When ‘levels don change’

When I relocated to the UK after university in the early 1990s, everything seemed so expensive, perhaps because my rapid inbuilt currency converter always sent me into a stupor, with my heart beating wildly in my ribcage. 

For clothing and shoes, I avoided high street stores like a plague, given that I was on a minimum wage job, sweating 14 to 16 hours a day.

As for the upmarket luxury stores, I could only gawk in wonder at their price tags. How could anyone spend such huge sums on these? 

My aunt, who was hosting me, told me I was merely engaging in ‘poverty talk’.

Street market to luxury stores

Street markets were my refuge.

The items there were cheap, even if the shirts lost their hue or shrunk after a few washes or the shoes came apart after a few occasions of wearing them. At least they were functional.

New clothes in a UK shop

Eventually, as I found my feet and my income levels began to rise steadily, I began graduating from the basic version of goods to more regular things in the high street stores, and then occasionally, a foray into the high end would beckon.

I remember buying a winter jacket once at an expensive, high-end store and feeling very special without being knocked over by the price tag.

I suppose I had lost my currency converter and had begun to rationalise, asking myself what the point was to work hard and make some good money and not spend on the good things of life every now and then.  My aunt had been vindicated.

Travelling choices

In a casual conversation with a young relative the other day, he insisted that he would never get on a local flight for as long as the roads were not shut down. His reason? Too expensive!

I asked him how he usually travelled to Kumasi from Accra. “VIP or STC”, he announced proudly, and added for good measure that it cost ‘only’ GH¢120.00. When I asked him why he did not go by the cheaper buses plying the same route, he stuttered a bit, noting the trap, before exclaiming ‘But it is not the same!”

I gently pointed out to him that there were many people who genuinely found VIP or STC too expensive and would prefer to travel by cheaper means, just as he thought the flights were too expensive.

‘Expensive’ was therefore relative. He insisted that even if he became a millionaire, he would travel by bus to save money. 

I gave him a kind smile. I pray he makes millions one day and that God keeps me alive to witness it. 

Human nature

When we are broke or our earnings are modest, our tastes are basic and simple – a beer budget, so to speak. When cash rolls in or income rises, latent tastes that we may not even realise we had bubble to the surface, we may discard certain tastes and habits, and a champagne lifestyle may kick in.

I insist it borders on a travesty to maintain the same tastes and spending patterns when money rolls into your life.

It even seems to defy human nature. I was surprised to read, for instance, that Warren Buffet, the American billionaire investor, worth just under $80 billion, is known for his modest lifestyle, living in the same house he bought in 1958, driving a modest car and avoiding luxury items.

What then is the point of all those billions?

In many cases, sometime soon after the money rolls in, the climbing tastes outstrip the resources and we then hanker after more resources to keep up – almost like a dog chasing its tail.

With a rise in professional or social standing and a corresponding rise in income levels, the roadside “gari” and beans that we consumed with relish not too long ago without a care in the world may seem deeply unattractive.

Local gin or brandy may give way to global brands.

A single room in a compound house may see an upgrade by way of relocation to a flat at a more upmarket address, and ‘yam’ phones do eventually give way to smart phones worth more than a trader’s working capital.  A seemingly eye-watering salary eventually feels woefully inadequate.

When we were undergraduates at the University of Ghana and it was quite fashionable to travel to London during the long break to work, my friends and I, like many students on campus, travelled by Aeroflot, Egypt Air or Balkan Airlines.

Being the ‘trotro’ of the skies, they took you on several stops literally to the end of the world before meandering to London ― some of these trips took three days ― but they were dirt cheap and we scrambled aboard without a care in the world.

Three decades on and with a few coins in the pocket, many of us would rather fly the relatively more expensive, but direct British Airways, especially as we age and our creaky joints can no longer handle a mad dash from one gate to another distant one to catch a connecting flight.

One day, when I become super-wealthy with palatial homes in Accra, London, Paris, New York, Monaco, Singapore and Sydney, with a private jet, a dazzling collection of vintage cars and a massive, albeit fragile, ego to boot, please do not remind me disdainfully that I used to drink beer and have switched to vintage champagne.

I would simply shrug and retort in quintessential pidgin English, ‘levels don change!!’, as former President Akufo-Addo once put it light-heartedly in May 2021 at a public event in Accra.

Because truly, I would have arrived.

For now, at my current level, beer will do just fine. 

Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng,
E-mail: rodboat@yahoo.com