The court for the Marwako trial is barely a 15-seater capacity court. Everyone one else had to do wearisome legwork to stay glued to two windows to get a sneak peak of the drama inside.

Jihad Chabaan, the supervisor who stands accused of assaulting his cook, didn't look lively in his lively green top. In the box, he often looked down literally and emotionally too.

Photo: Jihad Chabaan

How to blend pepper was an important part of the Marwako trial Monday. The blender that sat under oath in court was a pretty old electronic equipment with an inscription - one machine, multi purpose.

Multipurpose is the word - and so what other purposes could a blender accomplish on February 26, 2017, at Ablenkpe branch of the fast food chain?

According to Evelyn Boakye, it was used to assault her after her supervisor shoved her head into the blended pepper. According to the accused Ghanaian-born Lebanese, he was showing her how not to use the blender.

So right before a judge, a mother who had most likely used a blender, the Marwako equipment sat mute in a vocal cross-examination by a stern-looking counsel Augustine Agyei.

He took us through blending in the kitchen as part of his plan to keep his client from blending in in prison. Who opened the blender? Who put off the blender? Was the blender blending? What was it blending? Only pepper? Did it fully blend?

You were blending several things. Can you tell the court in which order you did or intended to blend the items?"
Which one did you blend first?

We combine, pepper, ginger, garlic onion and tomatoes, she answered. Defence also wanted to know if the tomato content in the mixture was high and suggested to the victim was actually blending onions which wasn't blending because there was large slices of the onions in the blender

All these were part of the picky examination that left journalists quite bemused.But the defence insisted this line of questioning was crucial.

Even more crucial was - how a watermelon sized head of the victim was flexible enough to enter an opening the size of a horizontally slashed coconut.

This question re-charged otherwise weary journalists who had reclined to the porch. Jumping to their feet to assault the window, they waited for Evelyn's answer.

Her answer was a blend of words and demonstration as she clutched her head and swung it in the direction of the blender explaining Mr Chabaan adjusted the equipment so that pepper met her trapped head enough to constitute assault.

Muffled disapproval rippled through the standing audience at this explanation. Not that it mattered to the judge.

The right English terminology for what the cook described was a subject of disagreement. Was the blender tilted or adjusted?, an English to Twi interpreter struggled to stick to the lawyer's preference of adjustment.

'You are putting my interpreter into trouble' the judge defended her officer in a case where translation can put new revelation on evidence.

The blender saga was not the only subject of dispute. What time did the incident happened; Evelyn Boakye's 4 pm or the lawyer's 8 pm? Was she offered pizza or rice after the incident? The lawyer asked if she sat outside the kitchen or inside the kitchen after the incident. Evelyn said both. Shouldn't she have sat in the restroom and not the kitchen? Why did she come to work the next day? Was it to work or report herself to management?

The judge wearied jumped in 'when are you finishing your questions?" an inquiry that also spoke the mind of virtually everybody else.

She wanted the lawyer to 'hurry up' because this case is 'just assault'. 'Is this murder?', she questioned the defence counsel's interest in the nitty-gritty.

She complained that she was tired of adjournments and adjourned the proceedings to set up day three of the trial on Wednesday.