I bring you warm Buharamattan greetings from Amalaman where we are on auto-pilot, if you were to believe what the papa deceive pikin people are saying. Well, to be fair, they are not the only ones saying that.

The Rock of Aso neighbours are also saying same. Oga Kpatakpata has been visiting herbalists in the land beyond the cornfields and has gone beyond his originally advertised return date.

There are many stories making the rounds, Wofa. Some say the herbs that are needed to be put in the pot to be cooked for him to inhale, he sitting on a stool with the hot steaming herb-infused, pot in front of him and layers of blankets covering him, those herbs, they say the herbs are a bit scarce now due to climate change and how much the snow has fallen this year. Some people also say that the herbalists are as slow as a wounded snail so their journey to the land of herbs is taking a bit long.

Others also say the Oga is just tayaaed, and need rest, insisting that it is only the infirmed tortoise who feels the cold and blames it on the weather. In the meantime, Wofa, we wait as the country drives itself. So they say. Ei, these yesi-yesi people.

I have been watching events in Sikaman from afar and wanted to share a few thoughts with you, Wofa. On February 2014, I wrote on my Facebook wall:

“Forget AFAG. Forget CJA. Forget footsoldiers. This is a year of citizen demos. Small small ones. They will start with roads and unfulfilled promises and upgrade. I can hear the sounds of a toad which is getting to the limit of intake of water.”

Later that year, on the 1st of July, a motley collection of mostly professionals, who are usually classified as the “middle class”, stepped off their social media accounts, went beyond their online rants and demonstrated with their feet, waking to the Flagstaff House to occupy.

That was the beginning of hitherto unconcerned Ghanaians, who had learnt to create their private solutions to public problems, wearing their voices and coming in from the cold. That simmer swelled and gained momentum and found expression in the massive defeat of the ruling party in the 2016 elections.

Legend has it that the tipping point of the struggle for Ghana’s independence started after the return to the then-Gold Coast of Sergeant Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe, Private Odartey Lamptey and their comrades who, as members of the Gold Coast Regiment, went to Burma to fight in World War II. The story goes that having fought alongside other nationalities and having calibrated their skills against same, there were imbued with the awareness of the fact that they were equally capable and wondered why they couldn’t be in charge of their own destinies. Well, the trigger point was the non-payment of their due pension and provision of promised jobs, but that awareness from the mountain top experience, where they viewed across the terrain and found their voices, counted and culminated in the 28 February Christiansborg, Crossroad shooting.

A people who gather momentum from the freedom of finding their voices hardly go quiet again. From 2014, many a Ghanaian started on a journey of shedding her cloak of silence and picked up an armour of citizenship that had a breast-place to repel insults.

Insults! The tool used by the Sikaman politician and his cohorts to frighten ordinary citizens from commenting on issues. Usually when loses the capacity to argue intellectually (or perhaps lacked the capability in the first place), the person descends to the level of using insults. I remember a story of one musician being asked how many times he smoked weed, Wofa.

“Once in a blue moon,” he responded.

The interviewer probed further, asking “How often does the blue moon appear?”

“Everyday,” the musician answered, not missing a beat.

The use of insults happened every blue moon day, and sadly continues. So with time, citizens resorted to playing safe and wearing clocks of silence that had been sewn under the culture of silence, when the former Odekuro, whose lineage transcends the cornfields, reigned.

But Sikamanians shed those cloaks! They found their voices and these voices, having found the harmony of singing a war song that could drive a party out of power, will not go silent as the new Ahenfie inhabitants settle in and attempt to maintain the status quo. These voices will not go back into the cold.

None of the parties in Sikaman have enough card-bearing numbers or staunch supporters to win elections on their own. None of them. From previous election trends, it is clear that the most the parties can pull on the strength of these dedicated numbers is about 45% of the total vote cast. To cross the 50%, parties need the swing voters, the so-called neutrals (which is really a misnomer, in my view, as no one who votes is a neutral!). The problem with these swinging safari folks is that they are too-known! They speak their minds with their thumbs, which have attributes of the pendulum.

I dare say, Wofa Kapokyikyi, that if one drew two circles representing these swinging safaris and those who wore their voices from 2014, the two circles will overlap very nicely and the intersection would contain a good number. A very good number. Voices that have come out of the cold.

Already Odekuro Odieasem Nana Tutubrofo Dankwawura and his sub-chiefs are feeling the new Sikamanian. The momentum built by the Sikamanian from the near-occupation of the Ahenfie meant that even though the new Odekuro and his men and women hit the cornfields running, the pace of Sikaman was faster, and is also fueled by impatience.

The issues that sent the former Odekuro out of the Ahenfie will not be changed overnight, but the environment that nurtured the issues and gave them life must change. Odekuro better note that. And he must note also that a key component of the past few years has been that culture of talking plenty that doesn’t cook yam. There is much work to be done, and it is the time for business un-usual. Sikamanians have had enough feeding of propaganda to last them decades so we want a different menu.

Long may the voices find expression in keeping Odekuro and his men alert, Wofa. May these voices not lose the audacity to question. Every Sikamanian has the right of exercising the “effrontery” to ask questions. The day we lose our appetite to question is the day we die as a country.

Till I come your way with another sebitical missive from Amalaman, I remain, as always:

Sebitically yours,
Kapokyikyiwofaase
End Notes

AFAG: Alliance for Accountable Governance
CJA: Committee for Joint Action
Tayaaed: Adulterated form of the word ‘tired’, pidgin
Amalaman: Nigeria
Sikaman: Ghana
Sikamanian: Ghanaian

–

By: Nana Awere Damoah

The post Sebiticals Chapter 36: Coming in from the cold [Article] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

In the days of yore when we were we and we roamed the highlands and lowfields of the university of spiritual training, which later was given a coating of the name from Nkroful, there lived an obroni-trained herbalist in the big herbal centre near the road that ran from the abode of Odekuro right into the bosom of Otumfuo.

Teacher Croffectus told us many market days ago on the hills of Menya Mewu, which existed side-by-side with the valley of the swinging monkeys, that everyone needed to be aware of two aspects of self for life’s journeys and to also made decisions on careers: aptitude and attitude; what one’s gumption quotient was and what his behaviours and idiosyncrasies inclined him towards.

What Teacher Croffectus failed to add was one’s debiatitude: how one looks like.

This herbalist in the herbal centre near the road looks like a fitter mechanic. Our view in the land of spiritual training was that an obroni-herbalist is supposed to look dadabee kakra, and not to have features that made you look up at the ceiling instead of admiring the handiwork of Odumakoma Nana Nyankonpon.

One of the reasons why perhaps Kapokyikyiwofaase didn’t even consider the suggestion of Premang Ntow’s son, that Premang Ntow’s grandson became a herbalist.

The debiatitide.

The legend was that during the period when even Nii Saddam reduced the length of his drumming sessions and gave time to the lesser business of reading his books, when men and women alike chewed the midnight kola and burnt the evening osɔnɔ, when Sir RED roamed the rooms muttering “minfitɛ gbɛmen average” (I am destroying the cumulative average of students) and admonishing students to draw any line even if they couldn’t make head or duna of the isometric drawing questions….during that period of exams, many are those who thronged the herbal centre for some relief from pain and stress, from the toils of preparation for exams and from the stress of not making enough time for one inte or the other, and the repercussions thereof.

The story continues that this fitter-herbalist used to prescribe herbs just as you stated your ailments and many who exited his consulting room found out, when they compared tales from not different tails, that they were given the same herbs, even for different complaints.

They soon concluded that the herbalist listened only with his hands.

So, one day, Nii Saddam, also called Kule, decided to get to the root of the matter. When he was ushered into the consulting room, he just sat and didn’t utter a word. But Fitter-Herbie had started scribbling away and prescribing herbs!

“But you don’t even know what is wrong with me!” Kule indicated.

“Ah, but don’t you all have the same illnesses and symptoms during this time?” Fitter-Herbie retorted.

I bring you warm greetings from my Wofa Kapokyikyi who told me that whilst it is true what our elders say, that even though heads may look alike, the thoughts in them differ, sometimes when you see how one particularly-shape head is modeled upon a neck, one can sense that the thoughts in that head have been experienced before in the past, and soon enough, the pouring out of those thoughts confirms the suspicion.

Like the stance of the Fitter-Herbie, many times when one considers the happenings in Sikaman, one gets the feeling of Ghana vu. Many times, the trajectory that issues take, like the path of a quadratic graph that rises and falls, that ‘pours water’, a line that accelerates to a crescendo and falls, like the crest and trough of a wave, seems too familiar.

In Sikaman, many times when the matters hit, one just gets the sense that we have been here just the day, the week, the month or the year before, and one could almost predict the path ahead of the issue.

The steadfast problems of our land never ceases, their recycling never come to an end. They are renewed every morning, great is our faithfulness in traversing roads just travelled.

How are our new politicians different from the old? How different do we address our issues? Are our national scripts rehashed just for new actors?

Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo wrote a novel entitled ‘We Need New Names’. Yes, in Sikaman, we need new scripts. We need new ways of doing things. We need new stories.

We need new politics. We need to change the narrative. We need new mentalities of citizens. We need different heads and fresh thoughts from these heads, mixing in a national cauldron where each thought acts as an ingredient to produce a national meal of positive progress that delivers tangible development.

We can’t continue to be that predictable. We can’t continue to peregrinate as if we have no destination as a nation.

We must get off the road just travelled and find new paths.

We need new names. No more Ghana vu.

Till I come your way next time with another sebitical, I remain:

Sebitically yours,
Kapokyikyiwofaase

–

By: Nana Awere Damoah

The post Sebiticals Chapter 35: Ghana Vu – The road just travelled [Article] appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

At the gutter, fortunate thieves got rescued by the police, who had to risk their lives to save these thieves. The unfortunate thieves got their home addresses changed to aquatic burial grounds. The treatment before the coup de grace varied in their gruesome creativity. Once, one guy got an enema of coal tar before being dispatched into glory. Or hell, to be more precise.

So, Akwesi Burger, a well-known criminal near the Maxwell Hotel area, considered himself lucky when he was rescued and sent to court, before being sentenced to ten years imprisonment with hard labour. One of those who really beat him up was Egya Nsiah, a painter. Akwesi never forgot him.

Ten years came quickly, and Akwesi was released from prison. On his way home, he came across Egya Nsiah painting the sides of a four-storey building. He looked up the ladder the painter was on and called out, loudly:

“Egya, I greet you!”

“Yaaaa nua!” Egya responded.

“Do you remember some years ago, a thief was caught near Nkansah Djan, and you were involved in getting him to the police?”

“Oh yes! I remember it like yesterday! I really beat him up to my heart’s desire! He should have even been killed, such people don’t deserve to like!”

Calmly, Akwesi held on the ladder and called out, “Well, I am that thief, and I never forgot how you thrashed me. Please find somewhere to stand, because I am taking this ladder away!”

In the name of Wofa Kapokyikyi who has the memory of an elephant and who says he can forgive, but never will forget, the man who says it as it is, I greet you.

It was Wofa who said that even though the bird flies and lives on a tree, when it dies its body comes back to earth.

In Form One in the school Osagyefo first built, the closest relative to The Wailers was a tall, fearsome senior of ours called Vandyke. For sure, his favourite expression was ‘Legalise it’! He who is in tune with the spirit of psychedelic delights will understand this.

One of the competencies that every junior needed to hone was the ability to run down the stairs from the top floor of the houses and exit the common room at the ground floor, hiding under the windows in front of the house to run across to the Academic areas without being spotted by the sharp eyes of those seniors who didn’t go out of their dormitories except when there was fun fair or scattey in the dining hall.

One day, one small boy ran down the stairs in Kwesi Plange House and didn’t turn back when Senior Vandyke bellowed his name. It was mid-terms and the boy wasn’t going to back into the dormitory for all the sopi in the dining hall! He knew if he did, he would end up being sent on errands the entire weekend.

As he ran off, Senior Vandyke chuckled and muttered to him, “Make you go! No bi mid-terms? Long vacation sef, they go a, they dey come back!”

The blessedness of time. Ah, the bosom of time disbosoms a tonne.

So it is that when people get into higher positions, they forget that the higher you are, the heavier you fall. But, time flies and even eight years come to pass, eventually.

Soon, both words and actions come full cycle. And the loss of power declutters the mind and descales the eyes.

Watch your words and actions, for soon, words and actions past answer the present. In other cases, words and actions present soon answer and judge the past.

I said once that the beautiful thing about patience and the bosom of time is that words used to put someone in his or her place today will be the same words that embarrasses or implicates the speaker tomorrow. Especially in this fast-paced world, time lap appears most microscopic.

Power has just changed in Sikaman and realignments are in progress. As the engine of the train exchanges places with the caboose, let the engine reflect and let the caboose-turned-engine learn that even long vac sef, they go a, they dey come.

Till I come your way again with another sebitical, I remain:

Sebitically yours,
Kapokyikyiwofaase

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By: Nana Awere Damoah

The post Sebiticals: Even long vac sef, they go a, they dey Come! appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.