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.
Sunday, 30 November 2014
Friday, 26 September 2014
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 mÉ›nyim 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.
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
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.
Monday, 16 June 2014
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.
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.
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