From the first day he reported for duty as French tutor, David Essel, a French-German graduate, made a huge impact on life in and around the Aboso Senior High School.

And the school made a life-chang­ing impact on him. At first, the students took the enthusiasm with which he introduced French greet­ings, rhythms and catch phrases as funny.

But he quickly pointed it out that by taking French seriously, they would only be taking their very lives seriously. Ghana, he stated, was surrounded by French speaking countries whose citizens continuously flocked here to seek employment and business opportunities, yet Ghanaians hardly even knew those countries, mainly because they cannot speak French.

It was time to reverse the trend before they swallowed us up. And by learning at least another foreign language, they would become true, global citizens. Anyone who missed such realities would regret it badly in future. Moreover, he said, French was an enjoyable language, and he would prove it to them.

Within a few months, French had become the most popular language. Even students who were not offer­ing French were taking it seriously. Apart from earning the respect of students and teaching colleagues, Monsieur David had quite a few lady admirers in the big town.

One of them, Gladys Asiama, a home science teacher, decided to beat the competition by making a ‘direct assault’. She wrote him a note asking to meet him to discuss translations of some popular French dishes. And when David obliged by going over to offer his generous assistance, she gently provided some well-prepared dishes.

Before the end of the year, she had completely won him over, to the annoyance of many girls. Gladys was certainly good looking, but later in the day, David wondered to himself how he got so completely run over by her.

They courted for some six months, during which they spent most eve­nings together, cooking and eating, going over homework a preparations for the following days’ classes. For David, ‘Gee’ was the beautiful, dutiful and practical partner he had always wanted in a life partner.

She was a good planner, who thought well ahead. And on her part, David was a far cry from the roman­tic but idealistic Simon, with whom she had enjoyed a three-year whirl­wind romance, but who had travelled the US for a three-month training course but had stayed for over three years without a letter or telephone call.

Apart from being serious with his work, David was focused on improv­ing himself, and had promised to support every business initiative she made. He was earning some income from writing articles in French, and was preparing to write a novel in French.

Although they wanted to have a modest wedding, their colleagues, students and parents and the folks of Aboso made sure it was a memo­rable affair. Gee got pregnant with their first child, and even though she was generally in sound health, David went the extra mile to make sure she was comfortable. Around the time of the pregnancy, Gee pleaded with him to allow her to spend week­ends with her parents at Kubeasi, and he reluctantly agreed.

But for most of the pregnancy, she had it smooth sailing, and Sarah was born without hitch. There was no shortage of people to help with her care, and Gee resumed work. Their marriage, to all intents and purposes, had gotten off to a good start. One morning, however, one of their fe­male colleagues walked into his class and asked him to find some fifteen minutes to meet her for some very vital information. Sometime before the close of day, he met her at the school park.

“I’m sure you will misjudge my mo­tive for giving you this information, but I want you to know that I am not a liar, and I certainly won’t lie about such an issue.”

“Don’t worry, Adoma. I know you are a lady of principle. I’m sorry our relationship ended rather, er, abrupt­ly. Indeed, I will admit that I wasn’t in control of things. But that’s not why you asked to meet me. Please go ahead.”

“Well, I’m afraid it’s not pleasant. Some months ago, a friend of mine who knew that I had been seeing you, came to tell me that one Simon, a former boyfriend of your wife, was back in town, and had been spending time with her at the Nananom Guest House.

This happened on quite a few occasions. I couldn’t tell you then, because even if it was proven to be true, people would accuse me of breaking up a marriage. But last week, something happened, again. Your wife left school to meet with him, twice.

My friend says that a woman who works at the Guest House called Mansa is prepared to confirm this, because she is disgusted by your wife’s behaviour. That is all. But I will be grateful if you could leave my name out of this, whatever action you decide to take.”

“This is so kind of you, Adoma. You know, one thing I’ve always feared in life is treachery. I experienced it at close hand in my family, and I hoped to avoid it. Don’t worry. I will make some enquiries, and take decisive action. I’m so grateful. If I may ask, can you forgive me for what hap­pened?”

“I never held anything against you. So in that sense you can say we are still friends.”

“Okay. Then let’s meet for a drink one of these days.”

David got home as she was tucking Sarah into bed.

“Welcome sweetheart. You are late.”

“Yes, I had to make a couple of contacts. Is she okay?”

“Very much so. Your food is in the oven.”

“Actually, I wanted us to have a short discussion first. When you have a minute.”

“I’m ready.” She moved to sit right next to him and smiled.

“Last week Tuesday and Wednes­day, you went out of school. You didn’t tell me, surprisingly. Where did you go?”

“I’m sorry. I think I went to buy some materials for the cookery class­es.”

“Gee, take a moment to think, and answer me. Where did you go?”

“Ah, where is this coming from? I told you that I went to buy materi­als.”

“Did you buy them at Nananom Guest House?”

“I think I passed there briefly.”

“On both days? To see Simon? For sex? Apparently, this has been going on for some time? So you, a married, nursing mother, is also having sex with another man?”

‘Look, David, you are just sitting there and hurling unsubstantiated al­legations against me. You can’t insult me, eh?”

“Unsubstantiated allegations? I can certainly substantiate them. And I must tell you. I will not stay in a marriage, not for one day, with a treacherous wife.”

By Ekow de Heer

The Journey to London is not an easy one when you’re carrying a pot-belly.

And, if the pot-belly is a fake one, then the carrier must face indictment and explain why his protruding belly must not be properly examined to de­termine the degree of genuine cargo in it.

As it were, some pot-bellies have been carefully cultivated through regular beer quaffing, reinforced by the evil of indulging in khebab chomp­ing. When you drink beer every day for five years, you are bound to lose your soul, and in its place will be a brewery installed in your belly. It is, however, an honour to have a brewery as a body-part.

And when you are going to London, the immigration officer can readily recognise your belly as one that has either a bubra-background, a star-ori­gin or a club-destination. Immigration officers are now trained to prophesy.

The immigration man is generally interested in bellies, not for the sake of it, but because stomachs have be­come multi-functional these days.

Yes, the immigration officer is often curious why a belly well examined does not bear the tell-tale marks of beer ad­diction and yet, the belly carrier also doesn’t sound a likely host to refugee worms. So what is in the belly? Five months pregnancy?

SUSPICION

Normally, a suspicious immigration officer must be careful how he handles the belly of travelling men. With some men, their pot-bellies are their only treasure. So they tell you to handle with care!

“Don’t mess up with my belly, men!” a traveller would say. “Do you know how many goddamn years it took me to build this?”

Apart from belly size, immigration capos also use a bit of psychology. When a man comes by unduly agitated and wants to hurry small through, he is a likely candidate for close exami­nation. His huge belly has no guilder antecedents! What he has inside is dangerous cargo- cocaine or heroin carefully packaged and swallowed.

If the plane doesn’t land quickly at Heathrow for the carrier to discharge, then an obituary becomes inevitable. The digestive juices in the belly and ensymes might be strong enough to di­gest the covering and leak out cocaine. Death is assured!

So the agitated traveller is chap­eroned into a little side room and questioned. The officer would like to know whether there is any drug in his alimentary system.

“Nonsense!” the traveller would cry out. “I am a final year doctorate student in Law. To suggest that I’m a cocaine smuggler is an affront to my noble academic pursuits. It is blasphe­mous to the God I worship. I am going to see my lawyer to deal with you…”

LABOUR

When the man mellows down, he is given something small to drink to cool his heart. Sooner than expected he be­gins behaving like a woman in labour, He dis-charges pellets of cocaine, 60 or more.

So suddenly, a man studying for his doctorate in Jurisprudence at Oxford suddenly admits that he is a cocaine courier extraordinaire.

Sometime past, drug smuggling was at its real peak and cocaine seized on couriers suddenly turned into sugar when it came back from forensic ex­amination. So you would wonder why any person in his right senses would either be stuffing his rectum with sugar packages or swallowing pellets of sugar.

Many drug barons were released because cocaine suddenly became granulated sugar, heroin became cocoa powder and various drugs miraculously assumed harm-less chemical formulae. Today, I do not think such miracles are still happening.

However, there are miracles as far as drug smuggling is concerned. First, the baby nappy method of the early 1980s is still in operation. A baby is carried with a wet napkin that im­migration officers would not suspect contains coke. Sometimes it is not only wet, but the baby’s pooh-pooh also shows.

Now, the new trick is with snails, a delicacy that people need in Britain. They are stuffed with coke and ex­ported. The yam formula has outlived its usefulness. So people have gone back to the late 1970 crude method of stuffing female genitals and taflatse rectums with coke.

This has necessitated the forcible examination of the orifices of the human anatomy in any event of suspi­cion.

Now if the stuff is not detected at Kotoka International Airport that might not be the end of the story. When the courier gets to Britain and he is or she starts dancing without being asked to, the immigration guys know that there’s “something in the soup.”

Fact is, every item or substance introduced into the human body must evict after some hours. That is why human waste doesn’t stay in there forever. It must exit compulsorily.

After flying for six hours the swal­lowed cargo in the belly starts to exit and it must be pushed back, a task that is well-nigh impossible under immigration scrutiny. So the courier becomes overly agitated and starts hissing like a snake. Soon he (or she) must start dancing, hoping that it would prevent the capsules from drop­ping out.

TRUTH

The African belly dancer is politely invited to enter into small room to free himself from further alimentary torment. That is the moment of truth.

There is no easy way to making money. With drugs, you could earn 30-years in jail. Saudi Arabia, you’ll be beheaded. In Singapore, you’ll be in for life just like in Thailand where Ghanaians are languishing today. Be­ware of drugs!

This article was first published

on Saturday August 6, 2005