31st night

It’s three hours to the new year and the city is still awake. It usually is in this part of town, and especially in this ‘Detty’ month.

But it’s different tonight.

Pubs and drinking spots are emptier than they were a week ago during yuletide.

Churches are full to the brim, each one seeming to make room for overflow.

You can decipher the mood by the people’s compliance to the unspoken dress code. White, from head to toe- 31st night best.

I hope they return.

Trotro drivers work over time. Shuttling passengers tirelessly in a north- south cycle.  The different lead to the destination - to cross over into the new year.

To be baptized in the new year proclamations and sweat from dancing off the shackles of the previous year- as tumultuous, prosperous or muddled as it may have been.

Opare the driver is tempted by road rage.

His mate has some unkind words for the offending truck driver, but they’re all carried away by the cold December breeze.

The bait is dangling in his face, but he’s not going to enter the new year with a curse on his lips.

“Driver, abotare, abotare”

He’s thinking of joining his church-going passengers to renew their commitment to God.

Maybe this year will be different.

Eden was one of them, traveling from the north to the south of Accra for service. She’s grappling for the new year feeling, trying hard to come up with her New Year’s resolutions, but she gets nothing.

But I will return..

Not to the job that sucked the joy from her eyes.

Not to the same flat, the new year would mean renovations- even if that meant simply rearranging her furniture and taking her Christmas decorations off.

Not to the same old habits. She had started exercising better and touching grass more.

Her new year-new me started before Christmas.

I hope it stays…