When the hunter returned home that evening, the sight that met his eyes was very dismal indeed.

Instead of the cheerful boy who always smiled broadly on seeing him return safely home, he saw his son sitting on the bare floor, his hand on his cheek and presenting a most forlorn appearance.

There was no food laid on the table for the hunter, as usually happened.,

Indeed, the fire in the hearth in the kitchen had been allowed to go out. This meant the hunter would have to waste valuable matchsticks to relight it, he noted in passing.

“Why, what's happened?” the hunter cried in anguish, as he flung his load of meat on the floor and clutched his little boy in his arms.

“Stop crying! Stop crying right now!” he comforted the boy. “Whoever messed with you will have me -- and my gun -- to answer to. You just stop crying.”

The boy allowed his father to wipe the tears from his face and then began to tell hum the story off what happened in his absence:

“About three hours after you had left, I was busy in the kitchen when I heard a loud BANG! on the kitchen door. My heart jumped! What could that be? Before I knew what was happening, the kitchen door was ajar. And out there, behind the door stood a....a....a … .a....le-le-le-leopard! A fully-grown leopard!”

”WHAAAAAAT?” said the hunter. “Did you just say a fully-grown leopard came here?” “Yes!” affirmed the boy.

He continued: “Worse, it was a leopard that talked like a human being!! He said he wanted to kill me because you, my father, had killed all the animals in the forest that he, the leopard, feeds on!”

“My word! And what did you say to him? Go on!.... Go on!”

“I said that you only killed enough animals to feed the two of us, so if animals were getting scarce in the the forest, then it couldn't be your fault.After all, such predator animals as hyenas and jackals and wild dogs also fed on other animals?

“This retort of mine, harmless as it was, seemed to annoy him very much. He said he didn't like being contradicted when he spoke. He asked me if I didn't know that because of his bad temper and ferocity, many kings of men named themselves after him to frighten other chiefs! He was Kurotwiamansa, who was known to be capable of polishing off all the people in a whole nation. Unless they moved elsewhere. And I, a little boy, was teaching him about matters of consequence to him?”

“I told him I was too young to know about such things and that I had only told him what I had heard you say as constituting the truth of the matter. He then changed tack. He then became conciliatory and told me he would expect his children to defend him in exactly the way I was defending you. He then lowered his voice and asked me in a conspiratorial whisper: “Ei, tell me; is it true what they say about your father, that he has a special room in which he keeps the skulls of all the animals he kills?”

“I wanted to deny this, but I realised it would be a meaningless gesture as he might then break down every door in the house, in order to satisfy himself that I was telling the truth. So I said yes, you had such a room full of animal trophies.

“He then ordered me to go and bring all the skulls from the room and assemble them on the floor! Next, he asked me to name each of them. I did as he asked....”

“You didn't? ... You didn't name the leopard whose skull is in the room with the others??????”

The hunter placed his hand on his heart, trembling already in anticipation of the answer his son was about to give him.

“No!” the boy said.

The hunter heaved a sigh of relief.dead

“No!” the boy continued, “when I reached the skull of the leopard, I said that you hadn't told me what animal that was.

“The leopard asked me why.

“ I said that you had explained to me that some animals were the sacred totems of my mother's clan, and that if you killed them and told me about them, I would meet with a terrible misfortune when I grew up. So you hid the skulls of such animals from me.

“But (I said) since Mr Leopard was so interested in finding out what that particular animal was, I would ask you when you came back home, and Mr Leopard could come back tomorrow and hear what it is.

“The leopard then swore me to secrecy, getting me to pledge that I wouldn't tell you that he wanted to know the name of that particular animal from you, so that I could tell it to the leopard, but that I just wanted to know it to satisfy my own curiosity. I did none better and swore that I would not reveal anything at all about his visit here today to you. He was pleased that I was playing along with him. We parted as friends. Well – I made it appear we were fellow-conspirators against you!”

Now, you may have noticed that the boy had embellished the story of his meeting with the leopard quite a bit. He had no qualms about doing this, for he wanted his father to think him very clever – just as all little boys do!

Having heard his son out, the hunter told the boy he had done very well to have used his wits to parry what the leopard wanted so well. He then said: “So the leopard said he'd be back tomorrow, did he? Okay, when he comes tomorrow, pretend that I refused to name the skull for you. You can say that you hadn't been able to convince me to reveal the secret you, and that I had maintained again that given the fact that the fate of your mother's entire clan was involved, plus the possible misfortune that might befall you personally when you reached adulthood, it would be irresponsible of me to reveal the secret, just to satisfy your idle curiosity. The leopard's reaction will let us know whether it was bluffing or not and I shall then know what to do”.

The next day, the hunter went into the forest as usual, leaving his son behind. The boy was incandescent with fear, and wanted to run away to the nearest human settlement, but he decided to trust his father's judgement by staying to see what would happen.

At exactly the same time as it had done the previous day, the leopard appeared. This time, in line with the friendly attitude it had adopted at the end of the previous day's visit, it knocked at the door and greeted the boy warmly. It then politely asked the boy to assemble the skulls once again.

The boy tirelessly recited all the animals' names again. And again, it came to the turn of the leopard's skull. And the boy stalled:

"Do you know something? I think my father suspected something, because although I begged him, with tears in my eyes, to tell me what animal it was, he wouldn't budge. He said that it was the sacred day of that particular animal and that if he mentioned its name to me, both of us would die. I cried and cried, but he would not relent. He really believes in spiritual phenomena. He even got angry and told me pointblank that if I wanted to die, I could go ahead but as for him, he was not ready to die. He had faced many dangerous animals in the forest and survived and he wasn't about to throw his life away by breaking a taboo he knew would certainly kill him.

“So he didn't tell me. But as for tomorrow, he will have no excuse. Because no animal could possibly have two sacred days set aside for it by humans, would it? Not even our own chiefs are accorded two sacred days. So I agreed.”

The leopard wondered aloud: ”He's that superstitious, is he? He goes into the forest with a lethal gun but is such a coward that he uses the gun even on such a small creature as a squirrel. Yet he is afraid to name an animal on a particular day, because he fears that the ghost of that animal will come for him! Who told him we animals have ghosts? Didn't I tell you he was stupid?"

"...At this point,the leopard paused and thought hard for a moment. Then he said: ''All right – I shall come back tomorrow. But d I shall accept no excuse then – no excuse whatsoever. If you are unable to tell me what I want to know, I shall have to bite your head off. Literally!”

The leopard tried to smile at the implied joke, but the intended smile turned into a snarl instead. It is difficult to change one's nature, you see, not just one's spots, (pardon the pun)."

We must now jump to when the hunter returned from hunting that evening. This time, he found the boy beside himself with rage, not fear.

“What at all have I done to you?” he asked his father. “Must you expose me to such a hideous creature twice in a row? When it speaks, it is as if a covered dead body had been unwrapped! Its breath stinks. And it never stands still, so you never know whether it is going to spring at you and make short work of you or not. And that horrible tail of his -- moving left and right and curled at the tip in a way that spelt evil! Well, I don't want to go through it all again a third time. He says that he will be back tomorrow,and that as for tomorrow, if I don't tell him what he wants to know, he will bite my head off.

"So please tell me what you intend to do about it. For if you cannot prevent the leopard from squashing my head into pulp in its iron jaws, then I shall have to move from this cottage and go yo live elsewhere, wherever that might be.”

The hunter calmed the boy down: ”Don't you worry, he said. "I am just coming!” And the hunter went back into the bush and returned with some strange herbs, seeds and roots. He mashed them together, added some red cola juice and the ashes of a burnt frog, and “bathed” his gun with the concoction. As he smeared the barrel of the gun with the liquid, he murmured some incantations which the boy didn't quite comprehend. When he had finished, he told the boy: “Tomorrow, when the leopard comes, there are just two things you have to do. Do tell him that the name of the animal is leopard. But as soon as you do that, don't wait even for half a second, but move away very fast from the leopard when you hear me whistle! Remember: stand aside and make sure that you don't go and plant yourself d where the leopard will spring from – which, as you know, is his left side. Have you got that?”

The boy nodded.

The next morning, the hunter made all his preparations, as if he was going into the bush to hunt as usual. For he was clever enough to anticipate that the leopard might be watching things from somewhere, wily animal that it was. But instead of going deep the forest, the hunter walked a little way out of the cottage and then circled back to hide behind a tree. from where he could see the entire cottage in his gun-sights.

The hunter then put some extraordinarily powerful bullets in his gun, cocked it, and put it beside him. Then he waited behind the tree that hid him.

The hunter did not have too long to wait. Very soon, the leopard arrived. It didn't waste time but briskly went through the drill of asking the boy to assemble the skulls on the ground and naming each animal in turn.

Soon, they reached the skull of the dead leopard. And pointing to it, the boy said:

"This animal is:

Gyahene! [King of Fire] Etwie [The one who can scratch you to death!]

"Osebor"! [The one who can deliver a death-blow!]

"Aboa fufuo!" [The beautiful White Beast!] Iy was my father who killed this animal, "Kurotwiamansa!"[Destroyer of nations!] ...

"When the report of a gun rings out from the forest, I chant: “Long life!” to my brave father!”

The leopard growled loud and long when it heard this. The noise that erupted from its throat was a mixture of anger and sadness -- anger that it had discovered tyhe skull of its dead cousin, but sadness that although the boy had been sincere to him in every respect, he had to slay him in revenge for his dead cousin that the boy's father had killed.

The leopard crouched low and assumed the posture he adopted when he was about to attack his prey.

When the hunter saw that, he knew the leopard was was about to sprung on the boy.

But the leopard suddenly stopped midway through his crouching.. He felt like memorising the heavy and poetic encomiums that the boy had used in praise of leopards. So he said o the boy: “Thank you! But I only heard what you said with my left ear. Repeat it again, so that my right ear too can hear it! The I shall know that you have really said those words....!”

The boy did as he was told.

As he was finishing the last sentence, the leopard moved leftwards, and crouched till his stomach nearly touched the ground. This was his number one springing position. Nothing could survive an attack launched from that position.

As soon as he saw the leopard make that move, the hunter whistled to his son, “ Twe wo ho!” (Move aside!)

The boy skittered aside like a flash. This and the whistling made the leopard hesitate for just half a second. It readjusted its his springing position and then leaped towards the boy.

At that same instant, the hunter pressed the trigger of his gun:

“TENGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!”

And the leopard fell in mid-spring, at the feet of the hunter's son, dead.

It was from that day on that hunters began to take their young sons with them into the forest, to apprentice them in the craft of hunting. For all hunters learnt from the hunter in this story, that leaving their sons alone in a cottage i the middle of the forest whilst out hunting,could cost them dear. It had nearly cost the hunter in the stiry the life of his dear son, who was nearly slain by a wicked, monstrous, frightening leopard.

Now, what is the moral of this story? There are several, but the one of greatest importance is this: when it comes to the security of ourselves and our families, we should not hesitate to think ”out of the box” and use our God-given intelligence to ensure their safety, instead of following our own predilections. By leaving his son in the hut alone because of his own fears of what might happen to him if he took him hunting at to young an age, (well-founded though his fears might have been) the hunter actually nearly lost his boy for good – to a ferocious, merciless leopard which would have unjustly killed the boy for something the boy's father had done, not what the boy himself had done.

Talking of security, I am incredulous that the Parliament of Ghana, sitting in February 2016, had not found it necessary to discuss the issue of the two ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees, whom the Americans have to Ghana for resettlement in early January 2016. The action of the Ghana Government, in accepting the detainees, unmistakably placed Ghana on the enemy list of Al Qaeda and its terrorist branches, AQIM, Ansar-Dine and Ansar-Sharia, as a 'partner' in America's self-declared “war on terror” against Al Qaeda. Isis and their jihadist allies.

Yet the Ghana Parliament had made no pronouncement on the issue, but had, instead, been busy vetting new Ministers! Wouldn't these Ministers be serving in a Cabinet that the President would ignore on serious matters of national security, if he chose to? What mandate were the MPs going to give to these Ministers, with regard to how they should behave, if the President presented his Cabinet with unreasonable faits-accomplis and/or arbitrary fiats, as if he was a dictator and not just an elected President?

If the President's action on the Gitmo-2, is illegal, as the NPP znd Occupy-Ghana maintain it is, is our Parliament going to condone such illegality on the part of the President, by keeping mum about the illegality he has committed?

American Senators, on the other hand, would have brought impeachment proceedings against their President, were he to ignore the constitutionally required "advice and consent" of the Congress on a matter that impinged seriously on national security. Four Senators had, in fact, not hesitated to insult Ghana by writing to tell the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to suggest that Ghana's prisons are practically worthless and that $10 million should be deducted from US foreign aid to Ghana, for each ex-Gitmo detainee that Ghana is not able to incarcerate securely.

Did the Senators write this letter at the suggestion of the US Government, to twist the arm of the Ghana Government and Parliament? Is the Ghana Government aware that US legislators from the party in opposition regularly do the "dirty work" of the US Government for it, by threatening measures against foreign governments that the US Government wants to cow -- by, say, threatening a cut in foreign aid?

Whilst the US Senators rubbished Ghana's prison system, the US Government did not care to defend Ghana! And the Senators didn't care a hoot about whether there could be “diplomatic consequences” as a result of their insulting another sovereign state and hurting the feelings of its citizens..

What does that teach Ghanaian Parliamentarians? This, that the US Senators did not flinch from insulting Ghana because they are not afraid to carry out their duty of representing the interests of the people of their country, as they see it.

US Senators do what they believe is in the interest of the people of their country. Can't our Parliamentarians at least learn something from the action of these US Senators? That would be the only positive by-product of the whole sorry Gitmo detainees business.

As the case is, the US Senators [like our leopard] growled. And our Parliament, which is full of people who have been “educated” and therefore possess qualifications relating to the acquisition of 'knowledge' in all manner of subjects, folded up. It is hard to conclude that these qualified people who act as our MPs also possess native wisdom of the sort that our folk tales and proverbs were meant to instruct us to absorb.

Indeed, if our MPs were lined up before our illiterate fellow-citizens, could they could they explain their inaction over the Gitmo issue convincingly to them? Didn't the little boy display a tremendous mastery of the verbal arts before the leopard, and thereby save the situation? Why couldn't our Government do the same when the American Government leaned on it to accept the Gitmo-2?

Folklore might make us laugh and take us outside our day-to-day lives and immerse us in a world of a different dimension, where animals do talk and engage in a cut-and-thrust contest of wits with human beings. That is intended to teach us that if even mere animals can use verbal skills to try and acquire what is in their interest, then how much more should human beings -- the original masters of the intelligent use of words -- should safeguard themselves by exercising wisdom in all they do?

ends