woes of Koosam 7

WOES OF KOOSAM

EPISODE 7

by Samuel Cobby Grant

It’s amazing how one’s life gets transformed by just a piece of news. Everyone really needs a dash of good luck and more often than not, good people make other people experience good luck.

That fateful day, Abena Tawiah drove Kobina Sam to work. He had asked her whether she wasn’t going to work and she had explained that it was only a temporary job. She had stepped in for a friend who needed to travel to take care of her sick mother so the Cleaning Company that had the contract had accepted the arrangements for her to step in when Abena and her friend presented it to them.

“What about the Chop Bar I saw you in the other day?” he asked.

“Oh, that?” She said as she looked ahead, her eye on the road as she drove. “I was alone there because Baaba the owner asked me to keep an eye on things for her as she left for the Harbour Main Gate to collect money from someone.

He saw they had arrived.

“OK. Wish me luck,” he said and she immediately gave him a long wet kiss that left him slightly disoriented. He was happy that the car’s glasses were heavily tinted.

“Wow! What was that for?” he asked, breathless.

“A good luck kiss,” she said with a straight face.

He laughed shakily and stepped out of the car. They waved each other goodbye.

The day went like a dream. He had met Mr Mireku who asked him to start calling him Amankwa instead of the ‘Mr Mireku’ he had been calling him. Kobina smiled at that. He knew it was going to be a while before he could be able to do that.

“You are now the Purchasing Officer of Sika Kokoo Mines. You’ll be taken through a month’s orientation and training at the Mines in Tarkwa, after which you’ll come back here to commence work; by which time your office here would have been ready” Amankwa Mireku said.

He was amazed, tongue-tied and shell-shocked.

“Thank you, Sir. I’ll never betray the confidence you have in me,” he had said, his voice shaking and croaky with deep emotions. He could hardly hear himself speak.

He went home early, with his appointment letter safely tucked in his breast pocket.

His mood changed when he saw how the grass had begun to grow, and he wondered how he was going to cope with keeping the place nice when he head to  Tarkwa for a whole month. Dejectedly, he went indoors. He had wanted to call Abena and tease her a bit but his mood did not permit it

“Maybe I should ask her to weed in my absence,” he said to himself and smiled. The smile widened as he imagined her swinging her arm with the cutlass in hand. He smiled again.

He opened the appointment letter to read and something fell out of the envelope and he saw with surprise that it was a GH₵ 200.00 note.

He immediately called Mr Mireku to ask him about it.

“Yes, it’s for you. Use it to buy what you’ll need for the trip,” he said to the young man who reminded him of himself. He smiled at his obvious eagerness to please.

“I hope he doesn’t betray my trust,” he said to himself, but he knew deep in his heart that he had found an honest person to work with.

“How is your first day at work going?”  Abena called to ask some two hours later.

“It was OK. I’m home now,” he replied.

“And you didn’t tell me?” She said, peeved that he hadn’t found it necessary to let her know

“I am sorry,” he said. He was really sorry. Abena had been so good to him and he didn’t want to lose her friendship.

“Kobina Sam. Come here right now if you value your life,” she said and ended the call.

He ran. Quickly. Fast.

He was there in five minutes.

She served him lunch. One that befitted a King. She was happier with his change of fortunes than even he himself.

He informed her of his desire to visit his mother before he left for the orientation because he hadn’t seen her for close to a year.

She was happy when he told her that.

She really liked him a lot and was doing all she could to let him see it but her outrageous sense of humour always come to the fore whenever the chance presented itself for her to make him see that.

She promised herself to act more feminine and ladylike whenever she was around him. After lunch, a droning sound shattered the peace of the area and he realized that a lawn mower had been turned on. He looked through the large windows and saw a young man his age, give or take a few years, operating the machine effortlessly as he slide it from one end to the other in easy strides. He stared at him with a yearning so strong that Abena who had come to stand by him went unnoticed. She had to dig her elbow into his ribs before he got out of the trance.

“Why are you so fascinated by a mere mower,” she asked with both amusement and confusion at the same time.

He stared at her, not understanding the way she put the question to him.

“You want to tell me, Abena Tawiah that you’d rather look at a mower than at me, who could be all yours with just a word?” she said it in a way that suggested that she wasn’t amused at all.

He stared at her, flabbergasted.

“I am so sorry. It’s just that I wish I have a mower to cut the grass at home. Especially, now that I’ll be going away for a month,” he said and held her hand but a force greater than both of them drew them together and before one could say ‘jack’ they were kissing with such intensity that her lips were swollen in no time.

Gently, she pushed him away and he apologized for his ungentlemanly behaviour.

She waved off his apology as she knew that it wasn’t his fault. She wanted him so much that it hurts but she wasn’t going to throw herself at him just because she loved him.

She spoke to Sefah, the gardener about cutting the grass at Kobina’s place and within two hours, it was done. A feat that so astonished Kobina that he couldn’t stop looking at the well-cut grass. Never had the place looked this well cut since he moved in.

He looked at Abena adoringly and thanked her from the bottom of his heart.

“Well, now that you have had your heart’s desire, what do you think about you and I?” she asked with frank boldness.

He looked into her eyes, took her right hand into his and without breaking eye contact with her, said

“I like you Abena Tawiah. I like you a lot and I will like you to be my girlfriend if you’ll have me,” he said and she embraced him fiercely, her eyes moisturising.

It was getting to 6:00 pm and as they took a stroll through the streets of Airport Ridge, holding hands and revelling in their togetherness, they met Uncle George on his way home from the opposite direction.

“Mbaa pɛ nkwasiafoɔ o,” he insultingly said to their hearing.

Abena’s instant taunting laughter made him wish he had kept his mouth shut in her presence, but words spoken can never be swallowed back.

He quickened his footsteps and disappeared around the corner.

 TWO WEEKS LATER

Kobina had never lived in such comfort in his life before.

He was in Tarkwa at the mines and his orientation was ongoing. Painstakingly, he was taken through the operations of the mine and appraised of how things were done. Then, he had even been into the mining shafts, deep in the bowels of the earth, and also to the smelting platform where gold bars were formed. He was introduced to all members of staff, though some knew him from his National Service days and was well liked by everyone, by  Ghanaians as well as the expatriate staff. He was placed on a senior staff level and as such, was accorded the needed respect.

Koosam was given a two-bedroom apartment, which to his surprise was fully air-conditioned, with three square meals a day as part of the perks of the job. He even got to choose the kind of food he wanted from the menu.

He had, before he went to the Mines, visited his mother with gifts and cash, made possible by the cash Mr Mireku had thought it wise to offer him.

His mother had shed tears of joy and had lain her hand upon him and blessed him.

She had beseeched upon him to quickly ensure that he gave her grandchildren as soon as possible and he had smiled at her tearful face and asked her not to worry. His thoughts went to Abena.

 As he sat in the comfortable armchair watching a premier league match between Manchester United and their arch rivals Manchester City, he felt a shuddering sense of loneliness and placed a phone call to Abena.

“Hi love, what’s up?” she said as soon as she picked up.

“I’m good but I miss you,” he said mournfully.

“Awwwww, same here. But don’t worry. We’ll see each other in two weeks’ time.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think that I can survive two more weeks without seeing you,” he told her.

“Do you want me to come over there?” she asked in her usual direct approach.

Before he could give a proper response, he heard Esi ask her, “Are you going to the Mines?”

“I want to. I miss him” Abena told her sister.

“OK. Just be careful,” Esi said.

“What did she say?” Kobina asked her wanting to know if he had heard right.

“She said I  can come,” she said with unbridled joy in her voice. She ended the call abruptly due to the excitement of seeing the one she loved once more.

Esi, seeing the way her sister was acting, stopped and advised her to be careful. She had always felt a sense of great pride whenever she thought of her younger sister. She had watched her grow up into a beautiful woman after the death of their parents in that horrible car accident and none of their relatives had stepped in to take care of them. It was Esi who had risked everything to start her own catering services to take charge of her little sister.

At one time, it was touch and go but her luck had held and she had made it big. She had even moved on to other business ventures to enable her properly take care of her sister even at the expense of her own well-being.

It was only after Abena was done with her First Degree in Business Administration that she felt the need to try and settle down and, she was indeed fortunate to have met a wonderful gentleman like Frank.

“Are you still a virgin?” she asked her.

They were like that. They said everything the way it’s supposed to be said. They don’t beat about the bush.

“Yes. Untouched, Untapped. Until marriage,” she said as a matter of fact.

“I am glad you said that. I am so proud of you,” she said with great emotion and they embraced tightly, patting each other in the back.

Delay tactics, planned and agreed upon by the two sisters, Esi and Abena, made it impossible for her to go to Tarkwa to see Kobina until it was just a week for him to return to Takoradi before she went. Esi had advised her that it was unwise for her to spend two weeks with Kobina.

”I’ll be leaving at dawn tomorrow morning,” Abena told him on the eve of her departure.

“I can’t wait to see you, my love,” he said, unable to mask his excitement. Her inability to get there earlier had really had him at the end of his tether.

She laughed when he said that. It was a burst of unrestrained laughter that resonated all around them. They spoke for more than two hours with both of them unwilling to break the connection the call ensured.

“I can’t believe you are coming to Tarkwa,” he said for the tenth time.

“You better believe it,” she said half seriously.

“I am going to show you that there are other places in Ghana apart from Takoradi.”

“And I am going to show you that there is a girl in Takoradi who is better than ten Tarkwa girls,” she said and he laughed. He had never been so happy in his life.

First, he had found his dream job, and a woman he loved who loved him more than her very self. What more could one want? He caught himself almost saying ‘more jollof’ in relation to the ever-popular TV commercial.

“Why the sudden silence,” she asked.

“Was thinking about how much I love you,” he explained quietly.

“I love you too Moses,” she said lightly.

His heart contracted painfully when he heard her call him Moses, wondering whether she had found someone called Moses.

“Moses?” he asked, his heart in his mouth on what answer she was going to give.

“Yes. Like Moses, you’ll see Canaan but would not be able to enter.”

He laughed with great relief and they finally said their goodbyes.

 Uncle George wasn’t glad that Koosam had found a new way to cut the grass. Especially, whenever people passed comments on how well kept the place was. He had hoped that the Captain was going to sack the young man from the Boys Quarters.

He was even angrier by the fact that Asantewaa and Akosua had been throwing themselves at him. Even that fianga girl at Egyiriba.

“Abi he says he’s going to visit his mother. He’ll come and see that the whole place has become Dodowa forest. How can you say you are a man if you can’t handle a common cutlass,” he said to himself as he single-handedly pounded fufu while the light soup simmered on the coal pot.

He saw a stray goat inching towards the remainder of the cassava. Goats in the area had been a constant bother to him and he had at one time killed one as payment for it chewing the kontomire in the backyard garden.

He saw the goat chew on the edges of the cassava.

He transferred all the animosity he felt for Kobina Sam to the goat, hefted the fufu-pounding pistil in his hand and threw it with all the strength he could muster at the poor beast with the intention of killing it. It saw the weapon in time and jumped high in panic, and landed on the pot of soup. The pot of soup crashed to the ground. The herring, kako, and momoni found their way onto the bare ground. The goat, with the speed of Usain Bolt, vamoosed from sight.

What happened next is best covered with a cloak of charity, our wise forefathers have a saying that says ‘barima nnsu’.

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