Village boy Impressions

1.   Some nights, when the moon is happy  Smiling broadly from its heavenly home.  A small crowd gathers in the yard;  Grandma, mother, aunty and the others  Not forgetting me and three smaller ones.  Akangriba the dog would be present  As is the cat who never quite got a name.  Baba is outside on the dampala [1]  With a neighbour for company   As the age-old ritual is being enacted,  And none can be left out:  A hand reaches into the big bowl  And grabs a handful of groundnuts,  Ka, ka, crack! goes the shells,  Hard-pressed between thumb and index.  Opened shells are clasped in one hand  Or dropped in a calabash nearby  And the ritual is repeated again and again.  Until our fingers ache, we the little ones. 2. Soon we find support in our teeth. A seed or two usually remaining To keep the jaws busy and sleep at bay. When this becomes too frequent, We earn a rebuke or two, And are driven off to our mats, Beside the cracking party, Under the gri

The following discourse was presented by my good friend, Martin Akandawen  during an inter-university debate. He presents very cogent arguments on why all the tension and hullabaloo before, during, and after Ghana's 2016 elections should not be seen or feared as a sign of deep ethnic divisions in the country. Enjoy.   Mr. Martin Akandawen in traditional regalia Mr. Chairman, Panel of Judges, Distinguished Guests, Time Keeper, Fellow Debaters, Ladies And Gentlemen, I rise to speak on the motion: “Pre-election, election, and post-election happenings show deep ethnic divisions in Ghana." Ghana is hailed highly among her peers for the many successful peaceful elections we have conducted so far. We have engraved our name in stone as a beacon of democracy that is worth emulating. This feat was chalked on the back of more than two decades of pre-election, election, and post-election happenings in this country and not on a single event or by sudden flight. Where therefore is

The baobab tree stands bare in the dry season On an hallowed spot at home, Stands a tall, mighty baobab.  Steeped in myth and legend  A massive and hefty girth  Thick, wide and stout arms.  Bare in the rainless moons  And green cloaked with the showers.  From every house, it calls;  Girls and boys, men and women The old and the young,  The nimble and the slow,  Birds, bees, beasts, and bats.  To all and sundry it welcomes  With food, sweetness, and shelter.  In its arms; shrouded or naked,  Or under its shaded bare ground,  We play, we laugh, we rest, we court. Read:  Village Boy Impressions - The Seasons at Home In the rainy season, the baobab tree is usually cloaked green  For the fresh nourishing leaves Our mothers fight the caterpillars. And for the lip-smacking nectar, We wrestle with the bees at dawn. Fearing neither their ominous hum, Nor the eventual virulent sting. Devouring the budding flowers, Into tummies that

When the sun is high up,  And the adults are busy with many things, With our chores hurriedly done or abandoned,  We steal away with our little hoes  Wandering far into the farmlands  To dig along the ridges in the fields  And glean what we may or must,  For pleasure or necessity!  The pleasure being in fields abandoned,  When the rains stopped too early.  Or the yield is adjudged to be poor;  And the farmer is discouraged;  Then happily we come into our own,  For here there is great  reward.  But alas! When hunger lays siege,  And our mothers are too busy or helpless,  Our insatiable appetites are awakened. Then rich reward or not we come  And dig and scatter and peer at the earth  Like the fowls  search for woodworm  In the shrubbery  at home.  For any and every excuse  We are glad to grab a hoe and can  And head into the deserted fields  Where we dig and search and dig,  For the nuts the hard ground holds,  Returning home with full bellies,  Even to

“6th of March! March!  Nineteen fifty-seven, seven!  Ghaaana, independence day! Ghana is marching,  Ghana is marching, Ghana, Ghana,  Ghana is mar—ching!” Those were the words we sang, with our shrill voices Shuffling our feet and swinging our arms  Proud even though we knew little of what we sang And we all loved the '6th March' marching day, But surely that was a long long time ago. But what is there to tell about mother Ghana now? They say, we said our country was free forever And yet every day I see her in heavy chains They say, we said, we could manage our own affairs But when last I checked,  The Impossible Mission Fund (IMF) was still in charge. They say, they said, well, isn’t that all we know? The days have gone down in the west;  and now you are old, dear mother. The elderly should recount the good old days.  And the young talk endlessly about dreams,  And castles in the air But what do you talk about at your age?  'good ol

1.         I beheld a jolly chap in the parkland;  In the warm sunny morning air.  With an old hat over his head,  An old bucket at his side,  An axe  over his shoulder,  And whistling a faintly familiar tune;  He wandered about to and fro  Collecting the dried cow dung.  I smiled in recognition and remembrance  As my heart rolled back the years  To when I went collecting termites. I also had an old bucket and a hoe  But alas! no hat of my own  As I marched into the scrubland,  With great eagerness or reluctance  Humming happy or melancholy tunes,  As my mood might happen to be.  A man returning to his house with a bucket of termites 2.         After the early rains, I go in search For crusts of clay  on the ground That shows where the woodworm lurks. There, I plant a pot of broken-up dung That will nourish and lure them To build and multiply for a day or two. And in the warm sunrise, I come To harvest and gather with my bucket!       The

Ø He had only one major publication  Ø It was in Hebrew  Ø It had no references  Ø It was not in a refereed journal  Ø Some doubt He wrote it by himself  Ø It may be true that He created the world, but what has He done since then?  Ø His cooperative efforts have been quite limited  Ø The scientific community has had a hard time replicating His results.  Ø He never applied to the Ethics Board for permission to use human subjects.  Ø When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it by drowning his subjects.  Ø When subjects did not behave as predicted, He deleted them from the sample.  Ø He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.  Ø Some say He had his son teach the class.  Ø He expelled his first two students for learning  Ø Although there were only 10 requirements, most of His students failed his tests  Ø His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountaintop Source : Unknown       I first saw this composition in th