Sun, sun go away
The Sun! The sun is melting Ghana. What can we do about it? Hmm. My Very Eyes May Just See Under Nine Planets. Who remembers this mnemonic for the order of the planets orbiting the Sun?
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Oh, the heat of the present atmosphere around me has whisked me into my early days in primary school where we had to “chew that mnemonic baba”.
One’s refusal to be able to “pour” that mnemonic resulted in a few lashes from Mr. Tetteh’s kerosene-soaked cane. He was our Geography Master; a very hot-tempered man.
Tall, dark, lanky, and bushy-haired man was he. Having suffered many troubles as a sworn bachelor, the 50- year- old man greyed and wrinkled so badly, the once visible tribal mark on his right cheek creased in by the time we completed Primary Six.
Mr. Tetteh taught us that a star is called a "sun" if it is the centre of a planetary system; a hot ball of glowing gases at the heart of our solar system.
He said to us that the Sun is by far the largest object in the solar system. It contains more than 99.8 percent of the total mass of the Solar System, and that was why no one had ever been to the sun.
Mr. Tetteh said to us, “the sun can hear when we speak on earth. Sometimes it smiles when it is happy. Each time it smiles, it shines brighter and the sun gets hotter”.
Temperatures of the sun, he said, hover around 15 million degrees Celsius; hot enough to instantly vaporise anything before it had a chance to even come close to it.
If what my teacher said is anything to go by, then Ghanaians must have done something interesting and exciting to have made the sun smile so broadly and persistently upon the earth the way it is?
Each smile brings nothing but barely bearable temperatures, warmth, discomfort and that was why I was extremely excited on Tuesday when I received a post on one of my WhatsApp Group pages:
“RAIN ALERT!!
Thunderstorm from Benin towards Ghana in one hr or two. Expected to be pretty heavy. Stay away from ECG substations, Huge Billboards, Petrol Stations, Huge trees & Electric poles.
Info from Accu weather, 5 hrs of rain today, 60% thunderstorms. From this Fri to next week, an average of 7.5 hrs rain NADMO numbers: 0302772926, 03027805410302982531, and 0289554061.
My hopes were so raised about this “vengeful” occurrence which was likely to make angry, the happy sun. With blest anticipation, I informed every member of my department about the sound of abundance of rain, and planned to leave the office early enough to avoid the path of the upcoming thunder and lightning. In fact, by 3 o’clock in the afternoon, our main office door was firmly shut under lock and key.
The clock struck four, then five, five-thirty, six, and no sign of a shower was felt. I felt so so so very disappointed. Now, I don’t know what messages to ever believe on these social media stance. Why are some people crying wolf when there’s none in sight?
On a day when there will be a serious wolf, no one will believe it and then what will happen will happen. Temperatures are hot, so if indeed such an announcement of an imminent cooling turns to be a hoax it becomes very worrying. What else can we believe via social media.
Hmm, on an equally serious note, let me ask, what have our clouds done to the happy sun? They seem to be compromising their strength, and have therefore become disunited. Around this time of the year, they’re supposed to be gathering. Isn’t it the case?
If my memory serves me right (and indeed it does), Mr. Tetteh taught us that Ghana has two rainy seasons which occurred from April to July and from September to November. So what is going on? Why are the clouds not forming to give us rains? Or are we not in April? Heh?
I don’t want to believe planet Earth has reached the end of its lifespan. I once read an article which mentioned that the earth’s got some 1.75bn to 3.25bn years to expire – when the earth will get so close to the sun, and feel its real heat.
But lately, I am tempted to believe the earth is nearing its lifespan. Seriously, during the day, the heat wraps around you so much, you feel as though you would suffocate from its embrace.
It’s high time Ghanaians did something to irritate the sun, to stop it from smiling awhile. And I hear it’s on its way to the Northern Hemisphere and has therefore chosen to travel across the Equator. That’s why Ghana is boiling up the way it is.
“Dear sun, please if there’s a short-cut to your destination, kindly use that route because this one you’ve chosen isn’t too nice for the dwellers here”. This is the statement I shall make to the sun if I get the chance to speak to it.
Eigh, if these temperatures should continue, I am not sure how we would be able to cool off in this part of the tropical world. Sleeping with ice cubes tucked underneath my nightie doesn’t seem to be enough.
We want to minimise our electricity consumption at home, so we are unable to use the A/C. Our ceiling and standing fans keep blowing nothing but hot air. Useless! The heat is deep and real! May the sun speed up its trip.
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