Bentsifi’s Tattle : A guy about town
Two boys in school uniform running down the road are kicking a bottle top in turns. The top falls in the gutter by the road and they stop to pick it up and continue in their delightful game en-route to school.
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They are doing this with the same abandon as the three older boys sitting and chatting in an animated fashion. Over there, a woman is selling cooked rice and stew, and a sea of school children flock her table, buying the food in polythene bags at 50 Ghana pesewas a piece.
It used to be that this was served in leaves. Now, while it looks neater, the polythene bags, littered on the street do not look good for our environment.
It is early morning, the sun is not yet up, and sweeping has begun. I see only young girls doing this in their respective compounds. I come from this town.
Our house is a storey building and I am standing on the upstairs balcony looking out into the centre of town near the taxi rank, which seems to be the epicentre of town and where every gossip must begin.
There is so much activity this morning. Everyone is going about their business. The young men, bare-chested and showing off their fit sea-going torsos, are standing in groups chatting. The women are also carrying the very young ones about.
Others are manning their stores along the main street while some folks making purchases and the young ones, especially the girls, sashaying in their pressed school uniforms to school.
I've never been to a town as laid back as Busua in the Western Region. A small community, it's claim to fame, mainly, is the fabulous beach here: a long stretch of powdery sand which triggered it being turned into a resort base back in the 1060s when an indigene named E. K. Dadson, built the first hotel here.
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With the original name as Busua Pleasure Beach, it has now metamorphosed into the Golden Beach Hotels’ well-appointed Busua Beach Resort, when the family sold the property many years ago.
When it is time to take a break, I often retreat to this place. Besides it being home, the ocean, with an omnipresent island a few kilometres out, gives this place a rather quixotic ambience and set against this backdrop, just being here is enough to relax anyone.
The Resort hotel is a three-star experience and actually does give quite a delight. It opens onto the beach, and having a meal in the open air restaurant overlooking the ocean is a very nice feature here.
I had dinner here last night: grilled grouper with sauté vegetables. I cleaned my plate. But by far, our local maize based kenkey called ‘fonfom’, with my sister in law Betty's - who runs our home as a travellers lodge - fish and tomato gravy is what always gives me the nostalgia, being here.
Busua has grown into quite a formidable destination on Ghana's west coast. In the last several years, many accommodation establishments have sprung up, swelling the population of this town.
As usual, it is visitors who do the hospitality jobs, the locals sticking to their seafaring occupations. Many too are idle, with some of the guys often meeting vacationing foreigners who tend to fall in love with them.
Some marry and travel out to love with their partners abroad, others too manage to get them to set up shop here, a lodge, a bar or some such thing, and others yet, just live their whirlwind lives until reality sets in a few years later.
I have been coming to this town long enough to know what I am writing about. The same thing pertains in many of our coastal towns.
There's certain buoyancy in this town though, as slow as things are here. Everyday feels like a Saturday. Or Sunday. Easy. Slow, and I like that pace this week as I am here.
This is how a holiday is supposed to be, easy, lazying days, just lounging. Particularly as I learn of a shortage of fuel, I am not about to move the car anywhere.
Other times when I come, especially when I do with friends, we take a drive. We go exploring to Half Assini, Nkroful, Axim, Mia Mia, Princess Town and Dixcove to visit the colonial castles and other attractions in these other towns and educate ourselves with our history.
It is quite an edifying exercise and it actually does relax one, and gives a nice break from the rat race of living in Accra. And though I stayed put this time round, as I am alone, the objective was clear.
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I am here on a break, blocked out the news so that I can relax my nerves et al. I was succeeding until I went online, on social media and read what is purported to have been voiced by the Deputy Minister of Sports, about loading a plane with hard United States dollars to take to our footballers in Brazil before they will converge again and deliver in unity as the Black Stars against Portugal in the on-going Soccer World Cup.
How messy! And I shudder to think what this reflects. I just may need a few more days out here!