Coffins (From #TheJainist)

“Aren’t you even ashamed your family laid you to rest in this disgrace of a coffin?”

“Hmmm, Kubi! I was shocked when those fools placed me in this ugly thing they call a coffin! How could they do this to me? After all the money I left behind, they couldn’t buy me a coffin made of gold? Good riddance! Look
at that useless handle! I swear if I should ever go back to life I would slap my children to their senses” Oliver replied his friend.


“Do you know when Felix died his family bought him a coffin worth $20,000? Do you also know that Monica’s coffin cost $25,000?” Kubi retorted holding his best friend’s hand. Oliver had died a month ago and his family gave him a poorly organised funeral.

The land of the dead was a dark and gravity-defying world lined up with darker bulbs. The lights that brightened the place came from sad ghosts who floated around waiting for loved ones who had refused to die. The ghosts had the cosmic ability to emit lights when they hovered around. The
unique thing about this land was that every ghost had a distinct light it emitted. For instance, Kubi emitted darkish-crimson lights which annoyed other ghosts. Oliver on the other hand emitted brownish-greenish lights which was extremely irritating when a ghosts begin thinking about Earthly
pleasures.

“Sweet Jesus! If Felix’s family could afford a $20,000 coffin then I have extremely been shortchanged” Oliver gasped.

“To be honest, I was very shocked to see your highfalutin coffin emerge from the ground. You see, when you were dying, I helped in fast tracking your death so that I could share your coffin with you and I—“ 

“Hold your horses Kubi! You want to tell me you killed me?”

“Technically!” Kubi replied running his (talons) fingernails on his chest.
“Didn’t you know I had ---“

“To sleep with Maame Kay” Kubi concluded the statement for his comrade.

“At least you should have let me sleep with Maame Kay first! Do you know how much I invested in her?” he screamed pacing up in down in the sordid darkness.

“Consider it as a sunk cost” Kubi smiled.

“Why should I? I believe you hate me.”

“No please! Remember when we were young I told you I was going to sleep with more women than you?”

“I remember but what has it got to do with Maame Kay?”

“Good! It so happened that you were two women and three children away from equaling my record. You had slept with ninety eight women and had twenty children out of which thirteen were rejected by you and guess what? You were only thirty three! Now check my record, I slept with hundred women at age thirty two, I had twenty three children and aided in aborting many. So I didn’t want you to beat my record.” He smiled.

Oliver opened his mouth in disbelief “Ninety eight!”

“Close your mouth and yes ninety eight women. Since you weren’t counting, I stopped to count for you. When you were in transition to this place, I overheard your children insulting you mercilessly. If you had heard some of their insults they hurled at you, you would have wished you were here earlier. So now before you cry, can I sleep by your side in your coffin?”

“And what happened to yours?”

“Because I was an irresponsible man, I was buried with none. In fact, no one knows I am here. I died while having sex and this prostitute not wanting to get into trouble dug a hole and buried me in it. I died at age thirty two and no one cared to look for me, not even you, so I was buried with none. Every day, I have to beg other ghost in order to sleep by their sides. At times, no one wants to share his coffin because they say I snore and you can imagine what these cruel winds do to my lungs.”

“So how did you get here in the first place?”

“The prostitute buried me with three packs of unused condoms. I can give you some by the way.”

“Do ghosts have sex?”

“Sadly no. This is why I keep missing Earth. Trust me, when you wake up with an erection, you would understand.

Read More

Leaving (from #TheJainist)

She was a virtual presence that had captured my heart with her words. It all started in a bleak December and each dying moment of the year brought its own gothic lust of achieving phantom dreams and buried wishes. It is often said that we find love in unexpected places and to this memories attest to this fact. 

I logged on to my facebook and saw a friend request which I spent no time in accepting. She had no mutual friends with me so I wondered how she was able to find me. She lived in Canada, spoke French and I doubt if she had heard whispers my name anywhere to merit a friend request and even if she had heard my name from somewhere how was she able to spell my name?

This is how it all began – she sent me a message on facebook in French and I sent her a translated reply “I don’t understand French.” This was done by the kindest courtesy of Google Translator. She replied in a few hours and asked how I was able to reply her in perfect French when I claimed not to understand French. I replied her again “I used Google Translator.”

Her name was Belle and for the next month, we spent time chatting (with Google Translator as my saviour). As time went by, I began to less and less depend on Google Translator; there were some of the conversations I could simply guess its equivalence in English. I think I enjoyed her chats and I am sure she enjoyed mine too.

She told me she was fourteen and had never had a boyfriend before. She claimed her classmates did not find her as desirable. She from that moment started to cry on me – she sounded like a bud needing help to blossom into a flower – and I thought I should help her. What happened next was that I was her boyfriend and she was my girlfriend.

From that time, she became everything I ever and never wanted. We talked about the future like we were gods who sat on thrones caressing each other into happiness. She told me how her mother hated blacks and how she would be disappointed if she ever dated or married one. A fool in love – I should have read in between those lines that our relationship was like a wind chasing happiness but I assured her that maybe her mother would change her mind if she happens to see me. She told me of how her father, a Kenyan, left them in the ditch and how after ten years down the drain, they have never seen or heard from him. It pained her to talk about this and confessed that every timr she looked at her skin, she wished she had not a shade of black in it. I promised her I was never going to be like her father because if for nothing at all, I am from Ghana and I will be different from his father who is from Kenya. She told me of how she trusted me and how she felt we could belong together.
She told me of dreams she had of us marrying in Ghana. She said in that dream, her mother had scolded her when she told her that she had been dating a black man for five years. She replied her mother that she was nineteen and capable of loving whoever she wanted to love. Her mother cried and her younger brother told her not to trust me for he had learnt that black men used magic to hoodwink people and he didn’t want his sister to be a victim of an unfortunate love story. She couldn’t take it anymore and came to Ghana where we married a week later. I smiled and told her that in the next five years – probably – we would marry and live in Ghana.

She asked me how Ghana was like and I told her beautiful tales of the sun kissing our bodies every day. I told her of the castles which was built by whites to sell slaves but are now tourists’ attractions and of beautiful natural vegetation and mountains set on God’s beautiful eyes.
In all these while, neither of us had heard the other’s voice before; it was like we knew each other’s voice all along. In my mind, I felt she had a soft beautiful feminine voice which begged to be heard and I weirdly guessed she thought I had a baritone voice which had so much authority and power driven in it I begged her one day to give me her number which she hurriedly gave. I prayed over the number and started guessing how happy she would be when she finally hears my voice.
I had the number on Monday and in that week; I listened to a lot of French songs and audios with the hopes of acquiring a French accent, read a lot of books in French and transcribed a lot of sentences in a diary I had labeled in her name. Then on Friday, I called her only for me to learn that the number was a wrong number. I was disappointed and told her that it was a wrong number. She vehemently denied and I told her to simply call me so that I can store her number.

In the next two hours, she replied stating that when she also calls, she gets the response that my number was a wrong. The universe was indeed conspiring to keep us apart. I wasn’t ready to let that get into my way so we agreed on a skype call on Sunday. She said her mom would be at work and her brother would also be at his friend’s. I confessed to her how I really wanted to speak to her brother since we would one day be my in law. She told me that it was a bad idea because the dreams she had earlier were rather apocalyptic and she didn’t want him to know about me for him to break us apart by his snide and condescending attitude. I agreed to it because I myself held dreams in a strong conviction.

The day came rather fast and I sat behind my laptop waiting for my love to come on the screen. I, in the morning, had gone to the barber just to look desirable in her eyes. I shaped my hair in the style she told me she liked the most. She said she liked her men in afro. So I had left my hair unshaven for about four months. The appointed time came and my love was not online, I waited for about an hour and I called her on skype. There was no answer. I waited for an extra hour, I called her again and there was no answer then another hour and still there was no response and she was not online either. I asked myself if Belle was even real. The walls in my heart were breaking and everything French started to put me off. That day onwards, it was as if nature wanted to tease me – whenever I put on the radio, I would hear something French and it would break me down.

We still kept correspondence via facebook. I asked her if she didn’t want to speak to me or whether she was fake. She cried on me and told me that she had a horrible voice and didn’t want me to be disappointed when I heard it. I told her that I did not mind and that I also did not have a nice voice either. I begged her to at least say a word or two to me on phone and just hung up; I was going to be okay with it. She also told me that she was ugly and my photos looked too nice she felt she would be undeserving in my eyes. I told her I did not care about her looks either. She gave one too many excuses that I just knew I had to leave her. I didn’t want to be the one to break up with her least I become another name that reminded her of her father’s or another example of how blacks are bad.
I think she could sense in my replies that I did not trust her again. Her answers began to be short, always telling me that she was busy assignments and project work. She started uploading pictures of she and some guy she said was her cousin. I did not believe her because I was jealous but who am I to disprove someone is not her relation? I still loved her and kept on calling her number with the hopes that someday it would go through. The replies I heard on the phone were the usual “The number you’ve dialed is incorrect, please check and try again later.”

Just when I thought everything was crushing down, she added me to her profile as her boyfriend. This restored the trust I had in her till I realized that her profile was private and that my friends on facebook could not see my relationship change. Not that I asked any my friends about it, one day, a friend of mine was showing me one picture of mine he liked on his phone, it was then that I realized that Belle did not reflect on my profile. I did not ask her about it because I knew she was going to give excuses and honestly, I was so tired of hearing them.

Two days to our first anniversary she was deactivating her facebook profile without even a goodbye. I was more than glad. I did not want to know her reasons neither was I willing to show any signs of how happy I was that our relationship had hit the inevitable end. We broke up (or was it, we lost correspondence? We never really broke up) and I have since not heard from her.

Sometimes I think about her and imagine if the photos she ever shared were real. Deep within, I feel she exists in the form and face her photos spoke of. What the relationship taught me that love is not like those in books or on the streets, there is never a perfect beginning or end for love. I still think that one day I will meet her and even if I do, I simply want to hear her voice. I simply want to hold and tell her that she reminds me of ghosts and of perfect wines which never exists. Sometimes, everything feels so surreal that sometimes like Belle feels so practical. I wish, the love I had for her will suffice in letting her know that not all blacks are a tragic backdrop and that blacks too are capable of giving purer tastes of love. The fact that her father left her and her mother in tragedy does not mean that all blacks are walking tragedy bombs waiting to explode with time. I hope she learnt how to destroy the mental walls of her mother and build her own according to how I treated her.

I never learnt again to love French it became deplorable never to rise again. I still spend a lot of time searching her name, hoping that I would see that aquiline nose, that pink lips, enchanting Bambi eyes and that beautiful skin which seems to be made of gold. To be honest, I still believe in her dreams and I know that one day, somehow or somewhere, I am going to marry someone who has her soul.


If you want a copy of #TheJainist email me on jyfrimpong@outlook.com

Read More

B'da (From #TheJainist)

There was once a great kingdom whose fame spread through every corner and cave in the world. Everyone marveled at how rich and strong they were. El-Ghaba as it was called was made up of men whose strength were more than wolves and women whose beauty brought those of the Nubian princesses to ridicule. 


It was said that gold was so much in abundance that it lost its value on the citizens. They bathed with gold, slept on gold, dressed in brighter shades of gold and used gold as cooking utensils. 


How this kingdom came to be (was to be charitable) described as ludicrous. There was this mad man who had visions of a place where everything was gold – he recounted this story over and over again till it became annoying to the ears of those who constantly heard it. He said he saw in his visions a kingdom rise out of nothing to something even the gods wanted to wear as a crown. He had seen strange men – white in skin dressed in stranger clothes – coming from a land beyond the sea to see this great kingdom called El-Ghaba and loving it so much to the point of death. Not only was the story ridiculous, it was also pathetic! There was nothing like white men, the people said, all what there was were black faces everywhere and gods do not need gold to dazzle them because they created it. 


There was however a group of people who took this tale from fancy unto fancy and set off to find the place the mad man had seen in his visions. Everyone told them they were chasing ghosts; they would soon reach, if they were even successful in their journey to nowhere, the end of the world and fall into a never ending pit and die from hunger, thirst and excruciating pain. This gloomy story did not tickle them. So with the mad man as their golden compass, they set off to find “Eldorado”. 

They, after a month of walking and perpetually staying awake, saw this forest full of melancholic songs and ghosts! All what the birds in the forest sang were apocalyptic hymns and poems. The mad man said to them that this was the land he had seen. In order for them to believe it, they told him to show them signs that showed they were on the “Promised Land” – he told them of trees he had seen and by verification had indeed seen them after surveying the land.

High with expectation, they set off digging and hoping. They dug day and night and when their hopes had finished with their tears, they sat down and wept. 

In annoyance, they decided to kill the mad man and not even the plea from the birds could mitigate for him. Suddenly they saw a huge and strange snake slithering towards them and they run! Just then, they heard a voice so clear and so strange telling them to come back. The snake was talking to them – only their abandoned gods could tell them how shaken they were to the bone marrow. 

“The visions of the madman are truer than what you see.” the snake said while approaching them. 
“I knew you would find me. You are my chosen people. Count yourself lucky to have embarked on a journey to El-Ghaba. I can give you gold and wealth beyond what you can contain in your romantic dreams only that there is a cost you must pay” it continued, still slithering and looking at their tired faces.


“From next ten years, you will have to sacrifice to me the most beautiful virgin in El-Ghaba. Every year after next ten years, I shall demand this and while you provide this, I will rain on you gold and an army so strong that even the mention of its name would bring your enemies’ gods to their knees. I will provide you with wisdom on how to build great buildings which will leave a mark in the sands of time; I will give you food, stable rains and everything you possibly will need. I will provide all these in exchange for a yearly sacrifice of a beautiful girl.” 


The offer sounded too good to their ears and all their fears were laid down to rest. They agreed to all what the snake had offered without question. They called him Bida and built him a befitting abode in which he rested and harmed no one. 


True to what it had said, they became rich so much that those who heard of their wealth were shaken. Those who earlier called their quest as a folly came to beg to live in El-Ghaba. They welcomed everyone and soon they became one of the biggest kingdoms to have ever lived. 


Ten years came and Bida had to be fed. There was an argument about whose daughter was to be offered to the reptile. Not wanting to show any disrespect to the great serpent of El-Ghaba who had shown great mercies, it was decided that the choosing a “bride” for the great reptile should be done in turns, a clan was supposed to choose its prettiest daughter and offer it to Bida as a token of their appreciation and in the next year another clan will do same. For the seven centuries, this was done with no quarrels. El-Ghaba became a kingdom set on the knees of the gods. 

It was during these prosperous times that a baby was born and as custom demanded was to be sent to the great priest for her future to be divined. Deep within, her parents wished her destiny would be beside a strong and wealthy king. The priest looked at the baby and stammered “A great nation will fall on her face and a greater one will come from her belly.” After divining, the priest went to the hut and bid the parents the best in life. 
The prophecy was so strange that night after night the father spent time trying to decipher its true meaning. The baby was named Sia, nothing more, nothing else. It must be remarked that Sia grew from beauty to beauty, she put even the finest jewelries to ridicule, her voice was said to make the serpent of El-Ghaba smile. Her beauty made her parents sad that each day they wished a far beautiful one was born so that their daughter would be spared the misfortune of been sacrificed to Bida. Their prayers were never answered and they knew that it was only a matter of time that she would have to be offered to the great serpent for the prosperity of the kingdom. 
As Sia was becoming of age she swept a strong handsome man, Amadou the Taciturn, off his feet. He loved her with a kind of love that made even angels jealous. Everyone warned him about loving Sia because such a love was like a stairways that led nowhere. You see, when love infects you, the only thing that can save you is death. 
At sixteen, it was decided Sia was to be sacrificed to Bida. When Amadou heard it, he cried a cry never seen and written before. Sia was immediately tied to the chief priest’s shrine and given the best of food and treatment to make her more attractive to Bida. She was bathed in imported coconut milk and her skin was smeared with the best oil and fragrance from Arabia. Out of desperation, Amadou run to see Sia for the last time and upon seeing her vouched to help her. Sia cried and told him to forget about her because she was a helpless situation and no matter what he did she was never going to be in his arms again. Maybe that’s what the chief priest meant when he divined that “a greater nation was going to rise from her belly.” After her death, El-Ghaba was going to be far greater than it already is. Amadou looking at her in her depressed state made him love her more than his taboo. 
On the eve before his love was to be swallowed by the serpent of El-Ghaba, he spent the night throwing his soul into despair. Then an idea struck his mind. When everyone was sleeping, he stole himself away and hid in a small hut near the pit where Sia was to be sacrificed praying for his god to be merciful and not let Bida swallow him before he snatched his love away. 
The chief priest and the elders of the town formed a procession and carried Sia to the ritual ground. She was wrapped in a loincloth she had knitted a few months earlier for her wedding. As she neared her death, they called on the great reptile to come and take its sacrifice. They left her near the pit and surrounded the forest least she gets the slightest of chance to escape. 
Bida rose from its pit with all its elegance circled its beautiful prey and lashed out its tongue in appreciation. She screamed on top of her voice calling for some respite but none was shown. All she heard were jubilations. 
Amadou very much aware of the fact that Bida struck its beautiful bride on the third appearance kept still and watched the reptile in great anxiety. When Bida was ready to strike Sia, Amadou rushed out of his hiding place and cut off the reptile’s head. The earth trembled, it rained like never before, thunders flashed across the skies as if they were in flight to a safe haven and when it had subsided, a great voice from heaven remarked “For a long time, I have offered you wealth, rains and food. Now what I dreaded most in life has killed me. It was my wish to be the most beautiful thing in wherever I find myself. That is why I asked for the sacrifice of the most beautiful girl on a yearly basis. Now that I have been killed by your own, this will be your punishment; this great town will collapse, wiped away from the surface of the earth and shall not be known even in the memory of dry bones. For seven years, seven months and seven days I promise you that not even a single drop of rain will fall on your land, your rivers will dry up and by that time that this curse will pass, your city that was greatly desired will be a tear in a sandstorm never to be seen again. 
Free from death, Sia and Amadou run away and married in a town so far away from El-Ghaba. They lived happily and gave birth to children who currently are the Akan people of modern El-Ghaba. Indeed the prophecy came to past, a great nation fell because of her face and a greater one came from belly. But the soul of the serpent is not satisfied and still looks upon the great Akan kingdom still wanting it to repay its people the pain Sia had put it through but love is so powerful and till love loses its strengthening care, the serpent of El-Ghaba can only look at them and weep because at the end of the day, it had lost. 

Written by J.Y. Frimpong

Read More