Irrespective of which tribe you belong to in Ghana, it is a taboo for a lady to expose certain parts of her body in public. The public don’t have to see your navel, hip, breast, upper part of your thigh not to talk of your ‘Eve’s Precious Asset’ (EPA). If a woman defies this ‘holy covenant’ and goes haywire, she is referred to as a whore, uncultured, prostitute or as we say in our local parlance, ‘ashawo’.
The problem some people have with me in this column is that, I am too blunt, bombastic and sometimes acidic. I spit fire when I am peeved. At my age, I am too old to change my style. After all, how do you straighten an already bent smoked fish? That is why I say it as it is. People can decide to keep acquiesced and indifferent to the dress comportment of these libidinous lasses but not me – your unbreakable, irrepressible and iconoclastic Earth Angel Gabriel, he who dwells in the firmament.
After all, when the sea is rough, the fishes don’t give a dime. That is why the fishes did not enter Noah’s ark during the great deluge. It is not that Grandpa Noah was not able to build an aquarium in the ark.
The population of Ghana is made up of mainly Christians, Muslims and of course a few traditional worshipers. People troop to the churches on Sundays and mosques on Fridays to worship the Lord God of Host. As these ladies walk majestically to wherever they worship, they dress decently and you begin to think they are religious enough.
Back home after worship, they put off their decent cloths and put on their provocative miniskirts, exposing their nudity to the world. They call it ‘latest vogue’ and they don’t feel ashamed to show off their ‘oiled’ breasts and bleached thighs. They are simply vexation to the spirit.
I am a ‘zongo boy’, born, bred, educated and cultured in the zongo where I still live. In the years gone by, you would hardly see a lady from the zongo exposing her nudity. Our elders will call your parents and reprimand them for closing their eyes to the disgraceful way their daughter dresses. In fact, such ladies hardly find suitors and they are treated like outcasts.
All too soon, things have changed. Nobody controls anybody and the floodgate is widely opened for the zongo girls to do whatever they want. Today, it is difficult to distinguish between the girl from the zongo and street girls who offer their bodies for sale for the sake of money, and worldly wealth like the mercenaries of Eros of yesteryears.
The sad aspect of this canker is that ‘Alhajis’ who are supposed to advise these wayward girls are the ones who admire them and seek their hands for marriage. I sometimes wonder if they saw these types of dressing when they went on pilgrimage to Mecca.
What is most disturbing is that I am yet to hear any Imam or Islamic clergy preaching on Fridays at the mosques, drawing the attention of parents to the way their wards dress. And these Imams and clergies are supposed to be the ones who whip their congregations on line.
Instead of taking some time to preach against such vices, these days, they give precious time to fake medicine sellers to advertise their killer drugs during Friday worship, thereby, literally robbing the unsuspecting Muslim worshippers.
As for the ‘one-man’ churches and their charlatan founders, these disgraceful ladies have taken full control. They deliberately sit on the front pew to attract the ‘man of God’. When it is time for ‘deliverance’, there are crooks who will cover the ‘delivered’ lady in mini skirt with a cloth as she falls with her miniskirt and kicks like a Bolgatanga donkey. I sometimes wonder why ladies who attend the Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Roman Catholic, SDA, Church of Christ, Pentecost and other orthodox churches are not ‘delivered’ anytime they go to church.
Maybe pastors in these churches should go for tuition from Osofo Kyirabosom and his colleague ‘deliverers’ to learn the trick of ‘deliverance’. What is most laughable is that about 2/3 of the congregation who are ‘delivered’ are women. The men don’t get deliverance because if the ‘man of God’ pushes their forehead, they refuse to fall down, (Don’t laugh because it is serious).
What is most disturbing is that our chiefs and queen mothers who are the custodians of our cherished culture are also silent as far as the way our ladies dress is concerned. Let the Otumfuo Osei Tutu, the Asantehene for example, speak out on this issue and you will see the changes that will happen. In fact, let the National Chief Imam of Ghana, Sheikh Sharubutu, issue a Fatwa on this issue and you will see changes in our zongos as far as the dress comportment of the ‘zongomaata’ is concern.
Parents and husbands cannot run away from their responsibilities when it comes to the issue of dress codes. Unto us is come the fullness of time for all to join the crusade. These girls dress at their respective homes before stepping out, almost naked. Don’t parents see them? Yes, I agree some of these wayward girls hide their miniskirts in their bags and wear the presentable ones at home, go to the houses of their friends and change over, but the question is: Don’t people who see them report to their parents, particularly if they are neighbours?
As for husbands who sit down to see their wives step out with dresses that make them look like prostitutes, I pity them. I pause for more insults from Apuskeleke girls. Do I care?
By Eric Bawah