Thelma Louis

Meeting the in-Laws

11/18/2014 3:22 pm

In my entire life I have met ‘the in-laws’ three times. I haven’t married any of their offspring unfortunately or fortunately considering the last encounter turned into a full-blown attack on my personality.

My first experience was surreal, almost like an out of body experience because these old folks discussed me like homework whiles I sat right there. Basically I was invisible. I was 19 years; obviously they didn’t take me serious.

In fact they thought I was a distraction to their ‘baby boy’ as his mum so fondly called him. She looked at me with suspicion, like anytime now I was going to jump on her son, get pregnant and be a burden on her Prince who I had been informed a hundred times that afternoon was heading for Harvard.

For the first time in a long time I really missed my mum. I missed her fussing about me, her worry that I’d turn out okay. She wouldn’t have said I was heading to Harvard but certainly she would have had no problem reminding every Dick Tom and Kofi how incomparable they were to her only jewel. She always said I was a rare beauty and any man was going to be lucky to marry me… If I kept my thighs together of course.

My first in-law encounter took away my self esteem. I was the nobody girl who wanted to destroy the future of somebody’s boy.

He never left for Harvard, got two different girls pregnant within two years and ended up running a small drinking joint in Asylum Down…

My second encounter was almost hilarious. My boyfriend’s father flirted with me from the moment I entered the house until I left and right after that my boy broke up with me because his mother had found texts from his father’s phone to mine professing his love for me.

Now I wasn’t about to tell my boy his father had the hots for me. I didn’t encourage it, in fact I threatened to tell his son but somehow I never got around to it. It was difficult and I didn’t want to loose my most pleasant future mother in-law yet.

After my first experience I was just too happy to be accepted by my second future mother in-law. His mum was sweet, I cooked with her in the kitchen, she liked my suggestions and continuously said I could be the daughter she never had. She had four boys, mine being the third. His father was a dog… And he wasn’t too subtle about it.

A Funny Thing Called Love

11/11/2014 1:28 pm

by Thelma Louis

A few days ago I was going through a stark of old documents looking for my school certificates to complete a job application when I stumbled upon a picture. This was an old picture of Mark and I. We were smiling into the camera.

Sometime in the year 1997, Mark and I had been dating a few months. He was gorgeous and my friends liked him. I was hooked. I played laid back when he was doing the chase. I intentionally missed his calls and waited by the phone for him to call back. And when he did I will pretend to be sleeping, or busy. It was all tricks of the trade.

Eight months on I was in love. I would stand by the gate waiting to see the lights of his car come down the road. It was during the load-shedding period. There were no mobile phones so if he wasn’t at home then home girl just had to wait and so I waited.

One night he was supposed to pick me up for a party at 9pm. At 11pm I was still waiting. I called his house every five minutes. My future father in law, who didn’t remember my name by the way, was beginning to get irritated. They didn’t know where Mark was.

The Bad Kisser…

11/4/2014 12:19 pm

by Thelma Louis

I spent several hours a day in front of the mirror practicing the perfect kiss. At fifteen years I had watched enough movies to understand what the fuss was all about when a man and a woman met, liked each other and desperately needed to lock lips and exchange saliva.

I practiced with my favorite movies, ‘Boomerang’ when Eddie Murphy kissed Halle Berry for the first time in his couch. I watched ‘The Body Guard’ sixteen times, I was obsessed with Whitney Houston, and does anybody remember ‘A Prelude to a kiss’? Alec Baldwine and Meg Ryan. I was a kissing junkie. Mind you I only practiced with my mirror. My perfect kiss wasn’t good enough for all those ordinary boys. I was waiting for my prince charming to break my virgin kiss.

By twenty-five I had kissed about an entire class of people. Girls, Boys, Men, rich poor, handsome, ugly… I had found nothing spectacular. My dreams of having the perfect kiss had long dwindled.

Were people just not inspired to learn the art of kissing or I had I just watched too many movies?. I decided it was the former. Bad kissers were my deal breaker. I mean I still dated a few slightly good ones. But I never really cared about kissing them a lot. Which obviously meant I wasn’t that into the person either. Kissing was more intimate for me than lovemaking. And I sought of got that confirmation when I watched ‘Pretty Woman’. You know Julia’s character even though a prostitute refused to kiss her client on the mouth because she regarded that as too intimate. But I realized a lot of men preferred otherwise. It was getting into the real action that excited them. I left it at that.

So whiles I dated the okay kissers I waited for my perfect kisser to come along whiles still trying to give a few kissing lessons to make my situation bearable.

But I swear some of these men couldn’t be helped.

Take that one whose breathe smelt like fried fish… the dude had just had kenkey and fish and he didn’t know he had to gaggle some Listerine or better still get some gum before meeting up with his date.

21st Century Woman…

10/14/2014 12:35 pm

by Thelma Louis

I was feeling very h*rny but I was also feeling very lazy. And I didn’t want to lift a very heavy thigh. I managed to raise my hand and laid it carelessly across his chest. And like clock work his eyes opened.

It really was easy getting a man’s attention I thought. One of the reasons I was definitely coming back a woman, or better still a 21^st Century Woman.

I loved my friend Sandra. She was all Ghanaian, born in James Town, British Accra lol, but bred in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, London since age twelve.

So even though Sandra hadn’t come home in almost fifteen years, girlfriend had stayed true to her Ghanaian-ness. She spoke and understood some broken Ga, loved her kenkey and fish from kenkey house and her favorite Ghanaian song was still ‘Aben wo ha’. Trust me I had told her a zillion times Ghanaians had moved on to Sarkodie and recently a slightly crazy one… uhm… oh Shatta Wale.

There was little wonder why Sandra was over the moon to come back home during the 2012 Christmas. She never stopped talking about it and honestly her friends who lived in London but had come for the occasional Christmas’ and funerals were getting tired of her ranting.

Yeah so they had enjoyed the attention the Ghanaian men gave them when they realized they were visitors in town, and the fact that everybody wanted to do things for them at family gatherings, the parties, the food, the azonto, the rasta, the weed… Oh lets not forget the fact that when they changed the mighty pound sterling to cedis they pretty much owned the town. They loved the pecks but they still hated the bad roads, the dumso’s were particularly annoying and the constant money-begging scenario was a real nightmare.

Still Sandra was the happiest person in the world traveling to a West African Country that Christmas.

I picked her up at the airport; she was in awe most of the time. She didn’t quite know what to expect so she basically just soaked it all in. Next day I went back for her at nine in the evening for a party. As usual she got all the attention on arrival. Later a man walked up and asked her to dance. She got right to it. I was a little confused at the speed at which she accepted the dance. Our Ghanaian ladies style was to decline at first and then get coxed into it gradually and then perhaps when the man got down on his knees we would… uhm go and move a muscle.

Let’s Go Dutch

10/7/2014 2:10 pm

by Thelma Louis

As a young girl growing up in Ghana I was made to understand from a very early age that no matter how bad it got in life I would more than probably finish secondary school, find a job that took care of a few bills, meet the man of my dreams and he will cater for my real needs.

And here my needs meant a brand new four-wheeler because I was going to have kids, two, a nice package of a boy and girl called Duncan and Deborah (my mum thought Duncan is better than Macbeth if I insisted on going Shakespearean). A nice three-bedroom house in Dansoman or North Kaneshie. Mind you growing up in the eighties, Dansoman and North Kaneshie were the places to live. By the mid nineties the paradigm had shifted, I was spending more time with rich friends in Cantonment, Airport, Kanda, Osu and surrounding areas.

If I could travel with my family on Ghana Airways at least twice a year, shop in Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street London, put my kids in Christ The King School, and eat Papaye on Sunday afternoons after Church then I’d know all my real needs were being catered for.

Of course dreaming is one thing, what your grandmother and those adorable aunties tell you are another, what that boy next door whispers to get into your pants is the crap and what life dishes out is the real b*tch.

A Little Too Much

09/30/2014 2:26 pm

by Thelma Louis

When I was thirteen, in secondary school form two and I had to manage a tin of milo for an entire month, I made a solemn promise to myself. I decided that when I grew up, and I had my own money I will drink at least five cups of thick milo everyday, waste one full tin of ideal milk in every cup, spread planta margarine in a loaf of hot tea bread and eat my heart out.

Twenty two years on, I earn Ghc4,735 a month after taxes, I drive a 2013 Toyota Corolla, I live in a beautiful house in East Legon, I travel business class at least once every year but I hate bread. I prefer tea with one cube sugar. Black.

So this particular night I am staring at my husband and wondering what happened to all those cravings I used to have for him when we first married five years ago. Because like my lack of hunger for thick milo, bread and butter I had no sexual desires whatsoever for this guy who once gave me multiple orgasms under ten minutes in the shower.

We were having our usual Friday girl’s hang out at our favorite restaurant. Serwaa Boateng had the floor. She was on her fifth glass of red wine, had let down her long natural locks and was not nearly done spewing her guts.

Luckily we had booked the private room on Monday so we had the space to ourselves. Five girls, all in our mid thirties, gainfully employed, two mothers, two wives, one divorcee, all in thriving relationships with attractive successful African men, all sexually frustrated.

‘For the second time in a row this week I had to imagine myself being hammered by a faceless dirty looking plumber to reach org*sm whiles my husband worked his skills on top of me’ Serwaa blurted out again. She was tipsy. Anytime now she was going to trip over her shoes lying nearby and succumb to gravity. I went to her and led her back to her seat. She laughed her frustration and asked for more wine.

Before Serwaa, most of the girls in the room had vented.

Obviously there were a lot more questions than answers. We were wondering why the cravings had changed. Why Fanta didn’t taste as good anymore? Why chicken and rice was nothing special at Christmas and why the hell did Piccadilly Biscuits tasted like chalk?

A Night to Remember…Part 2 (Concluding)

09/23/2014 2:18 pm

by Thelma Louis

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 IF YOU HAVE NOT READ IT ALREADY

The time was 7.15pm – Dutch time. I had finished my bath. It was long, and steamy. I did that when I wanted to wake every organ in my body. I needed everybody on board if I was going to have a bloody good time!

I took my time with my make up. Earlier on I had gone to the shops and bought some fresh clothes. A sexy little number. I wore my favorite strappy Kurt Geiger shoes, dabbed my channel chance at my favorite secret places. I winked at myself in the mirror. I looked beautiful even if I said so myself. Thelma, the river goddess!

He picked me up at 8.30 on the dot. That’s what you learn when you hang with these Europeans. They are time conscious, not like my brothers and sisters back home in the land of Africa. By the way just incase you hadn’t been confronted with the truth yet, to the typical outsider and I say ‘outsider’ to mean all those folks who haven’t bothered to leave the comfort of their continent and check us out, the outsiders think we all live in one big house. Nigerians, Kenyans, Ghanaians, Ugandan’s… except for the South Africans of course. Even they don’t consider themselves a part of that household; lets just say they live in the next house? Okay.

We had driven a few streets down from my hotel when Aalt stopped around a bend. He flashed his perfect twenty-two at me and jumped out. He was going to be right back. I stayed back, locked the car and quickly checked if my phone had full network service. I heard in the news a few days ago that a girl was abducted from outside a nightclub in Spain and had never been seen again. The authorities were almost certain it was human trafficking.

I stared at myself in the mirror. If they took me I’ll never stop crying. I mean what was I really good at except the missionary style. Don’t get me wrong I could wriggle and do the doggy and those acrobatics if it came to it but I’m also quite hopeless at it. In fact I had decided a long time ago that I had a defect of the wriggle.

In secondary school I had asked my best friend to teach me how to do it, when the house mistress walked in on us and paraded us in front of the entire school as ‘supis’ I was mortified. It took the urge off of course. So I was all about ‘booby show’. I’d pull one out to compensate for the wriggle. I didn’t have sex until I was in my twenties and the dude was too excited to notice I was on my back the entire event. I am sure he would have cared less if I were asleep.

A Night to Remember…Part One

09/16/2014 12:23 pm

by Thelma Louis

‘Did you pack this bag yourself ma’am?’

I looked at the immigration officer. She was a woman, 6ft 2, black and fierce, slightly taller than the guard dogs sniffing my bag. My head was swimming.

I had arrived via KLM from Amsterdam to Washington DC that morning. It was a good flight, but the night before was even better. As the American immigration officer pounded my ears with the one question nobody liked to be asked, I realized ‘my night to remember’ could have turned into ‘my life to remember’.

I may have just exchanged my freedom with one night of insane, wild fun.

We touched down at Schiphol Airport right about 6.15am Dutch time. I was fatigued and couldn’t wait to get to my hotel for a much needed shower. Making the flight in Accra the previous night had been a nightmare. I had woken up with a severe headache that morning. I knew who had come to visit, my tooth.

If you are as normal a human being as I am then you will understand that going to the dentist is the most dreadful thing ever. So l did my best to stay out of that awful chair as much as I could. I brushed twice, sometimes three times a day; I did most of my heavy chewing on the left side of my mouth and I gaggled as much Listerine in between meals as mush as I could. But like a thief comes in the middle of the night, so does a toothache and mine had kicked in the front door around 2am and taken everything from me including dear sleep.

I was grumpy. My head of department won’t shut up about the pile of work I needed to submit before I proceeded on my one-month leave starting tomorrow. I was going to be the maid of honor at my cousin’s wedding that Saturday in Virginia, reason I had to leave immediately plus I needed to do my usual one night stop over in Amsterdam. It was my favorite city in the world. Why the hell not. You could engage in any amount of fun in that city and you would still not end up behind bars. I loved the Dutch. TheY were friendlier than the British and much more forgiving than the Americans.

My head was throbbing. My jaws felt like two macho men were pulling it apart. I hadn’t attempted to eat anything for fear of making my situation worse, my stomach was beginning to make noises and I think I could hear one of the guys laughing.

My dentist was upset with me and so was my head of department. Apparently I couldn’t do anything right today. After poking my mouth with the dental mirror for what seemed like a lifetime, my dentist recommended a temporary fill in since I had warned her I was travelling that evening and nothing or anybody was going to stop me. She pumped me with painkillers and proceeded to clean me out and fill me in. I knew the pain would kick in when we started taxing. It was my most stressful moment on a airplane. Somehow I always imagined the plane won’t lift in time and we would end up in the sea or the bushes or the swamp, I don’t know what the hell laid beyond the runway and I hoped to God never found out.

I wrapped my “chalewote” with yesterday’s newspaper and tucked it neatly into my suitcase. My packing was complete. I always kept a packed bag around just incase I had to up and leave. You could never be sure when the army decided they were tired of the barracks and wanted to take over the lavish lifestyle of our corrupt politicians. So I kept a packed bag of my passport, some t-shirts, two pairs of jeans, my loafers, some panties, one dinner dress, one party dress depending on which prince charming I met on the ship crossing over to Australia. Somehow I always imagined that if there were ever a coup the best get away plan would be on a ship heading to the end of the world, i.e. Australia. My headache gave me a slight jolt; I made a conscious note to down some good amount of alcohol once I was on board to see me through the night.

The usual lackadaisical attitude greeted me at Kotoka International Airport. ‘The gate way to Africa’ my ass! That SINGLE escalator hadn’t worked an entire year, the bathrooms were an eye sore and don’t start me on those fans that almost carried your wig away if you had the misfortune of standing in front of it.

That’s Just Me…

09/9/2014 9:18 am

by Thelma Louis

I don’t like to stay in bed an entire day having sex or talking about it. I am an intelligent specie who would like to be engaged in other intelligent activities. That’s just me.

I don’t like waiting in line for a table or making do with the table near the bathroom when I have been picked up for an arranged dinner date. Reserve a table, damn it! That’s just me.

I don’t like sleeping on dark sheets or stained mattresses and pillows. I prefer them white, it tells me if someone has been sleeping in it before me and as for those stains I’d rather not let my imagination run wild. That’s just me.

I don’t like to be reminded of how tough the world is and how unnecessary certain purchases are when I am shopping with my own money. And as for those bored looks and constant sighs I get every time I change my mind about a dress… Well you aren’t getting any TLC if you keep that up. That’s just me.

I don’t like to be told a zillion times to try another dish on the menu card when I have clearly indicated what I want. And please don’t tell me I can order ‘anything’ and then insist I go for the cheaper option. That’s just me.

I don’t like to kiss or be kissed after several hours of sleep. And it doesn’t make it any easier that you didn’t brush your teeth the night before. Oh and it’s definitely not okay to give me ‘head’ or ask for one under those circumstances. That’s just me.

I don’t care to listen to stories about your life, that of your family and friends for the duration of an entire date. I don’t really know them, there’s so much excitement I can derive from talking about strangers and as for those stories concerning your ex’s lets just not go there. That’s just me.

I don’t like that after lending you money that you clearly indicated you will return to me, I have to constantly remind you about paying back. And don’t tell me your cold attitude has nothing to do with the fact that I actually took the money back when you finally returned it to me. That’s just me.

Coffee Magic…

09/2/2014 10:07 am

by Thelma Louis

I closed the book and glanced at my watch. It was 3.14am. I wondered if I should ‘chew’ a few more pages of the capture of Timbuktu in the‘Rise and fall of the Mali Empire’. It was 1992 May, secondary school form three. Exams week. I was high on caffeine and sugar, the result of leaving everything till ‘the last days’.

I looked up from my Casio watch. There were just three of us now. It had been an almost full class four hours ago. Obviously the ‘weak’ or the ‘intelligent’ had taken their leave, the remaining… well; they could just be like me. My eyes hadn’t blinked for a while now; I could watch an army of ants move a car and I still won’t blink.

The paper was at 8.30 that morning. I decided I’d go take a shower, eat a bowl of soaking, clean my locker and return to the classroom to finish off with the divisions in the Mali kingdom that led to the rule of the Bambara and Senufo people… ha I thought to myself ‘I will murder these questions so badly these Malian’s will wish someone else did the killing’

I stole glances at the others before I left the classroom. I was making sure everyone of them had their full body support. Two years ago form one; whiles I was trying unsuccessfully to sleep through the delicious smell of ‘homecho’ that some seniors were devouring below me, I heard a commotion outside. We all rushed out. A final year form five student was screaming and shaking like a leaf on the veranda. When she was calm enough to talk she said she was leaving the classroom when she decided to say bye to the girl sitting a few chairs behind her. When she got close enough, she called out but there was no response. She decided to knock on the book covering the face of the person. The hands let go. The book fell flat on the table. There was no face, just hands.

A few days later her parents picked her up. She never returned.

As I made it past the science block I thought again for the tenth time that day what I was going to do with my hair for the long vac. I could go to the Labone lady under the trees for my braids or I could just ‘stretch it’ in the salon. The braids were easier once you got past the eight hours of push and pull torture these girls put you through, plus the smell of the armpits, and the endless gossip about Lumba and how he’s sleeping with his girl dancers. The ‘stretch’ took only an hour to do but I always ended up with burns around my ears. One time I spent my entire vacation nursing a rotting ear…

I stopped. There was a click and then silence.

I thought I head the click of a high heel shoe. I looked around. I was half way between my dorm and the classroom. It was dark; there wasn’t a single person in sight. I took a few steps, the click sound of the high heel resumed. I stopped. It stopped. I broke into cold sweat.

HONESTY is the Best Policy…

08/26/2014 11:40 am

by Thelma Louis

Growing up, I heard and learnt lot. For example my grandma used to say that if you told a small lie, you had to tell a bigger one to cover the small one and then eventually you’ll be caught in the biggest one that will drown you. I didn’t want to drown in my lies so I made a point to keep things simple. I will tell the truth; after all it set you free.

So growing up I believed in honesty being the best policy.

This particular night however, this policy wasn’t working very well for me. Somehow I had come to understand in my adult life that the truth didn’t always set you free. In fact more often than not it puts me into even bigger troubles. I was accused of being brutal and unfeeling. Heartless! But I wasn’t about to give up the one true trait that my dear grandma had instilled in me. At the end of the day when all was said and done, I was the ‘free’ one.

But I wasn’t having any such luck this night.

On a long business trip to Canada, I started chatting with this fine dude of Ghanaian birth and Canadian citizenship. We talked at length, shared jokes, exchanged numbers and promised to hook up in Toronto.

After my business was done, I wanted to see the city so I called my Ghanaian/Canadian pal who was more than happy to show me the ropes. As the night wound down I felt light and silly. I had had quite a bit to drink but I was also ready to let my head down. So I did. I went dancing.

When my pal dropped me off I asked him to come in for a nightcap. He didn’t refuse. We started kissing from the door, down the hall—

‘What!’ My boo was livid.

The Good Doctor…

08/19/2014 9:35 am

by Thelma Louis

I asked her to wait for me at the gate while I checked the kelewele for the third time just to make sure it was the dry type and not ‘patchaa’ as she had put it over the phone. Until a moment ago I didn’t know there were two types of kelewele.

My phone rang, I picked up. She was lost. How can anyone get lost waiting at the gate of Korle-bu Teaching Hospital? Even the dead knew their way around here. This conviction came at the back of a doctor’s encounter with his father in law’s ghost at the cafeteria one evening. The man who was an apparent lover of coffee had made a cup and was sipping it in front of the cafeteria’s 1990 Tv. The doctor had since left campus in fear of another such encounter.

She sounded irritable. She said she was forced to move on because other drivers were honking at her. I proceeded to explain to her that this might have been because an ambulance could come in with an emergency at anytime. This seemed to annoy her even more. ‘Ewuradi…’ I held my head. My Ma warned me against high maintenance girls like this one.

This one was a princess by all standards. She flew Accra Dubai Accra for holiday, drove a Mercedes, and drank only fizzy water. I checked to make sure the water I bought that afternoon was still there. I had to go all the way to Labadi beach hotel to find one. The woman at the store near Mamprobi Post Office gave me a stern look when I told her none of her vast variety of bottled water appealed to me ‘Owula oye ojogbang?’ she asked. I gave a sheepish grin. I didn’t understand a word she had said but I knew she wasn’t telling me how handsome I was.

I found her in front of the ophthalmologist department. I rolled down the windows of my new Hyundai 2001 car. She glared at me and gestured for me to drive ahead. This would be my longest drive any mile. The potholes were wide and deep. Earlier, I had warned her about these manholes but would she let me hear the last of it after we had gotten to my flat? Of course not.

We passed the buckets of water I had fetched that morning. The rusted handle held the hem of her dress pulling the bucket of water down into a big splash. Her attempted flee sent her sprawling on the floor. It was dark; I could hardly see what I was grabbing at. I spent the next few minutes apologizing for pulling at her breasts.

Just when we had dug into the cold kelewele and the wok in I had spent my last fifty cedis on, I heard a click and then the lights went off.

I had decided a while back I wasn’t going to win this princess over with my shabby doctor ‘s life; the ugly oil painted wardrobe, my five short sleeve shirts, the cheap paper weight rag from Melcom, the make shift director’s chair that threatened to cave under her weight, the heavily scratched mismatched cutlery…

I knew by now I was way out of my league but I hadn’t played my last card yet. I had DSTV. After all what was a girless doctor supposed to do after a day at the emergency ward? The Crime Channel was my favorite. I had just switched to ‘I almost got away with it’ when the gods took my last ounce of pride.

The Cheating Curve…

08/12/2014 8:51 am

by Thelma Louis

I heard my name… it was bold with an air of authority. The voice was unmistakable. I stopped breathing. He did too.

‘Thelma…’ he boomed again. I responded as casually as I could. He was at the window. The curtains were drawn. The room was dark but I could feel his eyes piercing through the darkness.

Sammy crawled from under my naked body and disappeared into the bathroom. I reached for my nightgown and begun the task of trying to button up as fast as I could.

I felt weightless. I felt caught!

Why is it that when the issue of cheating comes up, girls are quick to point accusing fingers at boys? In the company of our boyfriends my girls and I always put up a colorful show of how we would react should we ever catch them with another girl and even worse if we caught them in bed doing the unspeakable. Whiles some said they will cut off penises; others aimed their fight straight at the other girl.

After all Girls don’t cheat. Boys do.

If only my girls could see me now.

I had started a senseless sexual affair some weeks ago. Why? I was bored and needed something to rejuvenate the little girl inside me. Sammy and I worked together. He was cute, and careless. He smoked and drunk with jollity, his music was loud and he drove fast. I felt cute right along with him. And in spite of all the abuse he remained handsome, neat and smelled good. Boy did smell good. When he leaned in to kiss me one evening after a drop off, I hesitated for just one second.

The rest like they say happened almost every lunch time in my apartment and under the watchful eyes of my mum’s picture, which hang loosely behind my door. I only noticed her when Sammy was lying on top of me doing what he did best. And each time I solemnly swore… ‘I will lie the other way next time’.

Don’t get me wrong; my mum won’t mind that her daughter was having sex in her apartment during her lunch break. Her problem… she didn’t like the ‘Ga’ Boys and Sammy Kottey was one full-blown ‘Ga’ Boy just like my mum. My father was ‘Kwawu’ by the way. Don’t ask me which ‘Ga’ boy did what to my mum. She just didn’t approve. So my afternoon sessions were turning into full-blown fights between my ‘cums’ and my mum’s disapproving stares…

I opened the door carefully and raised my eyes. Kwesi stood next to his car. He was tall, attractive and older. We had been together for two years. Things were not great but they were not bad. Not as bad as it was about to get anyway. I kept eye contact. One of my male friends told me that was the trick to beat. When you ‘think’ you’ve been caught and remember the word here is ‘think’, keep calm, be bold, keep eye contact.

**NEW COLUMN: I Hate Mondays! So Much It Affects My Sundays

08/5/2014 2:29 pm

by Thelma Louis

First, why do people think if I couldn’t perform a task or finish a problem by Friday 5pm, I will have a different answer by Monday 8am?

This particular Monday morning I had decided to take matters into my own hands and change my fate. At 7.30am I started calling everybody I expected will call me at 8.00 to give them a dose of their own medicine.

Everybody was shocked including my boyfriend who promised to come by the night before but didn’t show, didn’t call… I wanted to be sure he didn’t die on his way to see me. Better tell him I was quitting my job before he beat me to it and told me he had a bad stomach ache… His third excuse in the past two weeks. I had made a mental note to check my red book to see if it was pre-break up sign.

I crawled out of the bed I spent my entire Sunday in.

My knee gave a funny sound… Hmm I am thirty-seven, people say I look young for my age. Tell that to my knee who could barely support my skill last time I was trying to perform a sit across dance for my boyfriend during our lovemaking. Oh why are men getting so lazy in bed? The dude just wanted to lie there… A sheepish smile on his face suggesting he was enjoying my wriggles whiles I kept thinking I need me a younger man who will be more than happy to please me in bed.

Mondays… The sun is out too early, everybody is in a hurry to nowhere and Accra has a stench from all the rubbish people pushed out of their homes over the weekend. I made a mental note to vote anybody but this government in the next election. I grew up loving Rawlings. Why the hell not. The man was damn charismatic, he may not have been the most intelligent as the opposition kept telling us but he put his money where his mouth was. He took decisions, the good, the bad, the ugly. These days I forget who is in charge, AMA or the young man knocking relentlessly on my window asking me to buy ‘yooyi’ for breakfast.

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