Coke is it!

It’s always interesting to compare two country’s reactions to a scandal that reflects upon both. From what I gather, the arrest and hearing of the two British schoolgirls caught smuggling cocaine has been treated with the usual condescending concern for human rights abroad back in good old blighty. The red top rags have been full of vitriolic editorials spouting thinly disguised racist commentary and chest-beating defence of these two little Howard Marks wannabes. It’s all standard fare for what is rightly known as the silly season on Fleet Street. Since most of the politicians are on some junket holiday in Tuscany or the Barbados, it’s left to stories about flesh-eating diseases, vicious dogs and those bloody Europeans to fill column inches and stoke the national ire.

Here in Ghana, the reaction has been a little less excited. We’ve been subjected to months of a cocaine saga involving a stash of missing snowy white powder evidence, some red-faced coppers and a cover-up that is creeping steadily up the Police Force. People in these parts are getting quite jaded you could say. With this new story breaking, it seems increasingly obvious that Ghana is part of a latter-day Atlantic trade triangle involving Columbian farmers, Ghanaian or, as it now seems, British mules and Cockney ad exec cokehead doorknobs. I’m not one for editorializing as you know, but suffice to say, I’m not sure who I pity more.