Book Review: Wahala Dey
Title of Book : Wahala Dey
Author : Audrey Obuobisa-Darko
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No of Chapters : 17
No of pages : 105
Publishers : Step Publishers, Accra
Reviewer : Kweku Gyasi Essel
Wahala Dey is a multi-setting novel as the protagonist, Felicia Amoah, is found at various places observing, doing or being affected (or is it being weighed down?) by one thing or another. The story begins with a school setting.
Then it talks about Felicia’s home and family, her admission to a psychiatric hospital, her return to school, her work at a filling station in Accra, her stay at her friend’s house, her work with a company, Cozy Bridals, her rented house, and ends with her stay back at her friend’s house.
Problems of young people
The book talks about the problems young people go through at school, sometimes even in their own homes and elsewhere. And it takes luck or as the religious would describe it, the intervention of God, for any escape from such troubles but usually via the benevolence of somebody, who represents the luck or the intervention.
The problems young people go through constitute a real conflict for them and I think the title of the book “Wahala Dey” captures it because the title itself creates a conflict. I believe anyone who would want to read the book would wonder what the title means for it is neither vernacular nor English — it is pidgin. Simple. It is a combination of a Hausa word, wahala and a pidgin word dey. According to the book’s own glossary (pp 105 – 106, and specifically on p 106) “Wahala Dey” means “There’s trouble”.
And truly Felicia courts or faces troubles here and there. At school she cheats in examination and she is found out. She comes home and rides a bicycle down a hill with her eyes closed and hits another girl, who, together with her elder sister, nearly beat her up.
At a point Felicia’s father suffers stroke and for lack of finances, her mother forces her to find a job, so she becomes a filling station attendant. Her mother too falls sick and dies and after her funeral, Felicia’s father’s extended family members throw her out of the father’s house, a mansion as she describes it. For a place to lay her head, she pleads with the family to be a maid in her own father’s house.
Felicia’s lucky day
Luck falls for her when one day a lady comes to buy fuel from her but leaves the car and enters a shop. Later, some motorists are infuriated by how the lady has parked her car, making it difficult for them to be served.
Some of the motorists, men, want to beat the hell out of the lady but Felicia intervenes. A conversation ensues between them and it turns out that the lady who Felicia admires so much was her classmate at Obubuase Secondary School (OBUSS). The lady is Vivian.
Vivian hears Felicia’s story and takes her home to live with her. From this point, all Felicia does is to follow her friend to work. One day, Felicia suggests to her friend to help her forge some papers to help her (Felicia) secure a good job like that of her friend’s. Vivian wouldn’t budge but Felicia succeeds in getting Vivian’s mother to help her secure that good job.
Theft of documents
Felicia secures a job as a cashier and later as an Assistant Manager. Now she’s made it and steals someone’s documents in order for her to be able to travel. Felicia’s surname is Amoah and she manages to steal documents bearing the name Jane Amoah. Now to some people Felicia is Felicia and to others she is called Jane.
This shows another conflict of how some young people would do anything, however fishy, dubious or vicious, to succeed to be counted among the top class. Having a true name and false one is itself another conflict for Felicia, but that is not the end. After making it, she cultivates a lifestyle she describes as classy — smoking, wearing expensive dresses, carefree attitude, arrogance and all.
Later disaster strikes —fire burns her rented house and workplace too and she has to return to Vivian for help.
Wahala Dey is authored by 14-year-old Audrey Obuobisa-Darko of the University of Ghana Basic School as her second book after The Magic Basket.
The book will be launched on Sunday, September 28, 2014 at pm. at the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) House, near the traffic lights between Accra Girls SHS and the Ridge School at Roman Ridge.
Personalities expected at the launch include Mrs Matilda Amissah-Arthur, the wife of the Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, as the Special Guest of Honour; Professor Stephen Adei, former Rector of GIMPA, as the Guest Speaker; and Ms Abla Dzifa Gomashie, Deputy Minister of Tourism, as the chairperson for the occasion.
Mrs Amissah-Aurthur has publicly expressed worry about lack of the reading habit among Ghanaian youth and it is expected that she would honour the invitation to Audrey’s book launch and use the occasion to once again call on Ghanaian youth to cultivate the habit of reading and even go beyond it to write as young Audrey has started doing.