Gold-Plated Gutters In Accra, Ghana

*This and subsequent poems in the next few weeks are based on observations and experiences during my short stay in Ghana in May-June, 2014).

I saw them all! Ah! In Accra
Mosquito-colonized gutters
Accra's obsessive grace with filth, decay
Huge palatial-like gutters
Flowing with graceful aplomb
Gracefully overflowing their banks
Honored
Celebrated
Dignified
Normalized
Like the first rain at the end of the dry season
Like expected rain-water on the eaves of the house

Guttered-filth is all over
Proud gutters
Where mosquitoes rule
Where their music
Serenade filth
Praise filth
Nationalize filth
Normalize filth
Bank filth
Celebrate filth
Massive filth
In huge gutters
In open gutters
Time-honored gutters
Gutters of gilded postcolonial age
Supervised by postcolonial elites
Destroyers of colonial-era built gutters
Destroyers with a dearth of inventiveness

Massive gutters of filth
The pride of postcolonial Ghana
Gutters that swirl with putrid pride
Alloyed with plastic bags
Pampered waste-matter
Cascading all over with grace
From mortuaries
From palatial homes
From Parliament House
From the Supreme Court Building
From cottage industries
Ah! These gutters of grace

Great gutters
Massive gutters
Catchment areas of plastic, debris, excreta
Gutters valley-ing homes
Gutters province-ing homeless kids
Gutters colonized bybrilliant mosquitoes
Massive gutters
Full of manicured filth
Massive gutters
Nursing mosquitoes
Deploying armed mosquitoes
Gutters normalized
Brimming with excreta, garbage, trash
Gutters normalized
Gutters full of gold
Full of Gold
Putrid gold
Decomposing gold
Putrescent gutters
Ghana's effervescent perfume
Ah! These gilded gutters

*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called 'populist hyperbolic, satirical' poetry. She can be reached at [email protected] poems and essays on Ghanaweb and elsewhere must not be reproduced in full or in part for any academic or scholarly work without my written permission.