The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

I promised to write a blog post about dealing with the police while I was recounting my " Retrieving pick-pocketed items in Accra, Ghana " story. Obviously, I had dealt with the police in various ways after traffic offences and after my accident on December 30, 2012 . But this involved a crime, investigation and repeated trips to a Police Station. Let me tell a thing or two about dealing with the police in Ghana. First off, we must preface this blog post with the fact that policemen in Ghana are now paid much better than they were 10 years ago. They ride in better cars and they've been incentivized better to do their jobs. Traveler John bought them shiny blue cars to help them combat armed robbery and they became part and parcel of our traffic. Beyond every doubt, they have to do a better job maintaining law and order, protecting people amongst all they do. And even more importantly, they must exhibit "Service With Integrity". I'm not sure about you, bu...

Through all your comments and feedback, it's clear you've enjoyed reading my 5-part series on " Retrieving pick-pocketed items in Accra, Ghana . Like I said in Part 1, the characters in this story are real but most of their identities are concealed for security purposes. Before we dissect next steps, let's recap Part 1-5. No, this is not a review. Finally (y) "@ abocco : Mighty African Retrieving pick-pocketed items in Accra, Ghana - Part 1 bit.ly/ZMmrc9 " — Nii C'dore (@Cdore_) March 13, 2013 Herh blog post wey edey sweet like Agb3li kaaklo like that? Part 2 for come fast. Read part 1 of @ abocco 's post here: mightyafrican.blogspot.com/2013/03/retrie… — Qwophi Opare (@QwophiCedi) March 13, 2013 @ abocco Can't wait! Will you send out some red-gold-green smoke when part 2 is done? And please don't stretch this like Diabolo part 5 ooo? — Irene (@aireen233) March 14, 2013 Part 1 : I received a Facebook message that I thought was...

What's this Akwaaba lady doing in this blog post? You've arrived to the end of the 5-part series of "Retrieving pick-pocketed items in Accra, Ghana". She's here to say "Akwaaba" like we say in Ghana. On the blog post at hand. I was angling my way through work on Tuesday but I was distracted. I was recounting the story to various people and hoping I could close this " Retrieving pick-pocketed items " chapter. I was tired of going to the police station. I had been warned that these things could take a while. The police wanted to end the investigation and move on to other things. I was tired . I know you are also tired from reading 4 parts of an entertaining suspenseful story. This is part 5, the last part to join 1 , 2 , 3 , and 4 . You catch . You catch? As in, you catch say you catch? Okay, on to the story. Sometime after 2:33pm, I received a call from the policeman who had been on the case. Or should we call him investigator? He's a...

I woke up Tuesday morning thinking about "Dominique Mark". Actually, I was thinking about him using his real name, as in the other two names or identities I had discovered the day before. I felt bad that he had to lie in a police cell because of me. I hoped his loved ones would be there at the Nima police station when I arrived there. I had been advised to check my bank account to make sure nothing was 'stolen' from it. So I passed by a GT Bank branch and asked to check my account statement. They were going to charge GhC 2.50 to do this. If I had summarized Part 1 , 2 , and 3 for this teller, would she have not charged me the two-fiddy? Maybe. After something like 2.33 minutes, she gave a piece of paper with a number of it. The number signified the amount of money in my account. Why you want know? The number reflected well on what I expected to have in there. So I left the bank for the police station. To do what? I was supposed to be there. Because of how , thi...

So I had caused the police to arrest somebody for the first time in my life. I was feeling bad. Dominique Mark was pleading his innocence and asking me how I could have done this to him when he was trying to do a good deed for me. He was being a Good Samaritan . " I was trying to protect myself ," I told him. Once the police had arrested him, I was almost powerless. The police is not as sensitive as me, they use the voice of discipline while I use the voice of emotion. He hadn't been judged guilty. Yet. He started swearing that he was innocent and didn't steal anything. Like if he did it, something should happen to him. Hmmm. We asked him where the guy he was standing at the gate with was. Because I saw him (wearing a white T-shirt) with somebody else (wearing a black T-shirt). Black and white smoke. Dominique Mark claimed he didn't know him, or have his phone number. He had just met him at Paloma and was chatting with him while waiting for me. First red flag....

So I woke up on Monday March 11th happy that I had found my bank and ID cards. I really missed my Stanford Card. I didn't have to have to deal with calling Bank of America for new ones. I wanted Dominique Mark to help me find the stolen S2. I told the story to a couple of friends and marked my time till I would call my policeman friend, Alfred, to join the meeting with Mark later that day. What if Mark wanted to collect more money from me? The police just had to be there. Alfred knew someone at the CID at Nima Police Station and he would join me. I could only meet Dominique Mark after 6pm. If you are confused about the paragraph above, please see Part 1 . Okay you're back. Oya, leggo. Dominique Mark didn't send me any more Facebook messages to ask when we would meet, ask if I was serious about getting my cards back, etc. Up till today, he still has no post on his Facebook wall. I would also be confused as to what to write on it. Earlier in the day, I couldn...

On 6th March, I blogged that my phone and wallet had been stolen at the infamous Chris Brown concert at the Accra Sports Stadium. I also said then, that I was hatching plans to catch him. What was my plan? I didn't really know. Maybe he would try to buy something with my cards, I'd realise and then track him down. Because of this, I never cancelled my bank cards. Maybe I will track the phone using its Serial Number. I never got to doing this. But then on Sunday March 10th, this happened But before you read that.... the characters in this story are real. This story actually happened. Some information will be concealed to protect some identities. Sorry for the PSA, you can read on now :-) Conversation started Sunday 4:28pm Dominique Werner Hi Ato, how are you doing today? It's obvious I found a piece of documents around the DHL Office at Kanda this afternoon on my way back from the Beach which I believe are yours. Email me back so that we can arrange and...