Easylink
As a child, I learnt all about letter-writing: formal letters, semi-formal letters, informal letters, block addresses, slanted addresses, stamps… everything. In Ghanaian high schools, every form of modern technology is non-school i.e.banned, so I thought I’d finally get to use all that I had learnt in the 2nd grade, but like most things I learnt early in school, traditional letter writing methods were obsolete by the time I actually needed to write letters. Say hello to Easylink.
Easylink, and sister company, Easyconnect, was a huge deal in high school. It was, and maybe still is, a postal service linking all popular high schools in Ghana. So whereas you would normally have to buy a stamp, walk to a post office and fill out an address like this:
Adwoa Mansah.
Wesley Girls High School,
P.O. Box 61,
Cape Coast
With Easylink, you’d just circle “Wesley Girls” on the envelope, and fill in the recipient’s details:
Adwoa Mansah,
1 Science 1,
Compton House
Easy, right? They don’t call it Easylink for nothing.
Of course, we didn’t care much for writing good English either. For the most part, we wrote like we were texting. No, Gen-Z, not modern QWERTY texting, I mean hard-core SMS texting like the days before smartphones, when you had to text with the number key-pad. Back then, the shorter your shorthand, the cooler you were.
Introductions which used to read like this…
*My dearest, sweetest, fondest, fantastic, extraordinary, paragon of beauty a.k.a Lizzy.
I hope this letter meets you in a fabulous state of metabolism, if so doxology. My principal aim in writing this letter to you is to gravitate your mind towards a matter of global and universal importance, which has been troubling my soul.
The matter is so important. Even as I am writing, my adrenalin is 100 per cent on the Richter scale, my temperature is rising, the wind vane of my mind is pointing North, South and East at the same time; the mirror in my eyes has only your divine image. Indeed when I sleep, you are the one in my medulla oblongata, and I dream about you. I went out to sea in my dream, and I saw you: surrounded by H20 and you in your majesty rose from the abdomen of the sea like Yemoja, the avatar of beauty.
… now read like this…
Hey boo! ‘Sup!
Drmt ’bout u last nyt.
Of course, you dared not send a shorthand letter to Wesley Girls. Those Gey Hey girls ehnn…
Rumour Legend has it that once upon a time a guy wrote a letter to a Gey Hey girl in shorthand. She took a red pen, corrected all his grammar, and mailed the letter back to him… but not before they made a photocopy and put it on their noticeboards. Savage, chale, savage.
But you get the idea… letters were a big deal.
Banana
Every Ghanaian 90’s baby should have heard the rhyme that goes like this:
There was a man — mango
Sitting on the sun — santo
He wrote a leh — letter
Letter dunafa — fanta
If I have made a mistake in writing out this rhyme, then you know, like I know, that nobody ever tried to write this out for any reason. So please, leave me alone.😒
This story is not really about me, nor does it have anything to do with the man who wrote the “letter dunafa”.
It’s about a guy we called Banana and his experience with Easylink. Actually, he called himself Banana… I never knew why, but we… errmm… “respected” his decision to be identified as a fruit. Who am I to judge? It worked for Apple.
Once upon a time, Banana wrote a letter to a girl in a school far far away. I don’t know her and I don’t remember her name either… I don’t even remember which school exactly, but boy, did he invest into that letter.
Since there wasn’t much fuss about the “weight” of the English in your letter back in 2009, the emphasis was more on the design… and the ‘features’, shout outs from other students, at the back.
So we wrote our letters on colourfully designed writing paper, or else we paid some of the more artistic students to design the name of the recipient on a plain sheet. The really wild people, like Banana in his prime, would buy the already designed writing paper and then get someone to design the recipient’s name on it. Then they would perfume it and draw tiny hearts all over the sheet.
An elaborate display of affection? Nah… the boys just couldn’t write much. 😂😂😂
True disgrace is when you finish writing your letter–remember it’s in shorthand–and there’s half a page of nothing — a text vacuum — staring up at you. You dare not post that to someone’s daughter.
What are you trying to tell her? That she’s not inspiring enough?
After writing your text message letter came the best part: the features.
Featuring, or giving shout outs, back in high school, was perching on someone’s letter to say hi to the person, or someone else you knew in that person’s house or class. It was also a somewhat weird, yet oddly effective way of making new friends.
What it meant for the writer, however, was that his/her letter got showcased, first, when they went out to solicit for features, and also when the recipient went out to deliver featured messages.
That’s how we all got to hear about the sheer wonder of Banana’s letter. No, I didn’t feature–that’s why I don’t know her name–but we all heard wonders about the designs, and how this girl was one of the prettiest human beings on the face of the planet.
She was definitely not prettier than my Akua though. 😉
At break time that day, as Banana headed out to post his super-letter, an entourage of boys-boys followed him from the form 1 science block to the registry — the office where we sent and received letters.
“Boys-boys” were never quiet. We really brought the energy. “B-A-Nana!!” “Nana Banana!!” “Banaaaaaaana!!!” All the way from the science block to the registry.
When we arrived, Banana motioned for us to be quiet. He pulled out his last secret weapon from his pocket; a Motown wrist-band! He dropped it into the Easylink envelope and sealed his doom, ei, his envelope–let me not get ahead of myself.😅
The crowd went wild! “Banana, you do all!!” “Oseeee Banana!!” “The only B-A-Nana!!!”
As far as we were concerned, this girl’s heart would be putty in his hands.
“But if she no reply aa, yawa oo!”, George said out of nowhere. He was this shifty boy who looked innocent outside, but you did not want to do yawa around him.
Banana didn’t miss a beat in his contemptuous reply. “Fior! If e be you aa, like you no go reply? You figure my mouth die like your own?”
If only he had laughed it off in a kinder way.
4 Weeks Later…
You need to know something about boys-boys: boys-boys do not forget. Four weeks was more than enough time to get a reply, especially for a letter of that calibre, and the boys just wouldn’t let him forget.
For the first two weeks or so he was fine, until George started releasing little jabs.
“Yo! Aki-Ola, you publish any new books?”
“Chale, Banana, I go buy wristband oo, your girl send you some?”
“Banana, that your girl she dey school for Mars or what?”
By the end of the 4th week, Banana had been to the registry about 15 times to check if he had any letter… Then one day… If I were preaching, I’d say, “Turn to your neighbour and say: One Day!!”…
One Day!
One day, during break time, Banana burst into Science 4, not because my class was a hub for socialization, but just because George was in my class.
“Where my haters at? Where them dey? That George boy, where he dey?” In his hand he brandished a white envelope.
Every instinct in me screamed, “Something’s wrong! Stop him!” But hey, nobody ever accused me of being a hero.
Banana walked straight to George’s desk. George looked a bit pressured. Boys-boys rushed to the desk like flies to… 💩 hey… we surrounded the desk, okay?
Banana held out the envelope. It looked thick, which was usually a good sign, maybe it contained a school magazine. But why did it seem so off?
“Gbele am”–open it—the boys cheered.
As he began to open the envelope it suddenly hit me! The stamp! Easylink didn’t use stamps!
It was too late now.
Honestly, this must be the moment where I finally understood that patience is a virtue.
He ripped the envelope open… he pulled out the letter… he read the first line… he froze.
George grabbed the letter, read the first line and dropped to the floor in a fit of laughter.
I picked the letter quickly and read the first line, typed and printed, out loud, “The Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Teshie Congregation…”
I couldn’t! I just couldn’t continue!! Half of the boys and were on the floor laughing. The thickness of the envelope was because of the attached Presbyterian Young People’s Guild newsletter.
Chale, even Banana had to laugh at his own silliness.
So whatever happened to the letter? Did it make it to the school? Did Easylink lose it? Or maybe George intercepted it somehow?
The answer is quite simple, really: I don’t know.