I attended a meeting that ran for three hours and ended with everyone agreeing to meet again.
BRIXTON, England (The London Prat) – On Sunday afternoon the residents of our stairwell held what Mr Appiah from the second floor called a summit and what I would call a lunch with a chairman. It was convened to settle, once and for all, the matter of jollof rice. I have taken minutes, because somebody has to, and because in my experience the person who takes the minutes is the only one who ends the day with any power.
Item one: attendance and apologies
Present: Mr Appiah, who chaired; Mrs Appiah, who cooked and therefore ruled; a student from the top floor who had come for the food and was honest about it; a woman from the ground floor who brought a casserole dish and no opinions; and me, representing Lagos, which in this setting is a title I did not apply for but have been unable to refuse.
Apologies were received from the man in flat four, who sent a message to say he was on his way, and who was not. The committee has no quorum rules. It has never needed any. It has only ever had rice, and rice produces a quorum by its own methods.
Item two: the rice
I will say only that the pot was enormous, that the smoky edge on the bottom was exactly what it should be, and that I ate two plates before I remembered I was supposed to be defending a national position. Mrs Appiah asked me what I thought. I said it was very good. Mr Appiah said “very good” is what you say about a nephew’s drawing. I said that I had not finished my second plate and that this was my evidence.
The debate that followed was conducted at the high standard of every such debate, which is to say that nobody changed their mind and everybody finished the rice. I would like it noted that I was gracious. I would also like it noted that I took a third helping to show it.
While we argued about whose rice is whose, I thought of a farm website I had read that week, which reports that eight more companies are labelling their meat American. If only we could do that with jollof. A small sticker on the lid, an agreed country of origin, a certificate signed by three neighbours and a lawyer. Instead we have a stairwell, a pot and a long tradition of loud affection.
Item three: football, which we avoided for forty minutes
Eventually the student from the top floor raised the Black Stars, and the room went quiet in the way a room does when somebody mentions a relative’s divorce. GhanaWeb’s early-October report said that Ghana had lost their first two 2027 African Cup of Nations qualifiers in Group C and sat bottom with no points: a 2-0 defeat to Ivory Coast, then a 4-2 loss to The Gambia in which they had led 2-0 at the Accra Sports Stadium before conceding four goals in the second half. The Ghana Football Association and head coach Carlos Queiroz had parted ways by mutual agreement.
The detail that stayed with me was the association’s response. Its communications director was reported to have said that the leadership takes full responsibility, and that it is understandable the association gets blamed, because it is not in normal times. I read that sentence aloud to the committee and Mr Appiah put his spoon down. He said that it is the most sensible thing any official has ever said to him. I said that “we are not in normal times” should be printed on the letterhead of every federation, every committee and every residents’ association I have ever met, and he shook my hand.
I do not pretend to understand tactics. I do understand a second half. Every person who has ever led by two goals knows the particular silence that falls when you are on the phone to your mother and the fourth goal goes in. Ghana now face Somalia in a double-header, both matches in Accra, and the reports say the country hopes to return to a tournament it missed last time. The whole stairwell wished them well, and meant it, and also asked me to remind them that Nigeria has its own ledger of heartbreak, so that we may all be equal in sorrow.
Item four: the budget, in which the minister has a deadline
Mrs Appiah, who works with figures, wanted to talk about money. She told me that Ghana’s finance minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, had said in September that the 2027 budget would come to Parliament in the first week of November, with a new economy programme, jobs and infrastructure, and an investment figure of around 10 billion US dollars. MyJoyOnline’s report adds that the law requires the budget to be presented no later than the fifteenth, so that Parliament has time to approve spending before the year starts.
I like a legal deadline. It gives an official something to be brave about. In my own life the only deadlines that work are those enforced by a person with a casserole dish, and Mrs Appiah’s casserole-dish friend nodded gravely at this point, as though the principle had been established in committee.
Any other business
There was no other business. There was only a request that next time somebody brings a proper scale, so that we can compare the rice by weight, and a motion that the next summit should be held at mine, which I seconded before I had considered the cleaning.
It strikes me that a residents’ meeting is the purest form of the sort of news I like best: lots of confidence, small stakes, an enormous amount of rice. For anyone who enjoys the same thing from the page, I recommend an English news page that treats public life as a pantomime, and for anyone who wants to understand how that works, a short explanation of what commentary on the news is and what it is not.
The minutes are filed with the casserole dish, and the rest of my week is recorded under more of my daily notes at The London Prat. The motion carried unanimously. The rice did not survive the vote.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/