Let’s Go Dutch

As a young girl growing up in Ghana I was made to understand from a very early age that no matter how bad it got in life I would more than probably finish secondary school, find a job that took care of a few bills, meet the man of my dreams and he will cater for my real needs.

And here my needs meant a brand new four-wheeler because I was going to have kids, two, a nice package of a boy and girl called Duncan and Deborah (my mum thought Duncan is better than Macbeth if I insisted on going Shakespearean). A nice three-bedroom house in Dansoman or North Kaneshie. Mind you growing up in the eighties, Dansoman and North Kaneshie were the places to live. By the mid nineties the paradigm had shifted, I was spending more time with rich friends in Cantonment, Airport, Kanda, Osu and surrounding areas.

If I could travel with my family on Ghana Airways at least twice a year, shop in Marks and Spencer on Oxford Street London, put my kids in Christ The King School, and eat Papaye on Sunday afternoons after Church then I’d know all my real needs were being catered for.

Of course dreaming is one thing, what your grandmother and those adorable aunties tell you are another, what that boy next door whispers to get into your pants is the crap and what life dishes out is the real b*tch.

I finished school all right. In fact I did better than secondary school. I went to university and graduated with first class honors. I got a well paying job that allowed me to take care of more than a few bills. I bought myself a tico ‘akwadaa wo ko he’ rented a one bedroom flat in Labadi, bought myself a ticket on Ghana Airways to London for the summer (Ghana Airways was the nightmare I relived twice), found a job at McDonald’s for the summer, shopped at Primark endlessly (shopping at Marks and Spencer was marked as a real need) and shipped down a microwave, an iron, a blender and a hoover to begin life as a young woman waiting for my prince charming to appear on his horse wielding his magic wand.

Almost thirteen years later after meeting and dating all sorts of un-prince charming like men I still hadn’t given up hope that there was somebody out there for me. That man my aunties talked about, tall, handsome, well spoken, and a gentleman. That man who was going to come and take care of my real needs.

From my experience so far Ghanaian men were just alright when it came to taking care of their women. So he’ll buy you lunch or dinner every once in a while, a card and a 12 carat gold chain on your birthday, take you to Ada on a weekend and fill your tank if you conveniently left your car at his on a Friday night because you were too drunk to drive.

Some of my friends had also mentioned that their boyfriends bought them airline tickets, paid their dstv monthly bills and once in a while wrote a slim cheque for shopping. Whiles all of these were good and dandy nobody had come along and swept any of us off our feet.

One day we discussed the possibilities of finding these men. Did they really exist or had our grandmothers and aunties filled our heads with the same BS their grandmothers had fed them? Where were the men to give us early retirement from these god forsaken nine to five jobs?

Soon it became apparent that Romeo may have indeed died along with Juliet and he’s never coming back.

The reality of life begun to hit home for many of us. Yes we could still find our prince charming in the form of that young dude who worked in the next office from us, collected the same salary or less of ours, drove his ‘chenchema’ to meet our parents and gave our parents needless nightmares on whether he could actually make ends meet.

I learnt my lessons and moved on. My boyfriends were never rich but they tried their best. For example they never let me pay for any outing, they always remembered my birthday and brought a gift, and they were happy to drop off my carless friends every time we were out.

So imagine my shock, my utter surprise, my biggest revelation when he asked us to split the bill.

‘Lets go Dutch’ I remember him saying.

We were in a London restaurant, a cozy expensive one at that. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He spoke with impeccable clarity of the queen’s language and he worked in the city as a banker. A few months after I had broken up with my Ghanaian boyfriend I had begun to think that finally Romeo had come back to life. He was drop dead gorgeous. So I had to pay twenty five pounds cab fare to meet him, and the day before he had only sent me a one line text to wish me happy birthday and oh the weekend before he had apologized for his inability to drop my friends off because he was heading the other way.

But hey none of this mattered. The guy had all the means to provide for my real needs. He drove a jaguar and wore six hundred pound Hugo Boss suits. His fingernails were well manicured and he talked about spending his holidays in Milan and Singapore.

I cocked my head to one side and stared at him as he took out his wallet and paid half of the four hundred pound bill. Did I mention it was an expensive restaurant?

As I made my way back home on bus 40 heading for Camberwell Green, I spotted a Ghanaian bloke at the back end of the bus. I was sure of this because he had just spoken to his mum on the phone in twi. He was short, hardly a looker. He smiled at me and I smiled back.

My real need at that moment was some good old Ghana man loving.

“Thelma Louis” is a GhanaCelebrities.Com weekly column with no borders on the speed and distance it will take your imagination, while tackling some of our everyday issues—in reality and in fantasy.

All Thelma Louis’ write up will be filed under her name column-Thelma Louis.