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Ghana celebrates fifty-five (55) years of independence from British Colonial Rule today
AYEKOO! to all Ghanaians
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It feels like it’s been only a week since I reviewed Stuff and Nonsense by Gordon Bailey as I took part in Regular Rumination’s blog-along : Read More/Blog More Poetry: A Monthly Event!
This month, I’ll like to blog about a poem I’ve grown to love so much because it sums up beautifully what I will say to anyone who wants to know what it means to be a Christian.
When I say I am a Christian
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When someone says, “I am a Christian”, the person is often misconstrued as saying, “I am better than you” or “I am perfect”.
This is not true of Christianity.
A Christian is neither perfect nor better than anyone else. A Christian is saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9 (New International Version)
A Christian believes that Jesus Christ died on the cross for humanity’s sins so that those who have faith in him will be saved [from eternal condemnation] and have eternal life.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (‘the world’ means humanity in this context)
John 3:16-18 (New International Version)
I believe in Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection on the third day to save every single person, including me, and I have accepted him as my Lord and Saviour. This means I am born again (John 3:3)
I believe the Holy Bible is God’s message to us and I believe every word written in it is true because God does not lie (Titus 1:2).
I believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
I am a believer in Jesus Christ and the Holy Bible… that is why I say…
I am a CHRISTIAN.
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Esi decides to leave Oko because he is not supportive of her profession since she excels at her well-paid job and puts that before him and their marriage. She also resents Oko’s constant demand for another child when she thinks their daughter is enough and wants to concentrate on her profession. Oko on the other hand thinks Esi is selfish for putting her work before him and their only daughter, Ogyaanowa, and for refusing to have another child for him. The distance between the couple lengthens after six years of marriage. Oko feels emasculated by his profession as a teacher as compared to Esi’s prominent job as a data analyst with the government’s statistical bureau.
After the usual arguing one morning, Oko crosses the line.
… Oko flung the bedcloth away from him, sat up, pulled her down, and moved on her. Esi started to protest. But he went on doing what he had determined to do all morning. He squeezed her breast repeatedly, thrust his tongue into her mouth, forced her unwilling legs apart, entered her , plunging in and out of her, thrashing to the left, to the right, pounding and just pounding away. Then it was all over. Breathing like a marathon runner at the end of a particularly grueling race, he got off her, and fell heavily back on his side of the bed. He tried to draw the bedcloth to cover both of them again.
Esi lethargically sits in her office about half an hour later feeling unclean. As she thought about it…
It all came to her then. That what she had gone through with Oko was marital rape.
Her analysis of this disturbing phenomenon leads to a rather puzzling epiphany. She could not think of any native African word or expression for marital rape.
‘And, dear lady colleague, how would you describe “marital rape” in Akan?’
‘Igbo?… Yoruba?’
‘Wolof?… or Temne?’
‘Kikuyu?… or Ki-Swahili?’
‘Chi-Shona?’
‘Zulu?… or Xhosa?’
Or…
Oko’s treachery is the coup de grâce that ends their marriage.
Esi’s best friend, Opokuya has a different marriage. Opokuya is a nurse and Kubi is a civil servant, but neither puts work before family.
Opokuya had decided she wanted four children and upon consulting with her husband Kubi, they had had all four.
To the contrary, Opokuya and Kubi settle their differences quietly. Kubi is sensitive to Opokuya’s moods and Opokuya respects Kubi’s position as the head of the family. Although she is not happy that Kubi monopolizes the only car they share, she does not press the issue unduly.
Ama Ata Aidoo speaks to the issue of societal discrimination against independent, single, professional women in Africa. She expounds on the age-old problem of such women being constantly misconstrued as wanting to be ‘men’ since they will not acquiesce to the expectations of some of their fellow women to heed the beck and call of the male society. This includes having a well-rounded body for bearing children.
This obsolete paradigm is well adhered to by Esi’s mother.
The poor woman shared the popularly held belief that a young woman who is too tall, too thin and has a flat tummy and a flat behind has a slim chance of bearing children. The longer she waits after puberty, the slimmer those chances get!
Esi is further perplexed by Nana, her grandmother, as she advises Esi about love in marriage.
‘Love?… Love?… Love is not safe, my Lady Silk, love is dangerous. It is deceitfully sweet like the wine from a fresh palm tree at dawn. Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need to count on human strength, and when we have to count pennies for food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves.’
A. A. Aidoo does well to compare two very different relationships – that of Esi and Oko’s with Opokuya’s marriage to Kubi.
Esi ends up falling for the suave Ali Kondey, who pursues her without feeling any remorse about neglecting Fusena, his wife. Esi has high hopes for this relationship because of Ali’s sensitivity and constant attention, but this turns out to be short-lived. The romance meanders to an unforeseen predicament.
Although Changes is another enlightening novel about the struggles of women living in male-dominated societies, I found it difficult to follow Aidoo’s narration of the story. Her frequent interjections with history, sociology, culture, et cetera interrupted the flow of the story. It took me longer to read Changes because I had to adjust to Aidoo’s unique style of writing since I was so used to other authors’ various styles of writing.
I am also at a loss as to why this novel is dubbed a love story. I am not sure which of the relationships in the book is the love story.
Nonetheless, the novel made me appreciate feminism and the need to pay particular attention to women’s global fight for equality. All in all, Changes is truly an eye-opener to feminism.
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logo-ligi is a Ga word (spelled lɔgɔligi in the Ga language) which means tickle.
The Gas are the largest tribe in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana.
I enjoy a good laugh especially in the company of friends.
I love it when people laugh together over trivialities or serious and sensitive matters (to lessen their weight).
I want to tickle you with my articles, cartoons and other entries on this blog until you burst into laughter so you can have your share of fun every now and then.
And when it comes to serious matters, I will tickle your imagination and intellect to encourage you to be innovative and to take initiatives when reading, writing and exploring your hidden talents.
ANANSE NTONTAN (SPIDER’S WEB)
I introduced this blog on the 31st of December, 2011 (click here to view this post)
You can also go to the About page (click here ) for further information about the blog and its icon.
logo-ligi… to inform and inspire
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I loved the idea of holding a blog-along dedicated to poetry, so I decided to join Regular Rumination and many other bloggers for the Read More/Blog More Poetry: A Monthly Event!
Stuff And Nonsense by Gordon Bailey (to read more about him, click here) is an anthology for everyone. It’s easy to read (because most of the poems are short), full of humour and is ideal for those who wish to do a bit of light reading during their leisure.
If you have a voracious appetite for poetry, take some time off from the serious literature and read a bit of Stuff And Nonsense. You’ll exercise your lungs for a while, but please be careful not to let your sides split.
Are you among those who try to read a poem every now and then, but remain completely at sea no matter how many times you go over it? Give this book a try. You are guaranteed to have a paradigm shift about poetry.
Have you no interest at all in poetry? Then don’t think of this anthology as a collection of poems. Think of it as a collection of stuff and nonsense.
A few poems from the book:
DING
Ding Dong bell,
Puss is in the well;
We’ve put some disinfectant down
To camouflage the smell.
LOVE POEM
I held her tight,
That special night.
We kissed – a real humdinger!
I ran my hand
Through her mass of hair
And a squirrel bit my finger.
TONGUE TWISTER
I bought a pair of shoes today
But I shall have to return them –
The tongue keeps twisting
And this makes me walk with a lisp.
CHRISTMAS/SACRED
or
CHRIST/MASSACRED
Where do I draw the line?
NOTHING NEW
I was told there was nothing new
Under the sun.
So,
I looked above the sun!
MARY HAD A LITTLE…
Mary had a little lamb,
She taught it the guitar;
It now plays in a bleat group
At the local Coffee Baaaa!
THE ATHEIST
He looked at me
straight in the eye,
polished his spectacles,
and, without even a smile,
said,
‘I am an atheist,
thank God!’
A MAN…
A man knocked on our door last night
with a beard;
We didn’t hear him.
STUFF AND NONSENSE – A collection of Verse and Worse.
Make time to guffaw.
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I present to you the winners of Chinua Achebe’s NO LONGER AT EASE:
- Leander David
Everyone is welcome to join in the next 
There are no geographic limitations to this giveaway.
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James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s.
His active participation in the African-American fight for civil liberty resonates throughout his writing and can be found in poems like Ku Klux, Still Here, Third Degree and Who But the Lord?
I like reading his works because he speaks plainly, without circumlocution or unnecessary euphemism, about his struggle against racism and societal discrimination. Whenever I read the words of poets like Langston Hughes, I find it easy to understand the pain some people went through due to the colour of their skin or the name they chose for themselves.
Peace happens to be one of my favourites. I went over this poem a number of times before I could relate the title to the words. It may seem pointless at first, but Hughes wants us to reflect on the good we can do when we are still living. I for one, see no point in honouring someone posthumously when it can be done while they are still alive.
PEACE |
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A poem like Peace may appear morbid at first, but it speaks volumes about the unnecessary dichotomy people create to segregate themselves in society. Humanity’s history is filled with slavery, war, apartheid, racial and gender discrimination, ethnocentrism and so on. There are those who will even argue that these things make us human as no one is perfect and we all live in an equally imperfect world. I believe otherwise. The world needs not be perfect before we learn to respect each other’s differences. We need not wait to be perfect before we make earth a peaceful place.
Hughes makes an important statement with this concise poem:
‘We are all equal, but the only place residents agree unanimously on this issue is the cemetery’.
In their graves, the dead do not discriminate. Nobody cares who did what or lived where or spent how much money when they were alive. The only ones who continue to make a fuss about such frivolities are the living. And we sure do waste precious time arguing, debating and discussing such things.
We have even learnt to place a price tag on people, saying how much they are worth in hard currency. There are magazines and TV shows dedicated to the lives of the rich and famous (popularly referred to as celebrities). People compete to be mentioned on air as being worth this or that amount of money because of how much they earn and spend.
But the dead don’t care and neither should we.
Let us not wait till our residential addresses are permanently engraved on tombstones before we realise that dead or alive, we are all human. We all have something to contribute to make this world a better place. We can regard each other as brothers and sisters by looking past race, ethnicity, wealth or poverty, literacy, profession, religion, politics, or any other thing that seeks to divide us. If we learn to treasure each other and treat others as we treat ourselves, the world will be a much better place.
In the words of Michael Jackson et al:
♪ We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let’s start giving.
There’s a choice we’re making
We’re saving our own lives
Its true we’ll make a better day
Just you and me ♪
Every single person is precious. No exceptions.
logo-ligi 