Happy holiday. There’s this childhood memory I have that once in a while plays in my mind. Must have been about 7 years old at the time. A man walked unsteadily to the front of our house. He was drunk, totally drunk. He was well-dressed, unlike the average gutter-falling drunkard you knew. He was probably returning from a party or bar and had too much to drink, who knew? He slumped to the ground right in front of us, unresponsive.
Now there was some business activity in front of my house at that time so usually a lot of young men were around. Two or three of them took initiative and went to where the man had fallen and they called for water and soap. One of the young men lifted the drunk’s upper body off the ground so the latter could be in a sitting position. They removed his footwear and put them aside. It was one of those Caterpillar boots. It was brown in colour.
The water and soap was brought and the young men went to work. The main guy rubbed the hell out of the drunken man’s face with the water and soap! The way the drunken man’s face was vigorously rubbed with the soap is etched in my memory even now. It was as though they were wiping away the alcohol from the unconscious man’s soul. It took several minutes! The drunk guy regained consciousness and held firmly the shirt of the ‘soap lather’ man. I think maybe when he regained consciousness, he was like, “Awww my eyes! Who wants to kill me with soap?”
After a while, the other guys freed the ‘saviour’ from the grip of the drunk. The drunken man himself calmed down and sat quietly for several minutes. He got up, took his boots and left. Now here’s the kicker. The following day, we were in the house when he came. He was sober but you could tell he was carrying some embarrassment. Holding the Caterpillar boots, he said, “I am the one who was drunk from yesterday. Please these are not my boots. I think someone exchanged theirs with mine.” My relatives told him to go and ask from the place he got drunk at na we di3, why would we take his boots? What are we going to use it for?
Jonathan Mensah's INK HAVEN 