One thing I like about my old-time friend, Joseph Kwame Korkorti alias Korkorti Asamoah, is that he can eat. I mean eating in the literal sense. We are looking at four or five hefty balls of kenkey at a stretch. No pure water to occupy space. For a man with such wonderful appetite on any ordinary day, his capacity to munch on extraordinary days can be awe-inspiring.
God is wonderful! He has made all kinds of human beings and endowed a few with the kind of stomach elasticity that has helped them to distinguish themselves from ordinary mortals. Korkorti is one of the blessed few. I doff my cap to him.
The other problem with Joseph Korkorti is that he has never put on weight and medical science has since not given any plausible explanation for the man's weight deficiency in spite of his award-winning capacity for food.
May be, the bloke is more of a ruminant than a human, except that I've never encountered him chewing the cud.
In the good old days, Korkorti's eating talent was well-exhibited on Christmas Day. When others were looking for Alomo Bitters to get into overdrive before facing the Christmas fufu, Korkorti's natural appetite prevailed. In other words, he needed no alcoholic inspiration. The anatomical and metabolic mechanisms controlling his appetite were patently in-built. Technically, the man's stomach could be described as "automatic" and run as such.
Another Christmas is almost due, but the sad fact is that Korkorti has lost some of that elasticity that made him the champion on Christmas Day. He still exhibits signs of heavy intake, but the body is gradually giving way to reason. Old habits die hard, but not forever.
Talking about Christmas, I guess many Ghanaians are already making frantic plans for the celebration. Especially the women! They must outdo one another in the types of dress-style they'd be outdooring on Christmas Day. They are also going to rehearse how to walk into the church room for others to either appreciate or envy. Some of the steps are not easy!
Ordinarily Christmas is not regarded as serving any strict religious purpose. Of course, for the-born-again tongue-speaking deacon, the Christian element immediately reckons. For the ordinary Ghanaman like Kofi Kokotako, Christmas is all about getting red-eyed with booze.
The action starts according to a time-table: 24th December - Dread dozing; 25th December -It's going to be wicked; 26th - Hangover Day! No shaky; 27th_ Resumption of boozing activity. By 31st December, Kokotako has ceased to be a normal human being. He starts behaving like a monkey and lapses into coma.
When we were children, we always looked forward to Christmas. Those were times I wanted to be like actors like John Wayne, Pernnel Roberts, Dan Blocker and the rest. We found their pictures well-packaged alongside chewing-gum we bought by the roadside and kept the pictures as souvenirs. It was great to be young.
I usually saved part of my pocket-money to buy toy pistols; of course, my dad will always buy one but I guessed he was old-fashioned and wouldn't get me very trendy ones that would catch the eyes of my friends. If you saw me in the alleys firing and dodging, vicariously enjoying the triumphs of Simon Templar in James Bond movies, it was a marvel. If I had live bullets at the time, I'd have caused quite a commotion.
Today, I can't remember the last time I thought of shooting like Roger Moore or Sean Connery. When it is getting to Christmas I think about cash to buy X'mas goodies for my children. When we were very young, it was much easier for our parents. A whole family could depend on one UAC wax-print and when the family stormed out on Christmas morning they were hailed: "Aaankoo!" It was a sort of sartorial encore, a mass production gimmick that was probably more cost effective and acknowledged by cheers.
In a family of husband, wife and nine children, each child shorter by one inch than his elder sibling, the aaankoo! was a real spectacle. Often the man smiled rather broadly at the proud collection of his brood each attired in the same wax print. The eleven member family could form a football team - Boateng Eleven Stars.
Of course, there were other families where the man happened to be more prolific. He had two wives with each set of children in different wax-prints to add more colour to the Christmas morning. Together with his wife and children, they were many enough to have a polling station set up right in their home.
Indeed, those were the days when people delivered babies by mass production techniques. There was one man who had to build a whole boarding house to accommodate 54 children, some of whom he didn't really know. If one of his children met him in the streets and called him "daddy" he asked, "Who's your mother." He had a way of identifying the children by their mothers.
The man, however, did well for his children. He made sure they all got schooled to the highest level possible. In the mornings, the quantity of porridge and bread that was served would be enough to cater for an entire workforce. Jesus Christ! The man has to be surcharged for over-populating the earth.
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