Humour – The Christian Blog

My Rants

I love my country. I listen to the radio a lot and read stuff on social media. Do you know the feeling that makes you love and hate something at the same time? That is how I feel about content of these media platforms sometimes – they wear out.

Naturally, humans are hard to please but Ghanaians on these media platforms (in my opinion) are the hardest to please. There are two many ‘experts’ and this era has made them popular.

When Ghana started recording some covid-19 cases, the ‘experts’ started advising the president.

Ghanaians:

“The president should close our borders,”

“He should quarantine all travelers,”

“He should lock the nation down,”

Then the President called for a partial lockdown in some parts of the country.

Ghanaians:

“The president is two weeks late,”

“Oh, why did he call for a partial lockdown. It should have been a total lockdown,”

“Why didn’t he put in immediate measures to prevent people from travelling to other parts of the country,”

“The president did not explain what a partial lockdown is that is the reason our markets were flooded prior to the lockdown,”

“The lockdown should have been immediate. Why did he announce it on Friday only for it to take effect on Monday,”

Now that the partial lockdown has been implemented for three weeks,

Ghanaians:

“Ghana is not developed for the president to lock us down in this manner. The people will die of hunger,”

“The president promised us food. We want raw rice and oil. We don’t want it cooked,”

“Our economy (90%) is mostly informal. Why lock us in our homes for 3 weeks. What does the government want us to eat?”

“Our markets are dirty. The government should use this period to clean,”

The President will address the nation later tonight. I’m not too sure what he has decided to do since the ‘experts’ are calling for him to revise Ghana’s lockdown model. I do not envy the president.

PS: How do you call people who follow you on social media only to unfollow when you are not looking. They wear me out too!

*20th post of the 21 day lock down blog challenge and the writing prompt is: Rant about something*

The Real Struggle of Pastry-Making

My second attempt at this and it must go well. That is never the case with pastry making – your second, third and fourth attempts could be worse than your first and you’ll never know what went wrong.

You may have listened and watched all the tutorials, listed and purchased all the ingredients that goes with the recipe but boom – the results could be disastrous. Trying new meals could be an adventure but pastry-making could be a ride on a roller coaster. Brace yourself because anything can happen.

My second attempt at making puff-puff (a popular West African deep fried snack) and I felt I was properly armed this time. I called the commander-in-chief (my sister) who run me though the recipe again (for the purpose of revision). I made mental notes. I had no idea my brain was this sharp. I was able to memorise everything she told me without writing them down – flour, sugar, nutmeg, salt, margarine, flavour, yeast and baking powder. Mix dry ingredients. Mix the liquid ones. Put dry and liquid ingredients together and ‘beat it’ to introduce some air. If it’s too thick, add a little water and make it sit for about an hour. Cover it!

Truly, after an hour, the dough or batter had raised. Oil in pan, I allowed it to heat before dropping the spongy dough into it. That thing turned brown by soaking almost half of my oil. They came out looking like some soggy compact disks. Not today, I said to myself. Probably I did not give it enough time to raise. I allowed the mixture to sit for an additional hour and poured the oil into another pan. It was probably the pan. It did not make the puff-puff round. I heated the oil again and started dipping the dough into the oil. The results was even worse than the first.

I turned off the fire and called the commander -in-chief (my sister) after I had sent her photos of the disaster I was making in the kitchen.

“Did you allow it to raise,” she asked.

“It’s been sitting in that kitchen for two hours now,” I said.

“Sieve more flour into the batter. You probably made it too watery,” she diagnosed.

That was how I added more flour and fried again and this time, they actually came out looking a little rounder. I am not a failure after all.

Not the perfect puff-puff but a good attempt (in my opinion)

It’s amazing how this snack is common in our markets but very difficult for me to figure out how it is made. This lock down period has shown me how challenging it is to make pastries/snacks. The least mistake you and you’ll be preparing an inedible nameless substance.

**16th post of the 21 day lock down blog challenge and the writing prompt is: Document your experience trying something new or giving something up.**

No Pets Allowed Please!

We had lovely dogs that we kept for commercial purposes (the males mated other dogs while we sold off the puppies of the females). It was a lucrative business. We kept rottweilers and boerboels and I loved their puppies. They were fluffy, playful and were my tiny friends until we sold them off. The older ones also served as guards and we mostly kept about three dogs at a time.

It was all nice until we had a new puppy – a rottweiler. It came in sickly and we nursed it back to good health. Suddenly, the once-sickly puppy that had grown healthy would growl and attempt to bite anyone that went close to it, except my cousin whom it was familiar it. The rot claimed it couldn’t recognise any of us and kept being hostile towards us.

We got a new set of puppies after this one but they all seemed to follow in the footprint of the unfriendly dog. Whenever we went out and came late, we called my cousin to put them away before we could enter our own home. The dogs became more of the home owners while we gave them the space they required.

They changed my perception about dogs entirely. I do not like kittens either. My cousin does not keep any dogs and I have no dogs in my home too. If I am to chose a dog, I would want to know its parents. I don’t want a pet that would take over my home. For now, no pets allowed please.

Day 10 of #lockdown blog challenge and the subject is puppies or kittens (whichever way you imagine it to mean)