You can imagine the surprise on my face when i was given an assignment to write a paper on how i would be buried. At first it didnt seem too serious, being that i hardly read the question and just tucked the sheet away into my bag.
Now it was time to complete the assignment and i realized ..."oh my gosh, this something really crazy, how am i supposed to describe my death and burial? such a depressing topic.
After asking my dad how he would plan my funeral and what i would most likely be buried with; and him freaking out on me because he refused to imagine that i would have to die, i knew i had to do some deeper thinking. Who can blame my dad for finding this topic inappropriate. He had lost both his parents, Papa who i met briefly as a child and mama who i never met, and to make matters worse, his friends son had just died and the horrifying state of this friend completely drove him into panic for the lives of his own kids.
No body likes to think of death even though it is bound to happen someday. Finishing this assignment was like ending a war without a loss except you had lost even though it seems you won.
Terrible, Terrible realization .....I am actually going to leave this world someday.
what have i done with my life? i still have so much to do. There's a plan for everyone's life. Hopefully my plans come to pass before that day.
This is what i found out. People from Ghana sometimes get buried with matches to light fires in the afterlife.
Being that i have never been to a funeral before and i havent lost any one close to me, except one Uncle who broke this trend, it was hard for me to feel the emotional stress of death and what it does to people.
It not something i would like to know, because it's such a difficult emotion to endure but not knowing how its like makes me feel like when i finally do, it will hit me like "golf ball thrown at my forehead" ( a term i used in one of my creative writing classes, apparently, it doesnt sound intense enough).
For now, i hope i get an A in that paper. Death is not an easy topic no matter how "dark' you are. Describing your own death is even tougher. I hope i never have to do it again.
Home is where I belong, home is what I make of it and for a very long time Ghana has been my home. It is where my immediate family lives, it is where the friends I grew up knowing are and is where I feel at peace. The world is changing and people are going places and it is only right and expected that the people around me and home in general will take part in this change. My family has expanded, I have grown older and some of my friends have left where I call home to other countries searching for a better life and education and possibly creating new places they will call home.
Home has changed since I last saw it and although this change is not as massive, it is still apparent. Being away from home even for a little while really changes the way one looks at his or her home country. If you haven’t noticed my now, I tend to say home a lot, that’s how much I appreciate its meaning. I assumed that returning back home meant coming back to the little things missed like the food, the people and the culture but it turned out that many other things would become obvious enough to draw my attention.
As the years fly by, you imagine that things are supposed to get better and what used to be will be done with, leaving room for the richer and nicer things in life. On my return I noticed that our decline in progress was out weighing our improvements as a country and of course this was viewed as a disappointment.
The easiest way I can describe my dismay is by expressing my first impression of home on my return. It felt like I had suddenly slipped down the civilization slope to a place where everything looked faded and degraded. The mess that I had left behind thinking that it would have improved by now had only spread more and turned into something worse. I came to the realization that my country is far from becoming like where I just came from. The people in it were not as concerned enough to push for something better and poverty had reduced our hopes to gaining three meals a day, a place to sleep and tattered clothing, nothing more seemed attractive or at least that is the way I saw it, I am probably wrong.
It is not fair to dwell only on the misfortunes of Ghana. Credit must be awarded to the new buildings and offices, the effort made at trying to fix badly damaged roads and the reduction in power (electricity) outages, all of which are of great importance to the people. We were promised change and a way forward and from my point of view that change is long overdue. With our sluggish journey to improvement it is not surprising that the developments that were promised by government are not being fulfilled and those who have also noticed this are determined to speak out. However, I believe actions speak louder than words and Ghanaians are hardly the “action” type. We speak but do not do and even with all our noise making we tend to give up and get comfortable with what we have; this is when the noise dies down till is it triggered again by some odd incident and the process goes on.
It’s been said that Ghanaians are suffering but most government officials are living luxurious comfortable lives. The people of Ghana are the ones with the power and we must understand that when one gives up their power to someone, especially when a lot of us give up our power as well to a certain group to govern the country expecting them not to misuse this power, it is only normal that all those people should carry themselves a certain way. I do not expect to see The President sitting in a “trotro” (public transport) because the respect that comes with having such power will be lost and the people of Ghana, as out spoken as we are will definitely talk. They cannot come down to our level; we can only climb up to theirs.
I do not blame the government or the people for Ghana’s predicament, I blame everyone, young or old, in government or not, rich or poor and even myself. The sooner we realize that we put ourselves where we are the quicker our journey to enhancement will become.
I have always felt that although there is a need for change and development in Ghana, in some way we might lose a bit of ourselves. We like not having to deal with the pressures of the more developed world but at the same time, we refuse to understand why some rules that work in the developed world do not work for us.
After this slight bashing, I still have to acknowledge the fact that Ghana is the place to be!!!!!... I love my country and I will never stop talking about how special it is. I’m sure most Ghanaians will agree.
It's been on my mind for while now and i dont know what got into me today but i finally decided to create a blog page. So far it seems exciting and i can't wait to really get into it and WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! , hopefully someone reads my stuff and comments. I'm pretty sure if i really keep up with this i will look back at this post and delete it because it will seem so lame compared to what i will be writing in the future.Then again, i may not, its always good to know where you came from.
I'm young, i love to write, especially poetry and i think i'm blessed in many ways but i'm just having a difficult time realizing that. Maybe it's because i am originally from Africa and i've been here for a while or should i say almost all my life. Poverty is so usual and corruption is way too high for me to think i am blessed, that would just be selfish. I have no idea where i am going with this but hopefully this makes sense to someone.
So i woke up this morning and decided to create a blog page, im lacking direction and hope. I'm hanging on one thing... and that is someone out there will read my blog and tell me something. If not, im just gonna keep writing till it actually happens.
So I woke up this morning and i decided to express myself, hate it or love it, i am writing. Smile, its a beautiful day, lets celebrate life, no matter what. :-)
