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

Priscilla had gone away. She needed to pay an old debt, and the creditor had promised to visit violence on her whole family if she didn’t pay the GH¢700 by 8pm. Another woman was waiting in the other bedroom. He was about to join her when the voices started.

“You are here already?” Antubam said. “You deserted me completely as I went through the ordeal this morning.”

“Your own stubbornness got you into that situation. You must never approach those book people again. Do not get into any argument with them. Enjoy the money, the power and the women we have given you. You can never win.”

“And what about the man, Gidi­gidi.”

“The stick will give you all the protection you need. He talks a lot, and he likes fighting. But as you told him, he has no brains.”

“I need people to help me. The two girls were reliable, but they are gone. All the others are thieves.”

“They are thieves? And what are you? Remember that in the busi­ness you have chosen, there are many risks and dangers. We will try to help you. But you are very greedy’.

“The girl, Betty, told me that I will receive punishment sooner or later for deceiving people and for using the name of God. Is it true? Can you help me avoid this punish­ment?”

“Don’t worry about any punish­ment. Leave everything to us. We will give you all the protection you need. And by the way, the fetish priestess has made a request to Nana Kofi Broni to release you to her one day every month to keep her company.”

“That must be a very big joke. I will never, never again sleep with that old drunkard with rotten teeth. Never.’’

“She has already presented drinks at the shrine. If you don’t go, we are under instructions to fly you there by five o’clock and take you back home by six o’clock. If you don’t obey, your manhood will van­ish and never return’.

“Have you people come to help me or torment me? Why can’t you find someone else to satisfy the old witch’s desires?”

“Next time you say such a thing again you will receive more lashes than you did last time. Start pre­paring for Sunday’s service. You are about to become the most popu­lar prophet in Ghana.” The voices seized, and a strange silence seized the atmosphere.

Antubam was perplexed. What, he wondered, had he gotten him­self into? He only wanted to grab that beautiful girl, Betty, marry her and have five or six beautiful children with her. But his desire for that girl seemed to have released a chain of confusing events.

Apart from the fiasco at the shrine for which he had to go and perform pacification rites at the shrine, he was compelled to have sex with that stinking old priestess. Her mirrors couldn’t bring up the image of Betty, yet she blackmailed him into having sex with her. And now the dwarfs want him to make that repulsive act a monthly ritual.

How annoying. But could he afford to lose his manhood? What would he do with the regular supply of two women a day? And how could he give birth to children? And what was he going to do with the threat from that fool of a competitor, Gidigidi? The stick provided by the Okomfo saved him on that occa­sion, but what would happen when he was eating, having a shower, or sleeping?

And now the dwarfs claim he was about to become one of the most popular prophets in Ghana. He was thrilled at the prospect. It meant more money, more power and control over people’s lives, and of course, more women. But at what cost? At the back of his mind, he felt an urge to go to Betty, confess everything to her, and ask her to help him start all over.

It was clear, Antubam thought, that a power far greater than Nana Kofi Broni was behind Betty. From their own mouths, the Okomfo, the stinking priestess and even the dwarfs had all indicated that Betty and her ‘book’ were too much for them.

But did it make sense to go to a girl you badly want to subdue and, having failed to achieve your aim, now go to her for help? How could a proud man like Kofi Antubam go through that? No, the cost of going to Betty was too high. He would continue to enjoy being a false prophet for now. Perhaps, if he got into trouble sometime in the future, he would go to her for help. But as for now, the show must go on.

Betty and Mary started work with Morrison Construction, and estab­lished a relationship that contin­ued for many years. Completely satisfied with their honesty and hard work, Mr Morrison entrust­ed the acquisition and supply of materials in the Eastern Region to them, and concentrated on the other aspects of his work.

He paid for their admission to the University of Technology to un­dertake a sandwich programme in building construction, which they did online and on some weekends. They forgot about Antubam com­pletely.

Kofi Antubam continued in the church business for many years. He became very popular for his miracles, and for several other things. On a few occasions police were called to the church premises to control his assistants who often exchanged blows over the sharing of money.

Quite a num­ber of husbands confronted him for destroying their marriages, and he became known for raining insults on radio callers who asked him ‘stupid questions’. But he faced his main problem at home.

At first, he was only dealing with dwarfs who only spoke in shrill voices. But over time, all manner of creatures appeared before him, physically and during his sleep. On several occasions he tried to call or go to Betty, but the dwarfs restrained him. He sought solace in whisky and gin, and quietly hoped that Betty, or Mary, or Suzzie, would find a way to save him.

“That must be a very big joke. I will never, never again sleep with that old drunkard with rotten teeth. Never.’’

By Ekow de Heer