Water Wahala by Isaac Neequaye

Kweku Kyere whistled an old hi-life tune as he shut the door and sauntered into his living room. Agyapomaa was slouched in front of the TV watching a sitcom. It was evident she hadn’t been home long; she was still dressed in her work clothes. “Hello Sweetie, how did your day go?” he called across to her cheerily. She shifted her attention from the TV and smiled at him. “It went well. And how was it at Don’s Place?” A grin peeked out and slowly spread across Kweku’s face as he placed his briefcase on the dining table. Agyapomaa was always curious about how he spent his Friday evenings before getting home. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

This story has been selected for the StoryTime anthology African Roar 2011, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

Water Wahala was written by Isaac Neequaye.

Copyright © Isaac Neequaye 2010.

Though born in Tamale, the capital of Ghana’s Northern Region, Isaac Neequaye spent the greater part of his formative years in Kumasi, where his father taught at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Secondary education took him to Accra and then back to Kumasi again, where he graduated from the electrical engineering programme at KNUST in 1991.


Many people characterise life on a university campus as a sheltered one, but Isaac admits wishing he could expose his family to similar experiences now. It wasn’t apparent then, but the KNUST of those days was really idyllic.


His father, a surveyor, travelled often, sometimes taking the family along, and Isaac credits his love of travelling and sightseeing to these early experiences. During the early 80s his family sojourned for a while in Nigeria, and there was a time that it felt as if he was permanently in transit. Many such journeys—involving countless hours of travel, crossing borders, dealing with border guards and gendarmes, exposure to foreign cultures and people, who sometimes understood English differently—have shaped his outlook.


Isaac admits awareness about his ability to write well given the generous praise of his teachers when younger. But it was the affirmation of friends and peers that finally pushed him to take up his pen. It was time to discover whether his talents were applicable to other genres besides technical documentation.


Getting to this point has involved surmounting very daunting obstacles, given that most of his career has been spent honing his technical writing skills. “I don’t consider my creative voice and style fully formed yet, but I am now bolder to explore different experiences and projects. For me writing is also somewhat cathartic. I’ve gotten so fed up with a lot of the nonsense I observe around me and have come to realise that the key to weathering it all is perspective. So I try to see the humour in what goes on around me, peek behind the surface, try to walk a couple of yards in my subject’s shoes, and not rush to condemn or write them off.”


Isaac is a very new writer and hopes readers will like his work. As such he is eagerly looking forward to constructive feedback.