SHANKING MATTERS

My Dear God,

There is a piece of advice given to strikers in soccer. They say if a striker enters the penalty box, he should take his time with everything he does. “Be composed and deliberate in your movements because the slightest touch from an opposing player would result in a penalty”. Father, this is the same way some of us behave when we enter the toilet, ei sorry, the shanks. We are very composed and deliberate in that “penalty box”. I used to take my storybooks there to read, and these days I often take my phone there so I can browse and read comfortably no matter the type of shanks – bomber latrine or water closet. What is important is that the shanks must be clean and well aerated.

In fact, I was happy when I read the news of the World Bank promising to give Ghana $60 million to help stop open defecation. God, you know what open defecation is so I will not attempt a definition of it, with all the gory details. The project is supposed to start in the 3 Northern Regions, and parts of the Brong-Ahafo and Volta regions of Ghana. Now God this is where I start having problems. Well not problems, maybe issues. You know I try to sound diplomatic these days.

My first issue is the location of the projects. We are talking open defecation. And Accra, Accra of all places, is not the starting areas or one of the starting areas? The news item mentioned that those selected areas I mentioned are the areas where high cases of open defecation are recorded. Like seriously? Accra, Cape Coast, Sekondi-Takoradi, these are the areas where the HIGHEST CASES of open defecation is recorded, most especially Accra. God please don’t ask me for proof because you know I have none and neither does any state official. Only I differ with those know-it-alls, in that, this project is laudable and not “stupid” because Accra was not mentioned as a starting place.

God, my other issue is to do with the success of the project. I want the project to succeed. For success, I feel that we must take a close look at the location of the toilets. Thankfully, about 20,000 public and private toilets will be built. The public toilets should be situated in a part of the town where everybody can access it, not the outskirts or some obscure part. I’ve people abandon a toilet facility because the “ultra-modern” thing was located in a bushy area at the outskirts of the town, too far away from them. The toilets should also be clean and well aerated. A dirty, stinking toilet will not have any patrons or patronesses (trust me the women do the thing paa in manageable sizes). And people will shun any dirty and stinking public shanks facility in favour of the bush, beach or gutters.

Father, I know this letter’s tone sounds different from any of the others. Well I don’t want to say where I conceived and ultimately wrote this letter, but you can get from this that I was quite engaged, composed and deliberate. I want folks at their shanks to feel like Inzaghi and Van Nistelrooy, two extremely brilliant penalty-box strikers – the former an expert constantly-offside-positioned striker, and the latter a tap-in expert. People should feel comfortable enough in the shanks to do their thing, no matter the size, quantity or quality.

My greetings to the entire heavenly host, especially those you put on my case. Tell them I said I owe them one.

Yours faithfully (I prefer sincerely though),

Abi you know dada.