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The Underground Man - Part 47

Feature Article The Underground Man - Part 47
AUG 10, 2019 LISTEN

"Do you seriously think to be intelligent or even highly intelligent makes your life easier?"

"Do you think to be stupid and even very stupid makes your life easier?"

"Do you think being lazy or even very lazy makes your life easier?"

"Do you think hard working or even very hard working makes your life easier?"

"Do you think being creative or very creative makes your life easier?

"Do you think to be honest or even very honest makes your life easier?

"Do you think being employed makes life easier?"
"Do you think to be self-employed makes life easier?"

Anna put her hands before her ears. The voices around her were crying out loud. Her head was paining, her lips ready to crack, her thoughts dry. She closed her eyes shaking her head. The voices did not want to get away from her. Her heart beating fast, she wanted to run, run into nowhere to be somewhere in peace. Knives run around her head attacking her heart, her soul, her mind. Needles were hammering in her head. She was feeling that something not belonging to her were creeping up her vanes. There it was again, the pain in her waste. Needles from all sites, needles stretching her skin, needles makes her bleed. Needles pushed by force into her legs to make her fall, than pulled out again, in and out again, in and out again. It felt like someone having her under her control, enjoying torturing her standing before the bunker. She moved her head around and around faster and faster by the minute. Evilness let her soul darken. Anna was unable to see people passing by offering help. As she did not respond they backed off walking their ways. The pain increase by the seconds. Something was holding her not to faint. The taste of death poisoned her blood like a python crawling slowly but even more forceful up her chest into her neck heading for her brain to chock it. She did not see that she was standing in warm rain. Storm seems to come from far closer and closer circling around her body like a blanket ready to cover Anna for the night, a night of final rest. For a moment the needles stopped entering her body. Something seemed to have hold them back or pushed them aside. Anna stood upright again. She opened her eyes, looked down on her body, and down on her wet clothes socked in rain with no end. All of a sudden from nowhere the rain stopped as if commanded to end by an invisible force. She was coughing, took a deep breath, than another one and one more pushing with her lounges all evilness that had entered her chest out. Her heart was jumping up and down, sometimes stopping for seconds, and then coming back on when she took a deep breath to make it start once more. Anna looked down on her feet, her shoes had gone. She could not remember having kicked them away. Someone must have pulled them off her feet. She looked twisted around, saw them on top of the bunker carefully placed. Not by accident had they come there. She was wondering what had placed them there. Her mind was focused on the shoes, her eyes clear straight looking at her shoes on top of the bunker. It felt as if someone had wanted to save her from evil and make her stand by his side. As if sun would want to come out from behind the dark clouds warm wind showed up in her face cooling her down, giving her heart comfort. Minutes of silence passed, no one to be seen, no one to be heard, no rain, no sun, no wind, emptiness all around.

The second attack on her came by stronger force. Needles were pushed into her waist, her legs, her arms, her head, all over her body! Pain in every corner of her being, of what she was, what she wanted to be, what she had wanted to achieve. She was shouting out crying for help, crying to save her life. But no one was hearing her, nobody around, not even a dog or cat, not even a mouse or rat, not even an aunt or bee; emptiness of silence all around her.

"Life is not about you...it is about me!"
"Me and you we are one!"
"Love is forever...forever and no man can end it!"
"Learn to be wise and save your life. Only the wise man is a saved man!"

Anna closed her eyes, opened them again, and turned around to where from she was hearing the voices. No one to be seen. She looked into her hands seeing they were bleeding in pain, no blood to be seen. She was standing naked. Adam and Eva naked appearing in front of her. She stretched out her hands to touch them; they disappeared as fast as they had stood before her. Her head was paining, her heart jumping. Anna`s shoes were still on top of the bunker untouched.

"Come to me, I give you rest", was Anna hearing a very deep male voice, so calm, so full of trust, life everyone in every tone of the words spoken. It was a declaration, an offer stretched out to her. Peace captured her heart. Warm blood flew through her body. She stretched out both arms ready to be taken away. Anna looked over the right shoulder to her shoes. How much was it in her mind that they would be on her feet that very moment. The more he mind was set on the shoes few meters away from her, the more she had the feeling, the unseen vision, they would move inch by inch. She did not see how it happened, but all of a sudden the shoes were at her feet covering them like made only for her, not from a shoe shop made for anyone that has money to buy. Anna`s eyes looked down, her mind followed them. She was moving her toes one after the other; the shoes felt never be more comfortable than at this moment. Shoes to protect her, shoes to hold her tied, shoes to ground her and at the same time to lift her above all other shoes, all other people around her. She was feeling like a Queen not sitting on a throne, a Queen being herself rooted inside her mind to know what she was and who she was supposed to be in life.

Something in Anna needed to say: "Thank you for having chosen me!" Her eyes did not see the one she was speaking to. She looked around, emptiness as far as her eyes could see.

"Not at all...my pleasure", was Anna hearing a voice from near. She turned around looking at the bunker. Yes, her mind was telling her, the voice had come from the bunker, somehow, unseen, but certainly from inside the bunker. The rusty metal door was still locked. No one could have opened it, no way that this was ever possible. Which key to use, which way to go, what word to use, what to do? But someone from there must have spoken to her, someone certainly!

Anna looked down to the grey pavement thinking of the torcher she had just gone through: "It must have been someone using me as a toy girl made of straw putting needles into my body and my soul like in woodoo rituals!"

Castle Osu at the Gulf of Guinea overlooking a busy shipment route from Europe to Africa and Asia, white shining in the fears sunlight of Accra, had been converted to a tourist sight. The President of Ghana years ago had moved his office to Flagstaff House built by Indians and donated to the West African country underlining their good relationship hoping for more. Inside the Castle cells for the slaves ready for their departure to the Americas were empty. It needed much imagination to go back in time feeling and envisioning the suffering of thousands of innocent black people, they blood dropping to the stone plastered floor, thy sweat of fear what might happen to them in unknown territory, a future in chain, beaten by white masters to push them harder and harder to labor on the cotton field in Alabama and Texas, in Georgia and New Orleans, to help building a country of migrates slaughtering buffalos and killing native Indians by the numbers with aftermath still so very present in daily USA life causing inequality among races in the world´s economic richest country that tries to lead the world not with wisdom, but with force.

When most parts of West Africa were the Ashanti Empire with the Otumfo in Kumasi on the Golden Stool, the Asantehene truly was a very powerful man. His power was based on the Gods that had given him the throne like all thrones in African countries, and the riches of the gold Ghana has in vast areas of the country. It was and is that gold that made the Ashanti King the most powerful king in the region. When the time had come Kings and Chiefs reporting to the Otumfo decided to hide gold found on their lands they had decided not to hand it over anymore to the Asantehene for him to give them back their portion. The money purse of the Otumfo got less filled from year to year making it harder and harder to keep up his power in his kingdom. It was by that time the Americans were asking for cheap labor that the Otumfo had seen a gateway out of his financial misery. Asking his men under arms to capture in the Hinterland their own people to bring to the shore where the White Man was already waiting with his ships ready to buy slaves in their numbers, it was then to fill the money purse of the Ashanti Kings again. Whites were too scared to leave the safe place of the coast line around Castle Osu and former Ghanaian capitol Cape Coast as they feared possibly to get beheaded if they would try to cross the bush. No one disputes these facts but claim, but some Ghanaians in USA categorically state they respectively their ancestors had never known when selling their own people as slaves what the White Man eventually would do to them. A slave by law is a thing and not a human being for which reason their false claims are more than obvious.

"You are telling me, without the actions of the Blacks against their own black fellow, slavery would have never been possible as we know it?" asked Anna drinking water.

"When facts cannot be denied, the interpretation is always an issue of convenience", explained Gerald, her tour guide. "In your country of Germany people living close to concentration camps argued after the end of World War II they had never known what was going on in the camp...and no one believed them."

"True...", said Anna while following the group to the platform outside overseeing the ocean watching ships carrying containers from Ivory Coast into Tema Harbour. “We humans want to see the world not as it is but suck out what makes us feel better and more comfortable. We do wrong and sin...but to accept it and reverse it...oh...oh...who wants to do that?"

Two days earlier Anna had arrived at Kotoka International Airport in Accra for her summer holiday treat needed after months of hard work. That she had needed an invitation letter and not like in other African countries just getting a visa at the arrival, had caused her great concerns. Rwanda welcomes Germans without the need to apply or buy any visa, showing great hospitality, but Ghana as a country Germany was helping with loans and donor funding is asking the German Tax payers leaving money in the country as tourists and businessmen, was most shocking to her for which reason to be asked to present her yellow vaccination pass showing vaccination against yellow fever right at the point of entry as a minor problem. She had cooled her mind by being convinced Ghana needs money desperately and tries any ways to get hold of it regardless of moral standards how to treat people being friendly to a foreign nation. Money does not stink and not cry, never talks, never remembers, never complaints, never advice, but helps in Ghana to feed endless numbers of greedy hands in politics. Right the moment she had stepped out from the airport waiting for a taxi to take her to her hotel, she had come to realize to become rich fast in Ghana was by pursuing a career as a Politician or starting one’s own church...the best guarantee to drive a Jaguar in the shortest possible time.

The taxi was leaving Kempinski Hotel to the left with Holiday Inn Hotel visible in the back of the impressive five star Hotel from Switzerland located opposite a converted airplane in which a clever entrepreneur had opened a restaurant painted in green. The driver was heading towards Spintex Road passing Action Chapel and the under path leading to East Legon to their left hand side. As usual Spintex Road was congested with traffic in both directions. At Cocoa Cola Roundabout the taxi drove right into the last stretch of Spintex Road getting closer to Estate Junction with ICGC Calvary Temple at the left side opposite Ecobank Branch Sakumono. Right in front of them was Sakumono Estate once build by former President J.J. Rawling, home to thousands of people including doctors, lawyers and ministers. They left Shoprite Junction Mall in their back. Turning right Sakumono Community Hospital was in sight. Anna was looking over her right shoulder sitting in the back of the car was wondering how it was possible that the still recent opening of Sakumono Estate was making the houses and roads in between look so old, old like a rundown place. Maybe lack of care and maintenance was the cause of the place looking rather like an estate for poor people than a place for middle class income workers. The Members of Parliament flats to her right were hidden behind houses. A left and then a last right turn, the junction was near at which Pentecostal Church had built their Sakumono Branch residing their Twi service in it. At the end of the road a small hotel had been built by a man living in USA managed by his wife, the Orchard Garden.

"What are these?" asked Anna Kwame look up the mighty structures in Tema Harbour. Being from Hamburg visit in major ports around the world was a must. The round shaped silos painted in white were standing rocket high in nowhere. She touched the concrete of the silos wanting to feel their heartbeats, wanting to discover their true meaning. The heat of the day was making her hot. The night before mosquitos had disturbed her sleep even she had followed the advice to let the light on during the night to keep them away.

"Our first President, Doctor Kwame Nkrumah had erected these silos in the early sixties of last century shortly after he had taken office", walked Kwame in front of his new friend picked up around her hotel while shopping for groundnut paste, the kind only Ghana has to offer, pure, with no additives, no sugar, natural and spiced with local herbs and salt only making it delicious and the best in the entire world. "Over there you can see CPC which stands for Cocoa Processing Company Limited, established by him in 1965 with the help of Joachim Burmeister, expert in Europe number one for chocolate...actually from your city of Hamburg, a place called Othmarschen. Now this company is totally bankrupt and meanwhile taken of Ghana Stock Exchange. What they produce there is too expensive and the quality is so low, very low. It is not a chocolate you people in the West would like to eat, you have to bite with strong teeth into it...and the taste is simply unbelievable poor. How they package their chocolate...I cannot believe it. Basically their Managers have no idea about chocolate at all, all are only in their positions because of politics...that´s it." Kwame was guiding Anna back to the street, walked to the other side for her to see the huge silos better. "The idea for these silos was when the price of cocoa beans on the international market is unacceptable low, to store the harvest here, take them off the market, wait until the price is good again and then sell them."

"That is a great idea!"

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