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Tears and joy of service
The time is again ripe for us to call some people ex-national service personnel. They are the new group of people who must start learning how to sing songs like “Hark My Soul,” a sorrowful anthem of all jobless people.
The song is a choral appeal to God to intercede on their behalf so that “morning waakye” will not become a palaver.
Just as some are out-going national servicemen, others are preparing to become in-going servicemen. And I’m glad to hear that these days people are accepting postings to the rural areas because conditions in the countryside are no longer too bad. Ask Mr David Kanyi, the Greater Accra Regional Coordinator of NSS and he’d brief vou.
At least you won’t be infected by the guinea worm. If anything, it is the roundworm which would present a problem like it did to Ali, otherwise known as Emmanuel Lawer, a classmate of my younger brother Alor.
In fact, the worms, contrary to medical logic, made Ali a very prosperous person during the course of his national service. His belly was growing bigger and bigger and people began calling him “Alhaji”, thinking he was becoming wealthy.
As I once said, Ali went to the hospital and pleaded with the doctor to measure the extent of his prosperity, whereupon he was given two small pills. The next morning the entire colony of worms was decimated and Ali tearfully lost his Alhaji status in the Upper West Region where he undertook his national service.
Sometimes, going far away from home to serve the nation is like going to “hustle” in Lagos. For those forced to serve in the Upper Regions it is like slugging it out in Sokoto, and there, you can only make it if God dey your back.
You might be posted to a remote village where there is a tiny primary school and a JSS block that looks like it had just suffered from an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Ritcher scale. You’ll think the building will collapse on you, but it won’t. You are supposed to go in there and serve the nation.
Immediately you land, you must get a place which is an accommodation whether you think it is or not. You’ve got to accept it, otherwise you will be transformed into a Son of Man with nowhere to lay your head (Matthew 8:20).
A landlord will receive you as a serviceman with open arms until you start eyeing his beautiful daughter. Some landlords don’t tolerate such non-sense. They expect you to behave like a castrated goat and be the good tenant you are supposed to be.
Anyhow, your landlord would ask you a few questions.
“Krakye, you’re from the South-eh! How’s the place like?”
“Fine. They all send their greetings”.
“Good! For how long will you be staying?”
“About a year.”
“Good. This is your room,” he’d point to a small door. “The only advice I’ll give you is that if you follow somebody’s wife, they’d stick an arrow into buttocks, Get the point? An arrow is not a small thing”
“I know Baba.”
“I’m glad you know this. So if your manhood worrying you, go and drink pito and cool it down. if you chase my daughter, worse things will happen to you. I wish you a happy stay.”
Events narrated by past servicemen are good pieces of advice to their successors. You’ll find your national service very interesting or not depending on how you conduct yourself. And you have to go by the adage that while in Rome, do as the Romans do. If you go to Cinkase don’t go behaving as if you’re from Larteh. Abandon your Larteh ways altogether.
First and foremost, you must get used to the idea that your new environment is quite different from what you used do know and that you must as much as possible adjust to the staple of the area and acclimatize to the weather.
You must also know before-hand that the first disaster you’re likely to encounter is known as diarrhea. For three days, your stomach will be cleared of southern rice and meat stew, to be filled with Zaafi and alefi soup. The first day, you may need Andrews Liver Salt, but subsequently, you’ll be swallowing the ‘tuo’ morsels like a hungry native.
Yeah you got to forget about oats and butter-bread for breakfast and eat their food, drink their pito but don’t stare at their wives while licking your lips. The fact is that matters of the heart cannot be joked with. A man might forgive you even if you slap him in public but if you go near his wife, then you’re really in for like the foolish dog who sees fire and still wants venture in. Some sins cannot be forgiven.
The most important thing to do also as a service personnel is not only to go and eat tuo zaafi and come back, but to impart knowledge to the local folks. Tell them about the need for family planning, and sex education, but please don’t demonstrate the practical use of the condom.
You must try to make an impact by teaching them about environmental cleanliness, personal hygiene and functional literacy.
All these you have to do not by becoming “too known” but by being witty and accepting their points of view and counteracting them wisely and getting the message across. But if you go and tell them alcohol is not good, they’d say you’re a bad person who doesn’t want them to enjoy life.
You may also preach the good news but if you speak in tongues, they may be tempted to think you’ve been possessed by the spirit of one of their gods. In the process, they’d say their religion is superior to yours and you can’t convince them again.
In fact, if you make good use of your time anywhere you’re posted be it a cottage in the East or a hamlet in the North, you’ll come back satisfied and fulfilled. That is the real essence of national service. The service period is not time for honeymoon. It’s time for hard work and helping society.
Coming back home after national service is another palaver. Some come back fat and jolly but for others, their own parents can’t recognise them twenty metres afar unless they use a binoculars. When Edward Alomele, my kid brother came back from Karni, Upper West, I sincerely mistook him for a Malian refugee begging for alms.
I realised that the guy was smiling to me but these refugees hardly smile. I became confused. I was about to give him 50 cedis when I realised that it was my own brother. I embraced him. He was back from war or better still he had literally deserted the army and was back home leaner than a hungry Somali.
But he was happy and fulfilled. He had served his nation admirably.
Yes, some come back wealthy others return as churchmice. Some come back alone, others with a woman and child behind them.
“Mama, this was the lady who helped me-o! If it had not been for her, I would have died of kwashior-kor. She fed me well on beans. Look how fresh I’m looking.”
“But who’s the child?”
“That’s my first born.”
Mama will then realise that his dear son didn’t eat beans alone. He ate something else too. At night!
This article was first published on Saturday, September 24, 1994
I have often been saddened by the condition of Sikaman musicians. Of course, some are not musicians. They are jokers who think anybody who can sing a hymn is a musician. And why wouldn’t they think so when people think that every man wearing a rasta hair is a reggae musician?
Well, these days, almost everybody is dreaming of becoming a musician, even some ministers and parliamentarians. And it is never too late for them to begin learning the solfas and composing songs like “If You Do Good You Do For Yourself,” after all, life begins at 60 these days. If you die three years later, that’s your luck.
For the jobless, becoming a musical star is an everyday dream. They think when you are a music maker, you automatically break alliance with poverty. They are often mistaken.
I know people who claim they are musicians but are always fasting not because they are devout moslems or are on a hunger strike, but because even one square meal a day is a perpetual wahala. And the only drink they can afford is the poor man’s holy whisky which has a thousand names including ‘Nyame Bekyere’.
Even most of the popular musicians we see in town claiming they are foreign-based stars are more of hustlers than musicians. When they tell you they are going on tour abroad, it is a careful way of saying they are going overseas to scrub the whiteman’s toilet or pick tomato or apples to save their neck from musical poverty.
When they are back to Sikaman, they appear quite flamboyant with chains hanging all over them. They change the few dollars they have scraped, spread it around and promptly get broke. Then they can organise another ‘tour’. In between tours, they struggle to release an album and that levels them up a bit on the financial balance.
It all points to the fact that the life of the average musician isn’t quite organised. He has no calendar, no programme and no concentration on the job. He has to wash plates, become a waiter, janitor and toilet scrubber while finding time to make music. No musician succeeds in life that way.
One musician I’ll always respect, who thinks deeper than the ordinary Sikaman musicians is Carlos Sakyi. He is not like the Kokoase guitar musicians who see the world just in terms of bitters, a willing girlfriend, constant supply of kokonte and jot.
Carlos, often loved for his percussive overtones in gospel music, and once a gospel-rock star, has studied the life of Sikaman musicians and has evolved a blue-print for a great improvement in their lives work, finances and comfort.
In short, he has simulated a Motown-style environment for musicians and his formula is working with accuracy with the five musicians he has started with. The blue-print is what has brought MEGASTAR into being. It was launched on September 15, 1995 at the National Theatre.
When it got launched, many probably thought Carlos was “too know or was dreaming more than he should and won’t think about himself. Anyhow, the MEGASTAR is now an institution musicians can look up to, a big phenomenon with lots of promise for struggling musicians.
Music business in the developed world is not the way we regard it cheaply here. A musician is never distracted by how his finances go; his contracts are entered, his engagements made, his interviews arranged, his personal security guaranteed.
Music is his business and that is where his mind is and his attention focuses. Other aspects of his life are programmed for him by his managers. They hire who has to light his cigarettes, massage him, drive his car and the one who will say “Good Luck” when he sneezes.
A bodyguard whose face is exactly like that of the devil is hired to scare off muggers, psychopaths and criminals in general. Sometimes his girls are organised for him.
So the only thing the musician does apart from sleeping and snoring is to concentrate on making music, and true to it, no one can succeed in any venture when he is distracted.
This is how the Michael Jacksons, Lionel Richies, Dolly Patons and Whitney Houstons have made it with dollars packed and over-flowing. They aren’t any better than Sikaman musicians. The only difference is that they know how to organise their lives.
I managed to corner Carlos Sakyi and asked him to tell me how MEGASTAR was doing. He is the Managing Director of Megastar Limited, a music company that has a board of directors and a chairman. Carlos Sakyi shares the proprietorship with a partner. Carlos himself was one great musician who played for a band that beat Eddy Grant on the charts.
“Megastar is in fact a concept born out of the idea that the future security of the Ghanaian musician which has always been in jeopardy can now be guaranteed. Artistes spend too much of their time doing things on their own, chasing money and not concentrating on music. So their full potential is never realised. Some are in fact producing at quarter-rate. That is why they aren’t making much headway,” he told me.
“Megastar is now giving them the chance of the lives. We handle the interviews of Megastar artiste, their press releases, costume, engagements and everything they hitherto used to do themselves. We get them exposed on M-Net and we have contacted BB to get on their programmes. We handle their finances pay them salaries and bonuses, so they only have to concentrate on music
“Most importantly,” he continued, “we do not make all the decisions. Management always meet with the musicians to take the decisions that affect them.”
But who are the Megastar musicians? One is the great Amakye Dede, a star from birth delivered onto the earth with music on his lips; he is the man who feeds hungry ears with musical salad and harmonic sausages. He is the recipient of many national awards.
Next is Naana Frimpong, a latter-day Carlos-groomed songbird with the voice of an angel. She sings to kill. Her beauty has charmed her audience and they stare and stare at her.
The sensational and fantalising Tagoe Sisters are the next. The twin music machine is one that has produced the cream, arguably the very best, of gospel music all these years. I hear they are inseparable; not even their better-halves can keep them apart. Are they Siamese? They dance, and when on stage, they move the crowd.
Then comes Reverend Yawson who is a known songwriter. He is imbued with the Holy Spirit, speaks in tongues and of course sings in tongues. He is God’s representative on the group.
What about my good friend and super-heavyweight, Jewel Ackah? He is a star figure. His appearance is awe-inspiring, his voice golden. A great delight to be-hold when at his best in stage-craftsmanship, he has beaten his contemporaries to it both on land and on sea.
They are the pioneers of the Motown idea. They are all releasing new albums this year. Let’s see how it all goes.
In recent years, the term “female rage” has gained significant traction, symbolising a collective shift in how women’s emotions are perceived and addressed.
This phenomenon is not merely a fleeting trend but a profound movement rooted in centuries of systemic injustices, personal betrayals, and societal expectations.
As women increasingly reclaim their anger, it is imperative to understand the multifaceted nature of female rage, its causes, and its implications for individuals and society at large.
The historical context of female anger
Historically, women’s emotions have been subject to dismissal, ridicule, and pathologisation. The term “hysteria,” originating from the Greek word for uterus, was used to describe women’s emotional states as irrational and uncontrollable.
This legacy of silencing and shaming has contributed to a culture where women’s anger is often suppressed or stigmatised.
However, with the rise of feminist movements, women are challenging these narratives, asserting their right to express anger and demand change.
The anatomy of female rage
Female rage is not a monolith; it is a complex and multifaceted emotion driven by various factors, including:
1. Societal expectations: The pressure to conform to traditional roles of passivity, politeness, and emotional labour.
2. Gender inequality and pay gaps: Frustration stemming from systemic discrimination in the workplace and beyond.
3. Sexual harassment and abuse: Trauma and anger resulting from pervasive violence and objectification.
4. Emotional labour and burnout: The unsustainable burden of managing emotions and responsibilities in personal and professional spheres.
5. Hormonal fluctuations: The impact of hormonal changes on emotional states, often overlooked or dismissed.
The power of anger: Reclaiming female rage
Far from being a destructive force, female rage can be a catalyst for change. When acknowledged and channelled constructively, anger can drive advocacy, policy reform, and resistance against inequality.
The #MeToo movement, women’s marches, and increased representation in politics are testaments to the power of collective female anger.
Addressing the Stigma: Towards a more inclusive dialogue
To fully harness the potential of female rage, society must address the stigma surrounding women’s anger. This involves:
1. Validation and recognition: Acknowledging women’s emotions as legitimate and worthy of attention.
2. Creating safe spaces: Providing platforms for women to express anger without fear of backlash.
3. Education and awareness: Challenging stereotypes and promoting understanding of women’s experiences.
4. Support systems: Offering resources and support for women dealing with trauma and systemic injustices.
Conclusion
The age of female rage is a moment of profound transformation, where women’s anger is no longer silenced but celebrated as a force for justice.
By understanding the roots of female rage and addressing the societal structures that fuel it, we can move towards a more equitable and compassionate world.
The journey is complex, but the destination-a society where women’s emotions are respected and their voices are heard is worth the struggle.
References:
[1] Chemudupati, P. (2022). _The Rage of Women: A Historical Perspective_.
[2] Traister, R. (2018). _Good and Mad:
By Robert Ekow Grimond-Thompson
