*Embarrassed cough* Happy (extremely belated) New Year all! I'm not even going to insult you all with lame excuses. Hope there are some of you still out there reading. This year just doesn't seem to be starting off great for me and I sincerely hope I'm in the minority here. I hope everything's going wonderfully for all of you anyway.

I was having a random conversation with Nsoromma last night about the punishments people used to receive as children and she related a story of a girl who was a couple of years below her in secondary school and I just had to share.

This child (she must have been about 13) had been giving her Nigerian parents the stereotypical teen girl trouble of staying out later than her curfew, hanging out with unsavoury boys etc. etc. and I guess her father just snapped. She came home late from school one too many times and her father frogmarched her to a barber shop in the middle of Peckham and clean told the barber to shave her hair off! Think less Amber Rose and more this:

What makes this whole story worse to me that she lived in Peckham! You're always bound to bump into somebody you know in Peckham amongst the thugs, aunties, and fine boys. This poor child had to get on a bus from Peckham to Elephant and Castle everyday with her shining head until her hair grew back. As punishments go, I thought this touched the heights of genius.

This then lead to a conversation I saw on twitter asking if anybody else was 'gingered' as a child. Now I remember two or three of my friends having this done to them when they were about 10 or so and even now it horrifies me. For those who don't know, getting 'gingered' involved having ginger (or hot pepper) inserted in your vagina or anus as a form of punishment. In other words, total and utter child abuse.

The nastiness of 'gingering' aside, this leads me to the whole point of this post: what is the worst punishment you've ever received? It can't possibly be worse than having your hair shaved off in the middle of Peckham can it?...

For a long time, I have been wondering why we do some of the things we do. What I mean is the certain traditions that we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into to make sure they never become extent. For example, why do we eat fish on Good Friday? And why do we put up a tree at Christmas?

But they do not bug me as much as some of the unwritten rules that govern Ghanaian social etiquette. Firstly, why is it rude to give and receive with your left hand? I have directed this question to my mother on many occasions, and all she can offer is "because the left is the dirty hand". However, she has no idea how this rule made its way into Ghanaian society and why the tradition still lives on. I don't think it's a problem per se that these rules exist, but I would just like a bit more information about them. I remember telling my manager at work that I would have to be careful about which hand I use when I'm in Ghana. She asked me "why?" and I told her because the left hand was considered "unclean", then she asked me "why?" again, and I did not have anything tangible to offer.

Secondly, why is it that when you enter a room, where a number of people are gathered, you have to greet everyone, starting from the left (or is it right?) and work your way round in a clockwise motion? I remember going to an aunt's party and being ushered (read: shoved) into the living room by my mother to greet everyone. As I was doing what I assumed to be the right thing, I noticed everybody in the room fiercely staring at me. When I later pointed this out to my mother, she told me it was becasue I went the wrong way around the room. Does it have to be such a big deal?

I am not pretending to be a super-liberal, do-anything-that-goes-against-the norms-of-society type of person, who would do anything to break the rules, it's just that I am baffled why some people insist on abiding to the handbook on Ghanaian social etiquette, when it's missing the hows and whys.