Useless Column: 'I’ve resigned as a land guard'

My late father used to say there are only two problems in this world: Number one is the crave for land. Number two is the crave for women ‘by hat’! Please don’t look at my face again wai! Hahaaaaa!

Today is Friday and yaanom have started unnecessary greetings: ‘Just to find out how you are doing’, ‘It’s been a while since I checked on you’, Ei, so you have dawgd me like that; if the money come, don’t chop it alone o’.

These are all preparatory grounds to start next week 30th April requests: ‘I am broke oo…’ “anything for the girls?’, ‘Charlie, my hostel roof is leaking; let me send you the video’.

Hmmm! This video strategy er…I didn’t know it was a scam till two ladies sent me on different occasions the same video of leaking roofs. The interesting thing was that they were not roommates; neither were they students in the same university. Guys, if you don’t use your head, your body will suffer o, yooo!

That’s why even though doctors don’t manufacture drugs and vaccines, as to how they know which one is good to cure us can only be achieved through education, no be so? Ever imagined why you enter a room full of ladies and all are excited to see you except one?

This single one is the one who has real feelings for you oo. She may be doing so just to create an aura around her but try your luck. Such ladies are like boiled eggs – just take your time and gradually you’d finish peeling them off! Hahahahahaa. Ladies who are like that would kill me today. The good news is that they don’t even read useless things like this one. Kai! For what? Hahahahaha!

Ei, Wissdom Quarshie was one of my classmates. Directly opposite his name is the opposite meaning of his first name. We were all asked to name any tree we knew. At Anunmle where vernacular was in our inner DNA, Wisdom was not familiar with anything English! All he was good at are ‘Kw3333, ok333 mini’!

Name a tree. First person ‘Mango tree’, Second person, Pawpaw tree, third person Mahogany tree and by the time the teacher got to Wisdom, all the trees ‘were finished’ and he remembered only ‘Yoryi tree’!

After all, every tree be tree! This is where he ended his education because the teacher, out of extreme anger, dropped his cane and actually engaged him in a physical fight! Dasorrrrr! Just in case you don’t know yoryi tree, in English it is called ‘blackberry tree’.

Not that phone called BB oo. Blackberry is black on the cover (shell) and the edible part inside the shell is usually light brown! Go back to school if you want to argue with me over whether that is its English name or agric name! After all, up till now, nobody could clearly tell whether sugar cane is a fruit crop or firewood!

Man suffer before oo; I am still suffering. Small plot of land I’m trying hard to put up a chamber and hall on and these land-guards would not let me be! Just hit the ground with any tool and they come demanding ‘digging fee’. I managed to reach lintel and again they were there! I gave them nokofio.

I fear the activities of these guys oo. I once saw them biting off somebody’s upper lip just for refusing to give them GH¢2; so anytime they came around I sorted them out and asked my workers to do same.

In fact they ‘own’ every plot of land in town. If you have never experienced them and their activities, it is easy to conclude they are not deadly as my Uncle Ganyaglo once told me that ‘a madman dancing at the market place will only be funny to you if he is not your relative’. Have a ‘brush with the ‘laws’ of land guards and you would understand what it means if someone tells you about his or her experience in dealing with land guards. Deadly!

It is the reason I am so excited about the incoming Land Law that seeks to sanitise land acquisition and other related matters to deal with such.

I struggled to get some salary advance from my employer and started the roofing of the house. From nowhere, they appeared again this time asking for ‘Roofing fee’. Oh hooo! Ny3baa gbe wor!

Next time I would buy an estate house and be free but the problem here is how to get the money gboom like that. The other alternative, mortgage facility also doesn’t come easily or I dey lie?

Accidents on our roads are becoming a problem o. Less than 4 months into 2021 and already 800 people dead through accidents? Why? Ern, I say why? Sometimes one does not feel it when a close relation or friend is not a victim! That is where Uncle Ganyaglo’s advice makes sense to me that: ‘a madman dancing at the market place will only be funny to you if he is not your relative’ God help us change our behaviours on the roads as we take this whole campaign against accidents on our roads seriously.

Ei, you guys are wasting my time here oo. As I write it’s raining heavily and my roof is leaking. Hahahahaha! Go back to the opening remarks of this ‘useless’ every day life fiction enveloped in a satirical apparel!

This my carpenter who came to condemn the professionalism of the previous carpenter is himself as bad as nothing. Some artisans are funny oo. They have a way of condemning the previous one warming themselves into your heart and sometimes doing worse themselves when given the opportunity. Next time I would engage Raincoatt or something like that to do a better job for me but the money? Let me pay small small er! Hmmm!

Ei, I have a zoom meeting in the next 10 minutes. Let me quickly check my data before it’s too late.

These days of zoom zoom meetings will not allow man to rest. In fact some are more stressful than having meetings physically. Anytime I am in a zoom meeting, no one would call until I start to make a contribution. That is when my hometown people collaborate with my Accra detractors and would allow someone to call me to disrupt the whole network.

They won’t call when you have no such virtual things on going o. The moment you start p3, that is when a nephew would call you to tell you your grand uncle has swallowed spoon accidentally and the network? Phew! Some would keep calling, you keep cutting. They would call, you cut as if….ah! Hmmmmm

Anyway, COVID is still around looking for people who don’t wear their masks and refuse to wash their hands. Funerals funerals funerals! Please let’s be careful about the number of mourners o.

I attended one recently and two people (relations) were being buried at the same time and at the same venue and mourners were so many and without counting, I could tell the number was more than 50. I drew the attention of one of the young men I supposed was a relation to the deceased and for him, he knows the number to be 25 but since they were 2 dead people about to be buried, they multiplied the number of mourners by 2 so 50 is okay! You see where we are getting it wrong?

Happy weekend and God be with us all till we meet again next week for me to spew more fictionary realistic stuff in this ‘useless’ satirical piece! Hahaaaa!