Earlier this year, I was at one of the last of many security points before boarding on a plane for Dubai from Kotoka Aiport (Accra, Ghana). In the boarding/departure area of the airport is like a long corridor. There portable air-conditioning units running parallel along the corridor at a distance of about 1.5 metres away from each other. As you walk through the corridor, you feel bursts of blasting icy-cold air and then slightly cooler, then a blast and so on, until reach the sitting area where it’s just an icy-cold blast. When you walk past an air-conditioning unit which is not working, you truly feel as if a severe heat wave has just swept through.
At the security point, I was standing in line behind a foreign gentleman. We were standing right in front of a non-operative air-conditioning unit. So you can just imagine how hot we were feeling at this moment. The foreigner asked the Airport officer serving him, ‘Why don’t u get money and fix the air-con. It’s an airport, so it should be working’. The officer replies ‘Why don’t YOU (pointing at the gentleman) get money and fix it. You have come from outside to Ghana so you have money, YOU can fix it!!!!’. The gentleman says ‘No (shaking his head and laughing in disbelief by the officer’s answer). Why should I fix it?’. I was in disbelief as well, but all at the same time I thought it was funny. I tried to contain my laughter, but that was impossible. I just burst out in laughter. Both men turned and looked at me! The gentleman was laughing with me as well, but the officer had a look on his face which kind of said ‘You are laughing because the foreigner just asked a foolish question!!!’.
I laughed about the whole incident for days. When I think about it now, I still laugh. I laugh because I think, it’s only in Africa where someone would come up with such an answer!
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