The Vim Views & Versions - Blogs of a MIghTy African

I am pulling out the poems one by one. There goes the anthology idea. Am I ever going to be able to write enough great poems to publish one? Time will tell. This poem is written for war torn countries when they are 'actually war torn'. I wrote this in March 2006 to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. We thank God that human spirit triumphed over selfishness and Rwanda is moving on. Rwanda is slowly becoming 'krabɛhwɛ' (a place to watch) these days with the great work Paul Kagame is doing. It was specifically for the UCONN Africa Night, and it was recited by two lovely Ghanaian ladies who were at UCONN at the time. The poem was also inspired by the song, Rwanda, by Wyclef Jean, which was on the Hotel Rwanda soundtrack. Here goes the poem Rwanda, Rwanda We wonder, we wonder And leave others to ponder Why they wander, they wander Seeking red from black Staining their own back Blood is thicker than water Family is thicker than enemy We wonder who is fa...

One fateful day in 2000, I heard Arthur Musah (one of my idols at Presec) had gotten into MIT. The excitement that greeted this announcement was big in Presec because MIT was supposed to be the best engineering institution in the world. I had sworn not to do anything related to biology because I hated my biology teacher and I was quite strong in Math. It was the first time I heard about the Massachusetts (not Minnesota, Michigan or Montana) Institute of Technology. I declared that I was going to follow in Arthur's footsteps and enrol in MIT one day. Praise be to God, one day in March 2002, I found out I was admitted into my dream school. For a moment, I wondered if it was the Michigan Institute of Technology; I had some doubts. I must have done something right with my time at Presec. Some decisions and goals I set led to this moment, but what happened in that lean year between Presec and MIT. A lot happened, but it ultimately made me a little different from the person I was at Pres...

Afenhyia pa to everyone. Sorry for the long silence. I was busy chillaxing and eating some great food in Ghana. My time there has given me a lot of fodder for blog topics. We'll start 2009 off with a movie review though. I already blogged about " Life and Living it and this entry is about the second movie from the production that brought you Life and Living It. I heard about 'Scorned' in early November from a friend and I got excited. When I got to Ghana, I talked to a friend about the movie and she claimed it was even better than 'Life and Living It'. I had to own this movie before I left Ghana. Surely enough, I bought the two VCDs for the movie and I am really glad I did. Scorned is another excellent film from Sparrow Productions and a movie I have already seen thrice. Shirley Frimpong-Manso is really doing well and I hope she gets enough support to go into film production full-time. Scorned is about a woman who suffers abuse from her husband, who's the ...

Don’t you think we need to change ourselves for us to move forward or change, etc? Why do you vote for who you vote for? Are you happy with the disappearance of the Ghanaian flags on our streets? When was the last time you consciously bought a made-in-Ghana product over a foreign one? Which do you think will care more for you? NPP or NDC? Which government do you think will empower you more? NPP or NDC? Which government will control the constant migration into Accra which is choking our capital city? Which government will raise more money in Ghana through taxes for national development? Which leader is better equipped to get his opponents to listen to him and unite the nation? Why NPP or NDC? What are they doing right that the other political parties are not doing?

Many Ghanaians would not vote for the NDC simply because of J J Rawlings. How do you address them and this? The NDC has been calling for change. What kind of change are you calling for or bringing to Ghana? Even though Professor Atta Mills is called Asomdwoe hene, a lot of people don’t see the NDC as a peaceful political party. What do you have to say about this? Is Professor Atta Mills going to move to the Jubilee House if he wins the election or he’ll do what President Kuffour did? Fortify his house, etc In about how many years do you think we’ll have an Ashanti or Akyem presidential candidate in your party? Are you going to discontinue some of the contractual agreements the NPP had with some firms because those firms have mostly NPP card-bearing members? Many Ghanaians abroad were shocked when you pushed the election into a second round with 47% of the vote. Any idea why? For a long time, I didn’t know what the NDC platform was. Is most of your campaign propaganda? List some of the ...

Do you really believe you couldn’t win the first round of the Ghanaian elections because some of your supporters stayed at home? Is it true some people in the ruling government travel to funerals with 20 Pajeros? Who funds all that petrol? Why do we have to make way for NPP campaign vehicles to navigate through traffic? Would any of the NPP gurus send their house boy to a syto school? These schools do have free compulsory universal basic education right? Do we want quality education or just an increase in scholl-going children? When you champion the NHIS as an achievement, do you also tell Ghanaians many times costs over 6 GhC aka 60,000 cedis aka 6 dollars are not covered? What happened to Baah Wiredu and why couldn’t he get medical attention in a Ghanaian hospital? Why are we talking about closing the Togo border? What about the Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire borders? How much does one billboard cost? Humour us, how much did you spend on your campaign for the election? In about how ...

When I first heard about BarCamp from my GhanaThink buddy, I was apprehensive. What is this BarCamp that I have never heard of before? I still don’t know why it’s called BarCamp, even after helping organize BarCamp Ghana. What I do know is is that the concept of a BarCamp is excellent. It has almost everything I want in a gathering of minds, hands and people. BarCamp Ghana 08 came off yesterday, December 22nd at the Kofi Annan Center of Excellence for ICT – AITI. Ever since I arrived in Ghana on Tuesday the 16th, I’ve had many ideas of a blog and subject matters to write about, but the excitement that is BarCamp generated for me trumps all. My first real experience with BarCamps was BarCamp Africa. It was organized by a group of people, mostly non-African who were passionate about or had some interests in Africa. Google sponsored the BarCamp, giving us a whole building for free – an auditorium, a kitchen/bar with free food all day (yay!) and more than 10 rooms all with internet, power,...