hour for financial worries, and three hours to forecast winning numbers. The remaining two hours are shared between working on the job and relaxing. No country pro­gresses with such work schedule.

Perhaps, it would be better if workers rely more on dream-numbers, car numbers and

house numbers instead of machine numbers, shadows, counterparts, addition 90, turning numbers and timing plans. We should not sacrifice productivity for personal gain. We are free to work lotto after closing hours, week-ends and public holidays. All the best in your lotto palaver.

This article was first published on Saturday, October 27, 1990.

 Yesterday, I had to visit the cemetery in connec­tion with an impending event and as I stood there and looked at the various graves, I involuntarily started to reflect on life in general and it was a humbling experience.

All those people whose mor­tal remains were in the graves had been alive a few weeks, a few months, a few years ago, just like me and you, full of life and vitality.

There were men and women both young and old and I guess if we were to look into their backgrounds, would find diverse status in terms of financial muscle, academic achievements etc. and it was really disheartening.

One thing that really humbled me was the close proximity that all these peo­ple shared with each other, despite the differences that existed between them in terms of tribe, social status or whatever.

At the cemetery, you do not have the power of choice of your resting place, someone makes the choice for you and it was a very sobering moment for me.

I started wondering about what the attitude of these departed souls would have been in terms of how they would have related to people they came into contact with in their daily lives during their existence on this beautiful planet.

I wish it was possible to witness the look on the face of a very snobbish person who after his or her burial realised that she or he has been buried beside a mentally ill person, or a prostitute etc.

I really would have loved to behold such a sight, if it were possible. Just imagine for a moment that death is like falling asleep and this person who thinks she is better than everybody suddenly wakes up after being buried to realise that her permanent neighbour is a person with no qualifi­cation together with all the other attributes she despises.

Just use your imagination for a moment and picture her look of frustration, disgust and helplessness in the situa­tion she finds herself.

A thought run through my mind about the value in monetary terms the ideas the people in the graves had that they could not implement. Books that were not writ­ten due to procrastination, business ideas that could have helped eased the unemploy­ment situation in the country, a gift that could have trans­formed someone’s life but was not given, an advice that could have benefited some­one but was not given, a life whose full potential could not be realised, souls that could have been won for Christ had the desire to preach the gospel been implemented and the cascading effect it would have had on society.

What I picked from this reflective moment was how much procrastination can cost us as well as the need to be each other’s keeper so we can fulfill our divine purposes.

A few days ago, the ballot­ing for the presidential can­didates was done and there were 13 candidates. We woke up to bad news yesterday the 29th of October, 2024 and the candidates have now become 12 because one of them is no more.

If you had a grudge against her, it is of no use. In the same vein, if she also had a grudge against someone, it is also of no use. We need to constantly remind ourselves that somebody created us and that like a manufacturer, he alone knows our expiry date.

Reflecting on how we will end, I believe, would help us live a much more fulfilling and fruitful lives. The selfishness and the greediness will reduce our society would be better managed.

The dependence on foreign aid, I believe would drasti­cally reduce, if selfishness and greediness is reduced through the realisation that we brought nothing into this world and we shall certainly carry nothing out and that our final resting place, shall in most cases be determined by others.

By Laud Kissi-Mensah