The Christmas Whisper

 

In December last year, I undertook a challenge I had always prayed for, travel to all sixteen regions in Ghana by road. This challenge was fueled by the remarkable attempt and successful execution of the Ghana spirit which led some Ghanaians to drive from Ghana to the UK. 

Since I did not have the immediate resources to do the same, I dreamt of localizing that ambition by travelling to 16 regions on a road trip. I floated that idea on my WhatsApp status and one particular friend reached out to me and requested that I count the cost of fuel and mechanic wear and tear and decide whether the trip I was enthused about was worth pursuing. Well, I counted the cost but told myself the opportunity would come and it would either be through a personal or commercial request. Well true to my words, the opportunity came but it was through an official request which I hurriedly hopped on and meticulously planned to perfection. 

It was a task for me to visit all the sixteen regions in Ghana to undertake consumer research out of which the results or outcome will be used to drive or influence the next steps of an innovation project we were working on.  

I reached out to a few friends who agreed to tag along to help with the task ahead. We made a few new friends along the way.

 As much as I was excited about the trip, I had one big fear which I did not share with anyone till this day. It is December and you know how some drivers misbehave on the highways to the regional capitals. There were a lot of “what ifs” running through my head then. My biggest was “What if I had an accident and died on the way to wherever I was going?”

I did not want to be the reason why my family, nuclear and external, would not enjoy December and especially Christmas if I died that December. I did not want to saddle my workplace with another death with its associated periods of planning, preparations, compensation wahala demands from my family on the business and an unwarranted funeral cost on their 2024 profit and loss account. As a cost optimization champion and representative, I did not want my death to deplete part of the profit the business possibly would announce that year or the subsequent year.

 All prayers were said and just as we crossed our first major regional capital the car we were using started to jerk. Then my fears started playing back to me. But through some critical decisions made, I managed to get the issue fixed before visiting or last two regions after conquering fourteen regions out of the sixteen.

 I was elated that we were almost done and finally, I was going to drown the voices of doom that had occupied my head since the day I embarked on the journey in the first week of December.

Job done in  Cape Coast and Takoradi and here I was happily driving home. The day I was returning home was Friday, December 22nd 2023.  That day,  I planned to get home first by 6 pm, and then take a shower before going to church for the Christmas Eve service which I had a key role to play at church. Due to heavy traffic that evening, I had to drive straight to church when I arrived in Accra. I got to church at 7:25 pm. As soon as I arrived at church, I headed straight to the projection room. 

I played my part in the service and right after service, I came down to look for my family to take them home. When I  got to the car,  I realized that the front tyre on the driver's side was flat. My spirit started thanking God that this incident did not happen in a remote area that evening on the Takoradi to Accra road but rather my spirit was glad that the flat tyre happened in church.

My mind and my heart were on a different tangent. Why did it happen this evening? Look how tired I am. I have to remove the suitcases, the bags, the foodstuffs and all the thousands of research questionnaires packed in bags in the boot to the floor, remove the tyre from underneath, jack up the car, remove the flat tyre, and replace the damaged tyre with a fully inflated spare tyre. I had to do all of these by myself with no help around since people had driven out of the church car park by the time I was done deciding on what to do. Well, in the end, I did what needed to be done and drove the family home.   

The following day, which was a Saturday morning, I decided to take the research questionnaires to work. There were going to be lots of kids coming around and didn’t want anyone picking and playing with the rolled sheets. From the house,  I decided to send the damaged tyre which I changed the night before to the vulcanizer near the house. On my way to the vulcanizer’s shop, I started hearing some weird and unusual noise from underneath the car. I started asking myself whether I bumped hard into a ditch from church the previous night which might have caused something to break or bend underneath the car and thinking through, the answer was “No.”

So the question that was on my mind was, “Where the heck is this noise coming from?” After about 9 km drive from the house and right in front of the  Tesano Police station, I heard a whisper in my ear….” The sound is coming from the tyre you changed yesterday. You did not fully tighten the wheel nuts.”

I immediately came into the outer lane and branched to the right onto the road that led to the Apaadi Guest House from the traffic light just before the Tesano Baptist Traffic light.  

When I got to a safe space in front of a very luxurious white house on that lane I stopped, hopped out of my car, opened the boot, removed the wheel spanner, fixed it on one of the wheel nuts at the driver's side tyre and lo and belong the nut started turning easily as I tightened it. It was as loose as …….

After turning and fixing it firmly, I moved on to the next nut on the same tyre and then to the next and then next,  performing the same routine until I was done with all five nuts. Then I screamed “Thank you Jesus for saving my life”

If the voice had not whispered to me on that day, what I feared at the beginning of December would have happened to me during my travel out of Accra would have happened to me right here in Accra and Christmas for my family could have never been a good one for the rest of their lives. `

In Matthew 2: 13 the Bible says, When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

I guess I had my very own angelic whisper which averted a calamity on December 23^rd 2023 just like that calamity of the savior’s premature death was avoided at birth after the visit of the shepherds and the wisemen.