July 3, 2023

I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have advance knowledge of the future.  Like, if I knew years ago that my desire to be a lawyer would not come to be and I would end up doing a myriad of things that I didn’t even know when I was young to be possible.

Our choices were limited as teenagers in Accra, Ghana in the early 80s. 1983 saw a famine and a mass exodus of the middle class to the UK, leaving us to fend for ourselves.  The word creative cannot exist in such circumstances and automatically, we were steered towards careers that would put food on the table.

“I can’t afford to have you treat our customers like royalty,” he said angrily. “The customer is not always right.” I have watched you for some time, and I can’t work with you. You are more interested in pleasing the customer than being loyal to me. “You are fired!” Those three words shook me to my core. I felt completely downcast. I could not imagine that doing the right thing would end up this way.

He had always known that he would celebrate his fiftieth birthday by giving back to the less fortunate, and had discussed it with his wife Clara. He just wasn’t sure how to give back. Until ‘Sintim,’ the dispatch rider who normally delivered his waakye from Asylum down told him his life story.