Thank God for your graduation

I remember the moments before my graduation vividly; the excitement that welled from my being left me with a gushing stream of hope. I was hopeful about my future and deep-within, I had that fiery ambition to take on my world.
Then we walked into the great hall; clad in our gowns, prepared to sing the Gaudeamus. I suspected that the feeling could be mutual. After seeing the looks on everybody else’s faces, I knew I was damn right about the way I felt.
Truth is we all remember the feeling on graduation day, don’t we? We are oftentimes struck by the memories of our academic nightmares and the tough commitments we had made to ensure that we gotten to the places where our fathers sighed.
Emotional as it may seem, we see the moments stare at us right in the faces. We think about how stony the roads have become and the bitter chastening rod that we have endured in the course of our studies.
In the end; we are yet thankful. We are gratified by our own efforts when we finally walk onto that stage to shake hands with the dean. Graduates! That’s what’s spelt on our faces and everybody congratulates our efforts.
Perhaps that’s how life is organized. We go to bed every night hoping to overcome the dark. We lend our souls to the forces of the dark and our breaths; God knows who monitors them.
We turn, we snore, we drool, and we sweat. We dream, we die, we fight and we let ourselves go.
Here’s what I think; four years of schooling can be like our nights of sleep.
And when all the heat is gone; we wake up to our morning and like graduation day; not everybody makes the mark.
Some die in their sleep; some wake up sick for whatever reasons.
The best we can do is to be thankful.
My point is this; every morning we graduate from our sleep of the night and the truth is: it’s not our making.
So when you do like you have this morning, treat yourself like the fresh graduate you are. Treat everybody’s morning like it’s their graduation day too and thank God for graduating you.
I’m thankful to God for graduating me this morning and if you are reading this; it means you are up too!
Congratulations on your graduation!!! Go ahead; let the rest of your day shine.

Poverty is the Real EBOLA.

Ok! So let’s start with Dr. Amoako Baah’s assessment of President Mahama's speech at the UN general assembly. For once, the good old lecturer made me cringe because I had sat under him for about two years; acquiring knowledge in human rights, comparative politics, ethics et al.

I thought that the President’s speech was well-written and well delivered. In my opinion, Dr. Baah was simply being petty. I mean how can he think that the President wasn’t passionate enough about the issues on Ebola when the former had spent 11 of his 18 minutes, talking about Ebola?  What the hell could passion mean here?

Then it occurs to me: What if we can treat poverty the same way and expect that our leaders should exude such passion about it on international platforms like the UN general assembly?  

What if we can expect the President to speak about poverty for 11 out of 18 minutes and still think he could have been more passionate about it?

What if we can make the UN understand that poverty is also not a West African problem but a problem of the world? 

What if UN, Norway, Obama and everybody else share the same urgency to help deal with poverty like the deadly Ebola? What if WHO treats poverty like another of those life-threatening disease?

What if our society becomes scared of poverty like Ebola? All these radio alerts and broadcasts; these emergency centres and preparation mechanisms to contain the Ebola virus; what if we do same to poverty. 

My point is this: Ebola is dangerous, highly contagious, life-threatening and bad for Africa and the world, but so is poverty. It kills thousands of our citizens every day, it robs people of a good home, a sound mind and it threatens global peace.

So Bright tells me about a certain rich man who has vowed never to help the poor for what he considers as a justifiable reason.  He feels even nauseas at the sight of street beggars.

This same guy in the past had doled out about a thousand cedis to a young woman selling sachet water on his street to start something more decent for herself only to return a year and half later from London to see the young lady looking even more tattered in her pure water business than she looked before. 

That was classical poverty; deadlier than Ebola and the kind that can take you to hell.

I know all of us have interesting views on poverty except that what I’m about to share can be a little more provocative. But I don’t mind because poverty makes me angry at the world, poverty chokes me to death. Poverty is just as poor as the word Ebola.

If there’s anybody who’s aspiring to be poor, he’s as threatening as Ebola is to the world.

For God sake why should people suffer, why should people be born into penury? Why should opportunities, good life, happiness, friendship, peace of mind, smiles, ambitions, joy, pride, dignity, self-esteem and ego elude some countrymen?

Why must a girl of about 16   see her face in the mirror for the first time when she comes to Accra and exclaim “Ei! dei na mɛnyim ti’ɛɛ” To wits: “So this is what I look like”.

I’m sickened by people begging just so they can eat, I’m frustrated by older folks having to lose their dignity just so they can keep body and soul together. I’m livid at the exploitation beautiful young women and handsome young men will have to go through before they can access a little opportunity and I’m embittered by the mental shackles that have manacled the brains of a certain group of human beings simply because they have to spend more time thinking about “Maslow” than “Gates”.

Why must some have plenty; live in a country flowing with milk and honey while some have their faces buried in their hands. Why must some be fatherless why others are tired of phone calls from London relatives?

Why can’t we all share in the light of this world, worship the same God, go to the same heaven than have others live in a dark world of sin and woe.

Like Ebola, woe be unto poverty!!! And doom to anybody who allows themselves to be poor.

I don’t care where you come from, I don’t care who your parents are, I don’t care where you schooled but I hate that you think you may be poor. I have distaste for your hopelessness and poor ambitions.   I will bite your ears if you don’t start dreaming and thinking of your good life.

 Poverty is an enemy of the world; it’s the unseen terrorist and the threat to life’s harmony.

And oh! If you are a Christian and you think poverty is inevitable. I have news for you: Poverty is like a hall in the University of Hell. 

Poverty is the real Ebola.

Random episodes Vol. II

I looked on; as Oswald munched on his fish with a kitty relish; he wondered why it had taken me so long to introduce him to Auntie Ramatu’s joint. 

It was lunch time at work; Oswald and I were at my favourite banku and tilapia joint for his first time. Apparently he had fallen in love with the meal and like the lady in that funny TV commercial “I will come here every day to eat” Oswald whispered to me with an edge to his voice.

He and I had been friends not too long ago; he’s a budding playwright and a “classical poet” as he likes to call himself. 

Now before we left for lunch, I had informed him of the passing of Mrs Gladys Asmah and teased him on how he could cash in on the opportunity.  He had often put out poetry collections for sale in honour of very important people who passed on. You should check out his collections in honour of Komla Dumor and Maya Angelou. 

Across the table where Oswald and I sat was a boy of 14 years or thereabout, he looked quite unkempt to be honest and had a certain vulnerable look in his eyes. I could tell he was Ga. Don’t ask me why? 

Surprisingly, our young friend had before him, a lunch heavier than his pocket. Oswald particularly wondered how a boy of his looks could have such luxury. “Somebody had laid this table before him” we both wondered but obviously not God.

As we both agreed on this, a white woman approached our table to ask if the boy was enjoying his lunch. “We were right alas!” Our young friend’s lunch had been sponsored by the white lady. She seemed quite caring, a friend of children and to many street kids around the neighbourhood; a Good Samaritan. 

Like many of her other white friends, she teach these kids, feed them and inspire them to be better people. That didn’t come as a surprise. The white guys help us all the time; don’t they?  The reason I decide to write this is what we may both find interesting….

Just when the little boy was done eating, he got up from the table and snatched the fan chocolate his benefactor had bought for him as a desert.

 Our friend obviously couldn’t finish up his meal. He had some leftover; a lot actually but typically of an African kid, he was least bothered that he might probably go hungry again or had friends who may have had nothing for lunch. Afteral, he didn’t spend a dime on the food. Guess what her white benefactor, who I believe was American, did.

She asked for a polythene bag and gathered the leftover from the plate skilfully and said gently to the boy. We would give that to Brown, your dog when we go back.

That was the part that got me thinking: an old white lady buys lunch for a poor Ghanaian kid, gets him desert and still had the trouble of packing the leftover for a dog that belongs to the same kid.

I can’t speak for Oswald but I felt the shame in my eyes as I watched the little kid looked on unconcerned. All that mattered to him was that, he had eaten a good lunch, left some and had  desert as well.

That afternoon, our young friend was the victim; but indeed that is how many of us African governments behave; we claim to be small and poor to finance our budgets and appear vulnerable to our foreign partners and donors and when they do us the honour of extending some olive branches to us, we mismanage them with impunity. 

We expect these same donors to advise us on how to manage or allocate our resources effectively.   

Our politicians go on the rooftops about how bad our economy is, meanwhile the little we have is embarrassingly mismanaged.

Our governments lack the skill to prioritise and like the little boy, they lose touch of our future needs, As government functionaries, when we find something to eat and to fill our pockets, we forget that there may be citizens who can’t afford a decent meal or don’t have the luxury of drinking potable water. 

We ignore the plights of the many ordinary citizens who queue to vote us into power. We live our country men to go hungry and all that matters to us is that we are belly-full and have enough to waste.

A large proportion of our income is left to go waste and corruption has become a major devourer of the same scanty income we complained we had run out of. 

Our country is broke is the anthem we all sing; we have eaten the meat to the bone; our politicians keep telling us.

Meanwhile people drive empty V8 vehicles around, politicians spend large amounts on lunch and useless allowances. People continue to receive huge incomes they haven’t worked for and ministries, agencies and public corporations spend so much on unnecessary costs they have incurred by their own lack of proactiveness.

Then I particularly felt the shame when I remembered the number of times I had put my leftover in the bin or when I recall how assembly members at a certain metropolitan assembly I know take home double packs of drinks and savouries with undeserving allowances for meetings to discuss matters that had already been discussed at the previous meeting.

The white lady left me with a few lessons: I would continue to help the poor as best as I can and teach them to manage the little or more I give them and henceforth I’m not allowing any grain of food to go waste at home, I’m getting a new dog to eat my leftovers at least when I become irresponsible enough to fetch more than I can eat. I would think of my friends who can’t afford three square meals a day, I would learn to manage my little resource, I would live within my means and preserve for the future.    

Random Episodes Vol. I

It was one of those typically wet mornings when for many young workers, we would rather be in bed than go to work in the cold. I was perched at the back of a trosky – laptop in hand - imagining what the day would be like.

 You know at some point of my usual journey to work, I’m able to sniff into the troubles of commuters without opening my senses too wide. Trust me, lots of Ghanaians prefer to lay their frustrations bare whilst aboard on their troskies.

Oftentimes the bus conductors or “mates” as we choose to call them are not spared. It’s only in a trotro that you hear how really bad the government of the day is performing or how "destructive" their partners were in bed.

And by the way, I was right when I called going to work, a journey. Spending two hours of ride in rickety troskies using the bush roads just from Sakumono to Accra is nothing but an unavoidable journey of squeaky mechanical parts and near-whiplashes. God save you if you are sandwiched by two heavy women.

So like every day, by 25 minutes past 8, I’m almost always stuck in a traffic right before we hit the life-threatening bridge across the Kpeshie Lagoon. And hey, like Obama unconventionally interspersed one of his speeches with the clause, “we must fix that”.

As we snailed through the anchor of traffic before the bridge in question that day, I saw what seemed slightly unusual.  Here was a smartly dressed military officer attempting to get one lunatic over to the other end of the street. 

Now what caught my attention was the method of force and the impatience he had employed to accomplish what seemed like saving the mad guy’s life from being ruined by an impatient driver.

This is what I observed; the military guy had a long cane in hand, would hit the mad guy with the cane, obviously not without screaming and sometimes he would raise the cane so high that we all got frightened for a naked mad guy.

After observing for a while, I thought to myself : I mean I read somewhere that the military is the only state institution with somewhat monopoly over coercion but then again, couldn’t papa soldier have used a much simpler method, because here was a mad guy who was actually on his kneels begging as he was beaten. To him, the soldier whose authority he obviously recognises – though mad - was merely trying to beat him than get him across the street.

Then it occurred to me that we use too much force in this country even when people recognise our authority, and even when we want to help them or save them, we prefer to shout and throw our ranks around to assert how high and mighty we are. 

On radio, in parliament, on very important national fora, you hear opposition members and Ghanaians alike rant and rave on government for their actions on inactions. You hear teachers and lecturers abuse their students in class and act like teaching them is a favour they are doing and land owners, eject their tenants with force and disrespect.

 You would be amazed by the vitriol and hard temper with which people attack others on social media for expressing what’s supposed to be their opinion. We live in a country of heat. Husbands order their wives to do their bidding, teenagers force their girlfriends to dress and act in a certain way. People would just shout when they feel they are right. People mount up in heat to face situations they could have dealt with gently. 

My reflections - must people always shout to make their voices heard? Must people apply force to command respect? Must people always use force to correct wrongs in society? Does our nation, our economy, our relationships, our families and our jobs get better with all these heat? Can’t we take it easy for once? 

My point is this, every day in our lives, we would encounter some lunatics or some crazy situations; oftentimes ones that would inconvenience not just our lives but that of others but our reasons must dictate to us that, we can’t always rant and rave like the lunatics do.

 Let’s give our problems a gentle push, at least for the first time, let’s talk people into agreeing with us, let’s appreciate when people don’t reason like us, let’s learn to command respect with our heads and not our berets, let’s use our diplomatic skills as weapons of resolutions instead of relying on ranks and uniforms. And when even our lives are ruined and in a mess like mad people, let’s take heart and chill.

Sometimes our most reasonable self is portrayed by our inactions and our silence makes the sweetest sounds.