A CHALK, A PENCIL AND A PEN

When we were little (https://www.facebook.com/WhenIWasALittleChild), we used to use a chalk and a slate. My kindergarten class was the World Trade Centre. 

Transactions of children battling each other and batter trading for leverage to achieve unreasonable goals. My slate was my galaxy tab. You would find every information about me on it. And when I needed to refresh it, it was just a duster away.

Then came the days of using a pencil. Ha...how fulfilling it felt to hold on to my HB pencil. I was so into the pencil, i grew a very great artist. I would sharpen the tip to look like the apex of Mount Everest. What i loved most was the eraser, it reminded me of my chalk and slate days.

Graduating to the use of Pen was a kindergarten vision achieved. Just amazing. Truth be told, I had started using it prematurely; imitating my dad in the way he went about scribbling his name T-O-M-M-Y. I had grown out of using the chalk and walked by my kindergarten class every morning surprised by how short those kids looked and how much they pride themselves with their 'Some Song Galaxy Tabs'.

By the time I walked up to buy a pen for class, I would meet these upper primary kids coming for pencils. Ha..i would scoff! positioning my pen in my breast pocket to face the world! The joy of asking for permission to go out and sharpen my pencil, was joy the more.

Little did i realize that the transition was significant in my Success one day;

The chalk represented how easily I would be able to make mistakes and rob it off as a little child. How people would easily overlook my errors as unintentional. No wonder we fought each other every minute, yet forgot after the next minute that it ever happened.

The pencil would represent mistakes i would make in my middle age, once that would demand effort to erase...

The pen days would be errors that would demand a greater force to clean; which even after cleaning would leave scars to be remembered for years.

What a realization! The days of Rain Rain Go Away sure taught us how to actually stay awake to the deeper errors we could commit in our old age. Enough caused already! Look me through the eyes of a kindergarten child and let the scars I have created melt away.

What are friends for?

A ‘UNIVERSE’-CITY OF CHOICE

Before we ever stepped foot at University of Cape Coast,

University was just another big word we so much loved to scribble when a topic of the future came up.

The pursuit for placement made ‘sleeplessness’ our  students’ companion,

Yet the sweet taste of the ‘today’ held captive the burning desire for the ‘tomorrow’.

How we broke the ice?

He had done it again! The Man who called us ‘Genius’ before our birth!

The One we prayed to today. Remember?

Some say He changed the marking scheme;

Others argue it was the examiners’ mood He changed,

All we know is we were there!

University of Cape Coast

Like the skin of a ‘stubborn goat’ on a typical lip-cracking harmattan season, it only got tougher.

And planted in our minds our first moments of ‘’3b3fa and wa di agu’’.

 To thousands of other students, it remained University of Constant Confusion;

 To hundreds of others, it remained the University of Conscious Condemnation;

To you and me it remained and still remains the only University of Choice

The choice to live not for ourselves but for the common good of humanity; starting from our backyards.

A  deep sense of persistence granted us access to either join the ‘world’ or change the World

We chose the latter. Remember?

All the ‘trigonometric dichotomy of philosophical linguistics’ we were taught proved only one point;

That yesterday, our globe was our village;

Today our village is our Globe

Never did we realize that the most important lessons were not in the lecture theatres.They were lessons trapped in the monumental exhibits that stand ‘rain or shine’ on the soils of the land

The lady statue of Adehye Hall, with the grin of a well-fed vegetarian, in the silence of her ‘voice’, tells us how imperative Focus becomes in the struggle between persistence and pressure.

Symbolic of the existence of ‘frienemies’, the west African crabs of Oguaa Hall wish they had vocabulary

But unperturbed, they served the representation of a message that needed patience in deciphering.

The breastfeeding mother at Science Faculty, (we referred to as Mother UCC) stared in awe, marveled at how her stretch could still not deter us from gurgling down from her chest, nourishment for growth and maturity.

 We learnt how much knowledge is still hidden from humanity; from the statue that stands in the central junction to Science Faculty. With a torch directed at a book in broad daylight, we had instinctively recognized the extent that words underestimate the value of Purpose and Reason.

Bearing the surname of my mother in her ‘crucify Him’ days (youthful days), the gentleman Casely Hayford only kept mute and communicated by a strong wave of radiating confidence, in affirmation of who we can become tomorrow

Then we noticed something unusual.

The FIRST gate of UCC was closest to the gallant monument of Ghana’s FIRST President.

Was it a geographical coincidence? How I wished I believed in coincidence!

 Dr. Kwame Nkrumah stands with stretched arms to welcome us to the undeniable truth that ‘every one is a solution Ghana cannot do without’

These lessons (and more that demand deep thinking over these words), we cannot forget!

It is in the storms our faith is needed the most. It is in the darkness our light is most relevant. It is at the battlefield our cumulative abilities come in handy. We shall continue to persevere to discover the uncommon for Ghana; and for the world.

Today is future! The journey would have been the opposite without you. Remember?

A Statue of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah at University of Cape Coast