Sounds Like Sexual Harassment to Me

When I saw the news report, in which the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, at 78 years old, was alleged to have made a sexually suggestive comment to a female radio presenter in the Volta Region, I could not help but wonder why My Dear Good, Old Uncle Kwaku Wille would make such an off-color joke, obviously, and then at a moment in the history of the country and a socioeconomically harrowing time on which watch, as it were, when he ought to be more studiously focused on the massive and seismic cultural, economic and technological development of the nation in ways that the system presently appears not to be working as it ought to. Trust me, Dear Reader, yours truly fully appreciates the very global dimension of the problem (See “Seeing You Has Boosted My Desire to Marry from Volta Region – Akufo-Addo Shows Hidden Desire” Modernghana.com 9/18/22).

He perfectly knows that hereabouts in God’s own United States of America, charges of “Sexual Harassment” would have ratcheted up on social media in ways I do not fathom have occurred in Ghana in the wake of such unseasonably salacious remark. Which is all well and good because thereabouts in Ghana, Galamsey and Hell’s Junction, that is, our sense of humor for even the most indecent and off-color jokes knows absolutely no bounds. Which may also explain why the most indecent and heinous, off-color and definitely lurid of jokes, namely, the massive and protracted enslavement of African humanity, took place right here on the alluvial shores of Ghana, at the time called The Gold Coast Colony of Great Britain. Actually, my gut reaction to the widely reported sexually suggestive news report of the aforementioned remark of Uncle Kwaku Willie’s had to do with role-modeling in a country of polar extremities of wealth and grinding poverty, where the relatively few well-heeled ones amongst us are generously insensitive enough to the plight of the overwhelming majority of the citizenry as to cavalierly suppose that they could make such off-color polygamous, actually polygynous, jokes well before the children have been put to bed, and the late-night entertainment shows are in full-blast or at their peaks.

From another angle or perspective, I sincerely don’t think or believe for even a split-second that Uncle Kwaku Willie really had on his mind what was widely reported to have come out of his mouth because, if, indeed, all he direly craves or desires at this sunsetting phase of his life was the ravishing taste of an Ewe Woman, not necessarily a woman from the Volta Region per se, then he had better be reminded of the fact that he ought to perfectly know that Akyem-Abuakwa, in particular, and Okyeman, in general, contains more disproportionately dainty women of Ewe-descent, of the Agbeli-Kaklo-frying kind, than any that he could ever find in the Volta Region, where they cannot deliver even the most grammatically appropriate nominal identity or citizenship for somebody born and/or brought up in the Volta Region, which I have been insisting for at least a decade now that it is “Voltaian” or “Voltaic,” just like how the Burkinabe(s) used to be called when Ghana’s immediate northern neighbor was called The Upper Volta, well before the late Capt. Thomas Sankara renamed the same as Burkina Faso.

You see, Okyeman is chockfull of the prettiest and smartest of Voltaians because “Once upon a time,” Okyeman was the ideal “diasporic” setting for nearly all non-Akyems to congregate and eke a decent living and existence because the mineral-laden land was also very fertile like the womb of a multiple twin-bearing mother; and, besides, the indigenous Akyemkwaa were stereotypically known to be very lazy and hopelessly addicted to contracting “foreigners” or people from the neighboring lands to do their labor-intensive agricultural activities for them. Largely, these would be Krobo women – for some reason, Krobo men have been reckoned to epitomize laziness, almost like their Akyem counterparts, if the Dear Reader were to ask about the Honest-to-God Opinion of yours truly. But, somehow, and ironically, they tend to be synergistically complemented by their very hardworking and sexually liberated women. Plus, I was about to say that I speak on authority when I say that the finest and prettiest Ewe-descended women are nearly all of them domiciled in Okyeman and the Eastern Region, in general, and definitely not in Agbelimaland, as it were, because I am a vintage descendant of one of them, to wit, Togbega Agyeman-Dei of Peki-Blengo.

On the latter count, of course, I make a definitive distinction between those pathologically incorrigible nation-wrecking political scam-artists and criminal kleptocrats called the Trokosi Nationalists and Akyem-Ayigbe royals like myself, with a humongous splash of Asante-Juaben royal genes deftly mixed somewhere therein. By the way, I was actually also thinking about Mr. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, when I first heard about and read the aforesaid remarks attributed to Uncle Kwaku Willie, since it is a quite well-known fact that the New Patriotic Party’s Member of Parliament from Assin-Central, from the Central Region, is the one politician in Nana Akufo-Addo’s circles who is widely known to be fond of making such small and loose talk and actually has at least one Ewe-descended woman among his quite humongous harem of customarily wedded wives. But, of course, what the remarks attributed to My Good, Old Uncle Willie shows is the fact that we are, each and every one of us, susceptible to such off-color joke-making when we least expect the same.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 25, 2022

E-mail: [email protected]