The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

I just watched the South African movie, White Wedding again. After going through Tsotsi, Yesterday, Catch a Fire, Jerusalema and District 9 , it was nice to watch an Mzansi movie that didn't deal with crime, AIDS or apartheid. Not that all super South Africans are about those subjects but you get my point. Local is indeed lekker and am loving South African cinema. I've been looking forward to see White Wedding ever since my friend told me about it and I had to have a friend who was in South Africa over the summer get me a copy. I've not been disappointed. The movie is great, maybe not spectacular like I thought, but great. And as usual, I got a whole lot to say about it, which is an even greater thing. Sharp, sharp! "Marriage is one of the things God got right" . White wedding is a movie about Ayanda and Elvis' wedding, though it doesn't happen the same way as originally planned. The movie takes us through what goes wrong leading up to the wedding day, a...

I was at KSM's Nifty @ Fifty concert held in Accra in December 2006. I recorded a bunch of videos and the ones I am posting on the blog today are about politics. KSM is arguably Ghana's best stand-up comedian and if you haven't seen him perform live, you are missing out. Well, not exactly, because with friends like Youtube, we can all revel in KSM's talent and artistry. :-) First, he prays for a funky president. Can you imagine Ghana having a leader making a speech and everyone is bumping their heads because they are enjoying the speech so much? I know I want a funky president for Ghana. No more old heads taking up these positions because they need something else to do after retiring. Let's get some youth in here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx9JsFZpPXY I think we had a funky president once, by the name of Jerry John Rawlings. KSM proves this by describing the scenes of a taxi driver overtaking the former president's motorcade. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...

Last Friday, the Black Satellites put in a finale to cap an impressive outing in the FIFA U-20 World Cup by beating mighty Brazil on penalties to emerge champions. I had watched every single Ghanaian game in the tournament, following the boys' men's progress. It was such an awesome feeling to finally win another World championship after the Black Starlets ruled the world at the U-17 level in 1991 and 1995. Congratulations to the whole squad, the technical team, and the fans who supported the Satellites with their prayers, and encouragement. This world triumph has not been without talking points and I'll seek to address some in this post. Being world champions at youth level is not the end, we have to build on this and become a world-class footballing nation at every level. The name Ghana should be on the lips of football fanatics all year round, forever. This class has been magnificent from the get-go. Two years ago, they lit the FIFA U-17 World Cup and just fell short at ...

Earlier this year, I blogged about my friend, Eyram Tawia's work on Leti Games . Together with Wesley Kirinya, from Kenya, they've launched a couple of games produced in Africa. The major one is iWarrior which is receiving a lot of buzz and is an iPhone app (game). So if you have an iPhone, pick up the app today from the Apple appstore and support African-made. I haven't been able to play the game yet but from what I hear, it's a lot of fun. What else do you want in a game? And it's an African-made too :-) I've already blogged about Eyram Tawia and his work on Leti Games. I am excited for both these guys. We had tried working on a computer game for the African Cup of Nations in Ghana in 2008. Through my working experience with them, I knew they would go on to do bigger and better things and are quite capable of competing worldwide. Eyram had already proven his mettle by winning GhanaThink's Programming Contest while a final-year student at the Kwame Nkru...

I've seen a couple of friends post this video on Facebook and I finally decided to watch it this week. I was impressed. I knew some African cities had some nice 'buildings' and all but this video was a little eye-opening. This is because it didn't show just Johannesburg, Nairobi and Abuja. It's the Africa they never show you in the media. It's the Africa Africans themselves never really see on their televisions as well. It's the Africa we don't talk enough about. It's not the real Africa, but it's a part of Africa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13MFN0PqP3E When I first came to the USA in 2001, the big things were the big things that impressed me. The big buildings, large roads, highways, interchanges, etc. There are many differences between the US and Ghana, but I must say the skyscrapers and infrastructure takes the cake. I had thought of doing some form of engineering for undergrad, but the awe of the infrastructure wowed me and I settled on t...

Dumela Mma! Rra! Kea leboha! If something's nice, you do it twice. Completed the first season of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It's highly recommended. Alexander McCall Smith is a great writer, maybe I should break my novel reading duck and get hooked onto his stuff. For real though, I'll rather find out the story on the big screen. Here's hoping for more of Africa's stories to be told through film or television. This story is set in Botswana. For people like me, who've never been to Botswana but heard about the nation, this was a chance to continue learning. At the start of every episode, we saw a map of Africa and then exactly the location of Botswana. And then we've have to sit through 55 minutes plus of life in Botswana. Or not. Or just whatever stories the writer/producer wanted to tell. Or maybe what I have to say today :-) I already talked about the TV series on HBO, BBC, and DSTV in this blog entry . You can find out more info on HBO's...

I have only watched a couple episodes of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency but I am so excited I had to write about it already. This series is adapted for television from a bestselling novel. It features Jill Scott as the major actor and is set in Botswana. It's not exactly produced by Motswana or Africans but it is pretty 'African'. I have only seen two episodes but it didn't mention one thing synonymous with Botswana - HIV-AIDS. We also know Botswana has one of the best performing African economies and is one African country with no record of military rule. The series doesn't broadcast these, but celebrates Africa. You have to watch to understand. I had heard about this series before but while I was populating a list of African-themed films I wanted the Stanford libraries to have, someone suggested this addition. From Wikipedia, we learn about the novels. "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is a series of ten novels by British author Alexander McCall...

I've been meaning to write this entry for about a month. After the facebook campaign for presidency got its 233rd member, I decided it was time. If you didn't know, 233 is Ghana's country code (phone). It's of major significance to me. I've been honoured to see people speak highly of my leadership skills, etc and it's been making me wonder if I am up for such things. This is the 4th in my leading to leadership series, if you missed earlier entries, here they are: Tech/KNUST Primary & JSS (pre-high school), Presec (high school), and Syracuse (pre-college). In this entry, I will talk about the MIghTy years. A dream to attend the best engineering school had come alive. A prayer to be in a world-class institution had been answered. How did I deal with leading? Let's find out. Before we get into the stories surrounding 77 Massachusetts Avenue, we must understand how we got there. One joyous day in March 2002, I received a phone call. It was from MIT. I had...

My current favorite movie house, Sparrow Productions, is back with another movie called 'A Sting in a Tale'. A few other new Ghanaian movies are making the rounds. Haven't seen any of these films but wanted to keep y'all posted. We still haven't settled on a name for the Ghanaian film industry, don't give me any Gollywood (already taken by Johannesburg anyway), or Ghallywood, etc. A Sting in a Tale is Shirley Frimpong-Manso's fourth film after Life & Living It, Scorned & the Perfect Picture. I have been crying for her to feature Agya Koo in a movie but this time she chose Majid Michel. Most Ghanaian movie enthusiasts would tell you Majid's a better actor than the big celebrities like Van Vicker, Nadia Buari and Jackie Appiah. I agree. We'll see how he does in this production. The movie also features probably the best female actor in Ghana now - Lydia Forson, arguably Ghana's best in Adjetey Annan (Pusher), as well as Doris Sackitey, who w...

This is a quickie. William Kamkwamba is a Malawian who at age 14, built a windmill to provide power/electricity for his household in his Malawian village. Since then, he's built a couple more and gained a lot of publicity for his courage and ingenuity. He was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart yesterday and I wanted to post the video of that segment. This is one of Africa's shining stars and it's nice to see him go places. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c William Kamkwamba www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview He's also spoken at a couple of TED conferences. At TEDGlobal 2007 in Arusha, he told his story. A couple of my friends who attended the conference in Tanzania met him too. I was actually put in touch with him so he could help provide and get Malawian content for Museke.com. The move never materialized though. Here are a couple of his TED talks. He's now at the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in...