May I Reminisce?

I usually would walk with my older colleagues to Kwame Nkrumah Circle, discussing football, politics, women, and any other topic a group of twenty-something year old lads talked about whenever they congregated. And when we got there, we jumped into waiting ‘trotros’ or joined long and winding queues. But not on this day – nay! They would tease the living daylight out of me. So I dashed out of the class immediately the lecturer dropped his black marker and duster. “No time for imbecilities!”…as Asempa FM’s Songo usually blurts when incensed about the goings-on at the GFA. Reason? I had had a very terrible day in class, ‘bombing’ an impromptu company law quiz – one I wasn’t prepared for.

I saw him ‘screaming’ for help to cross the road – the blind man, when I alighted at the Tesano Total filling station. I couldn’t understand why right thinking sons of Adam standing beside him would refuse to help this poor man. So out of sympathy, I held his hand and signaled oncoming vehicles to stop for the newest ‘celebrities’ in Tesano to cross the road.

When we had reached the other shoulder of the road, wanting to take my mind off the disaster of a quiz and do something positive, I asked where he was headed. Thankfully, he was headed my direction. I became his guide for the next 20 minutes or so. Then he engaged me in a conversation I found really awkward but interesting. He started off by asking my name and age, which I answered [ I figured he’d need it when asking God to bless me – at least so I didn’t embarrass myself in class again]. His youngest son was way older than I was, I would later find out. Then he said it! He was a beggar! “Ah! This man paaaa……what he dey figure?” To wit, what was this man thinking? Didn’t his other four senses tell him that his guide had on 2 occasions been a victim of unscrupulous confidence tricksters posing as beggars? Well, I had determined to end the day on a good note by doing something worthwhile, so I just smiled wryly, shook my head and hissed inaudibly.

I nearly left him to his own fate when he told me he’d paid for his sons’ university education and also put up a 2-storeyed building with alms. He must have sensed my shock when he uttered his ‘achievements’ as I cast a look that said so. “Ashocki wo?” he asked? “Are you kidding me? I feel like smacking you and walking on”, I thought wickedly. What made it more nauseating was how he said it – with some oomph! He went on to tell me he had two locations he solicited alms from – Oxford Street, Osu on Monday through Wednesday, then Accra Mall on Thursday to Saturday. I asked his reason for those two places, to which he gave me this response; he’d done his market survey and realized that on Mondays to Wednesdays, foreigners came to the Oxford Street to purchase artworks and seem to move their purchasing activities to the Accra Mall on the other days. He would literally cry to alert pedestrians to come to his aid. Sometimes, he would also sing to attract even the stone-hearted to show compassion, or feel like the devil’s next-of-kin if they refused.

Despite my anger, I sought to find out why he still begged for alms when he had children who seemed to be doing pretty well. He answered by saying that he made about GHS 500.00 on a very good day. He was even bold enough to show me the little fortune he’d made that day. Meanwhile, I had just about GHS 15.00 and some change in my pocket – my ‘home-and-away’ for the week. And here I was being presented with an opportunity to snatch about GHS 350.00 from the hands of a cunning beggar. Oh! Check that… trickster – and not lose sleep over my misdeed. If I’d gone ahead and carried out that thought, I would have received curses – ones God would not have permitted to come my way. After all, he also deceived people to get it! “Thief man thief thief man!” Simple, isn’t it?  But I was still determined to do something noteworthy that evening, except I was hoping to be paid for my services – guiding him, providing a listening ear to offload all his rather insulting achievements, neither punching him nor snatching his little fortune.

This happened about 6 years ago. I thought it wise to share it with you, my dear readers, because I was party to a conversation that brought this to mind, hence this piece, which seeks to share something from my encounter with the blind beggar.

Yes, he was doing something I found irritating, but hey!, you can’t take one thing from him – his style. He researched! He surveyed his market and got to know that he’ll make a lot of money to cater for his wife and 4 children if he stood at the Oxford Street on Monday to Wednesday and the Accra Mall from Thursday to Saturday of the same week. He’d also researched and found that if he cried, people would have sympathy on him and double [or even triple] their initially intended alms, or that people who didn’t even plan on giving anything would be ‘forced’ to change their minds when they heard him sing a particular song. Inasmuch as I hated what he was doing, something was taught unconsciously.

Our businessmen wouldn’t borrow from the banks at very high interest rates and invest in some not-so-well-researched business idea a friend shared with them, only to fail, and having to recoup their lost investments from customers when the next business idea actually succeeds. I also think if students researched about job prospects with regards to programmes they are offered to read in our universities, I dare say courses like Classics, Anthropology, Dondology and others of their likes will be struck from our tertiary education curriculum because no one will choose to read them. This will reduce the number of graduates without the requisite employable skills, who add to the ever-growing tally of unemployed graduates in the country. Divorce cases will be on the low as would-be couples will make time to study their partners to acquaint themselves with any ‘flaws’ their partners possessed, and assured themselves that they could live with them. The success rates of policies initiated by ruling governments will increase if framers researched on how the policies are going to affect the lives of the intended beneficiaries, by widely consulting. We should enjoy the fruits and not the seed, but I think the opposite is the case in Africa. To have our backs scratched, we surely must have an itch.

The world will be a better place for us all if we engaged in that painstaking but very necessary exercise called research.