*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

** DEDICATED to all enslaved and slaving Ghanaian workers overseas – doctors,
nurses, professors, security, live-ins, factory hands, taxi drivers, pimps, hair
dressers, fruit-pickers, etc. - whose stories are yet to be AFRICANIZED by CNN.

“West African Girls Now FreeNew Jersey - They arrived in the United States from
West Africa, young girls held against their will and forced to work for hours on
end. But this time, it didn’t happen hundreds of years ago. Nicole’s journey
started in 2002, when she was barely 12, in her small village in western Ghana.
She and about 20 other girls were held in plain sight, but always under the
watchful eyes of their captors. ‘It was like being trapped, like being in a
cage,’ said ‘Nicole,’ now 19. CNN agreed not to use her real name” (Ghanaweb
December 25, 2010).

Sad stories, tragic stories
Of girls in bondage
Troko-sed in Anloga
Battered at Circle
“Slaving” in Abrokyire
Forced prostitution
Stories patented by CNN
Universalized news
Truth in search of focus
Ghanaians love it all
The White man’s news
Orgasmic news for all
Orgiastic breast-beating
CNN-nization of Africans
Re-Darkening Africans
Africanizing poverty
Africanizing HIV/AIDS
Africanizing corruption
Africanizing prostitution
Sanitizing white
Choreographing Slavery
Trivializing SLAVERY

Sad stories, tragic stories
Tragic stories in Abrokyire
Of the living-dead Ghanaians
Lured overseas to slave
Polishing aging White behinds
Slaving Doctors, slaving Nurses
Slaving Professors, Teachers
Slaving Live-ins, Security
Tragic news untold by CNN

Sad stories, tragic stories
Young girls
Virgins on acidic phalluses
Raped by parents, pimps
Young girls
Staring in sexual bondage
Sex packaged for sale

Sad stories, tragic stories
Young girls
Ghanaians worship money
Morality in the Castle window
Decay read from the pulpit
Putrefaction-plastered palaces
Our festering sores of wealth
Seasons of anomic wealth
Of our cargo-cult mentalities
Of our impoverished minds

Sad stories, tragic stories
Young girls
Young girls you are not alone
Tell CNN you are not alone

Ghanaian MEDICAL DOCTORS
Medical prostitutes
Lured by MEDICAL PIMPS
Mocked and shunned by patients
Disrespected by their peers
Doctors with long-drawn faces

Ghanaian NURSES
Lured by OVERTIME
On death-row night shifts
Nurses who only clean wounds
Nurses who only dress sores

Ghanaian PROFESSORS
Balding with snowy hair
Mocked for counterfeit accents
Credibility questioned daily
Sidestepped for tenure/promotion

Ghanaian LIVE-IN workers
They are retirees from Ghana
Parents/in-laws on visitor visa
Oh! Live-ins do it all
Embalmers of massive sores
Sores that soars in the nostrils
Cleaners of aging behinds
Cleaners of flaccid penises
Cleaners of vapid vaginas
Cleaners of limp breasts
Live-ins are slapped
Spit on, insulted
In ghoulish mansions
Alone in havens of wealth
Of entombed smells
Of loneliness
Of the living-dead

Ghanaian SEI-CU-LI-TY
Security man
Synonym for WATCHMAN
Alone, aloof, lonely
Stiffly trench-coated
Mechanistic door-man
Targets for gun-toting
Watchman watching it all
Watching snow

Enslaved Ghanaians
Young girls
Doctors, professors
Lured by Abrokyire gleam
All trapped in a cauldron
Of modern enslavement
Of hegemonic toxins
CNN parodying slavery
Sad stories, tragic stories
Of hegemonic lyrics
Of our cargo-cult mentality
Of our cloying banality
Oh! Ghanaians overseas
The living-dead generation

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained
oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in
Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college
in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist
hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com