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The time was 7.15pm – Dutch time. I had finished my bath. It was long, and steamy. I did that when I wanted to wake every organ in my body. I needed everybody on board if I was going to have a bloody good time!

I took my time with my make up. Earlier on I had gone to the shops and bought some fresh clothes. A sexy little number. I wore my favorite strappy Kurt Geiger shoes, dabbed my channel chance at my favorite secret places. I winked at myself in the mirror. I looked beautiful even if I said so myself. Thelma, the river goddess!

He picked me up at 8.30 on the dot. That’s what you learn when you hang with these Europeans. They are time conscious, not like my brothers and sisters back home in the land of Africa. By the way just incase you hadn’t been confronted with the truth yet, to the typical outsider and I say ‘outsider’ to mean all those folks who haven’t bothered to leave the comfort of their continent and check us out, the outsiders think we all live in one big house. Nigerians, Kenyans, Ghanaians, Ugandan’s… except for the South Africans of course. Even they don’t consider themselves a part of that household; lets just say they live in the next house? Okay.

We had driven a few streets down from my hotel when Aalt stopped around a bend. He flashed his perfect twenty-two at me and jumped out. He was going to be right back. I stayed back, locked the car and quickly checked if my phone had full network service. I heard in the news a few days ago that a girl was abducted from outside a nightclub in Spain and had never been seen again. The authorities were almost certain it was human trafficking.

I stared at myself in the mirror. If they took me I’ll never stop crying. I mean what was I really good at except the missionary style. Don’t get me wrong I could wriggle and do the doggy and those acrobatics if it came to it but I’m also quite hopeless at it. In fact I had decided a long time ago that I had a defect of the wriggle.

In secondary school I had asked my best friend to teach me how to do it, when the house mistress walked in on us and paraded us in front of the entire school as ‘supis’ I was mortified. It took the urge off of course. So I was all about ‘booby show’. I’d pull one out to compensate for the wriggle. I didn’t have sex until I was in my twenties and the dude was too excited to notice I was on my back the entire event. I am sure he would have cared less if I were asleep.

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‘Did you pack this bag yourself ma’am?’

I looked at the immigration officer. She was a woman, 6ft 2, black and fierce, slightly taller than the guard dogs sniffing my bag. My head was swimming.

I had arrived via KLM from Amsterdam to Washington DC that morning. It was a good flight, but the night before was even better. As the American immigration officer pounded my ears with the one question nobody liked to be asked, I realized ‘my night to remember’ could have turned into ‘my life to remember’.

I may have just exchanged my freedom with one night of insane, wild fun.

We touched down at Schiphol Airport right about 6.15am Dutch time. I was fatigued and couldn’t wait to get to my hotel for a much needed shower. Making the flight in Accra the previous night had been a nightmare. I had woken up with a severe headache that morning. I knew who had come to visit, my tooth.

If you are as normal a human being as I am then you will understand that going to the dentist is the most dreadful thing ever. So l did my best to stay out of that awful chair as much as I could. I brushed twice, sometimes three times a day; I did most of my heavy chewing on the left side of my mouth and I gaggled as much Listerine in between meals as mush as I could. But like a thief comes in the middle of the night, so does a toothache and mine had kicked in the front door around 2am and taken everything from me including dear sleep.

I was grumpy. My head of department won’t shut up about the pile of work I needed to submit before I proceeded on my one-month leave starting tomorrow. I was going to be the maid of honor at my cousin’s wedding that Saturday in Virginia, reason I had to leave immediately plus I needed to do my usual one night stop over in Amsterdam. It was my favorite city in the world. Why the hell not. You could engage in any amount of fun in that city and you would still not end up behind bars. I loved the Dutch. TheY were friendlier than the British and much more forgiving than the Americans.

My head was throbbing. My jaws felt like two macho men were pulling it apart. I hadn’t attempted to eat anything for fear of making my situation worse, my stomach was beginning to make noises and I think I could hear one of the guys laughing.

My dentist was upset with me and so was my head of department. Apparently I couldn’t do anything right today. After poking my mouth with the dental mirror for what seemed like a lifetime, my dentist recommended a temporary fill in since I had warned her I was travelling that evening and nothing or anybody was going to stop me. She pumped me with painkillers and proceeded to clean me out and fill me in. I knew the pain would kick in when we started taxing. It was my most stressful moment on a airplane. Somehow I always imagined the plane won’t lift in time and we would end up in the sea or the bushes or the swamp, I don’t know what the hell laid beyond the runway and I hoped to God never found out.

I wrapped my “chalewote” with yesterday’s newspaper and tucked it neatly into my suitcase. My packing was complete. I always kept a packed bag around just incase I had to up and leave. You could never be sure when the army decided they were tired of the barracks and wanted to take over the lavish lifestyle of our corrupt politicians. So I kept a packed bag of my passport, some t-shirts, two pairs of jeans, my loafers, some panties, one dinner dress, one party dress depending on which prince charming I met on the ship crossing over to Australia. Somehow I always imagined that if there were ever a coup the best get away plan would be on a ship heading to the end of the world, i.e. Australia. My headache gave me a slight jolt; I made a conscious note to down some good amount of alcohol once I was on board to see me through the night.

The usual lackadaisical attitude greeted me at Kotoka International Airport. ‘The gate way to Africa’ my ass! That SINGLE escalator hadn’t worked an entire year, the bathrooms were an eye sore and don’t start me on those fans that almost carried your wig away if you had the misfortune of standing in front of it.

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