In my lowest moments
I can reach out, and
Touch You
On my highest mountain
I can sing out, and
Thank You
My life has been but
A tapestry
Only You
Have woven.
(c) Nana A Damoah, 160822
Reflections, Musings, Effusions, Thoughts…
In my lowest moments
I can reach out, and
Touch You
On my highest mountain
I can sing out, and
Thank You
My life has been but
A tapestry
Only You
Have woven.
(c) Nana A Damoah, 160822
Compiled by Nana Awere Damoah
Contributors: Dela Russel Ocloo, Kobina Ebow
(for Agbenoxevi)
Political roads
Are not made
To last
In the election year
When dams are
Built
for villages
hurriedly
the rains come
down
To wash away
the village
And the dam
(c) Nana A Damoah, 180921
Cowries in a Calabash
12 Sept 2021
One of these days, as a nation, we should have a deep conversation on what a job means in our present time. Nearly two decades ago, I read a book about Slash Careers, about managing multiple roles and jobs and side hustles. It was such a great insight for me personally, as I have always juggled my science and liberal arts interests side-by-side.
Throughout my career as a supply chain, technical services and manufacturing professional, I saw the shift by companies from offering permanent jobs, such as our parents had (some working in one organisation for their entire working lives), to turning jobs into temporary roles, using third party services to either provide labour or runs the actually services directly, outsourcing departments and services, using co-packers or third-party manufacturing sites and so on.
Today, in not a few countries, contract jobs which are renewed annually, is not uncommon. Jobs that may require only a portion of the 8-hour working day so you may find people doing a couple of such jobs to fit into a day.
Covid has come to even throw a new spanner into how work can be done.
What does the average young person consider a job today, in Ghana?
I listened to some of the interviews during the recent job fair organised by YEA. And I knew that the definition of a job may need a bit of upgrading here. The definition of a job may have changed and left many of us behind, jobless – per what our parents knew it as.
My serving today, from the cowries in my calabash.
5 September 2021
Complain about the past and the present but also seek to do your bit to construct the future.
Our parents and those before them grew up in harder times, under rulers not their own, under situations not their own creation but they dared to dream and to change the narrative for those who were to follow after them, us.
They fought. They fought to claim and build their nation again, with their sweat, their hands and their all.
Work in progress, it is. And they did their bit and handed over. To us.
I fear we have become a generation of complainers who know all about who and what to blame and much less about what we have to sweat for and build.
And politics has made us lose our sense of communal labour. Of seeing the village as one unit and joining hands. You help weed my farm, I help weed yours. Ndɔ boa. That is our social welfare system, that is our tradition way of building together. Modern political administration has made us lazy. Where we look to the capital for everything, including building a latrine for our own village.
I sat in a book reading session once, listening to the venerable Kwaku Sakyi-Addo. He told a story of visiting a village once for a meeting between the village folk and some visiting NGOs. The meeting was held in a massive edifice, the local church. The main issues discussed were about facilities and development that the village wanted. One key request struck him: they wanted a community toilet. Later, he asked them how they built the church. They replied that they built it from their own resources and their communal labour. Why not use the same strategy to build the community toilet, he wondered.
I dare say religion has made us lazy too. We expect manna, not from our own farms, but from heaven. That is why a person would spend all day, on weekdays, praying for a job, in a church which is a converted factory or warehouse.
We are the ones to till this land and to bequeath a better land and country to those after us.
Woe betide us if our children turn out to be worse complainers than we are now.
My serving today, from the cowries in my calabash.
6 July 2021
From my limited experience in industry, no fire truck can carry enough water to quench any fire. What you need are hydrants everywhere, working (as in water flowing through them) and ideally having booster pumps available to generate the necessary pressure to pump and shot the water to fight.
Do you see hydrants around?
Do we do drills to check that they are in good condition?
In my last role in industry, I was responsible for Health, Safety and Environment. We had regular drills – for evacuation, for fire fighting, for alarm systems. These systems need to be audited to close gaps all the time.
No good system runs on hope.
11 July 2021
Aside the jokes and friendly banters, the GOAT debate shows how binary many of us are, and this shows even in how we view the politics and development of our nation.
Either or.
This vs that.
The world is big enough to have two or more views in the same seat.
As a refinery person, blends are a way of life.
As a lover of mathematics, polynomials are the spices of life.
As a man of chemicals, I know that in the presence of emulsifiers, oil and water can co-exist in one emulsion.
Happy Sunday.
14 May 2021
I really love the conversations on-going about the cost of running our democracy, government and bureaucracy.
In the lifetime of my career, I saw changes done to conditions of service of Directors and Chief Executives, to match the times and the purse. In the company that Yamson ran, I saw a movement from when Directors had their own drivers and secretaries to when they drove themselves and typed their own letters or at best shared secretaries. I saw the movement from when the company had residences even for CEOs and numerous guest houses to a point where top managers lived in their own rented/own apartments and when employees stayed rather in hotels with sales of guest houses done. Always optimising, always finding ways to be more efficient, to improve the bottomline and to stay afloat and solvent.
I always thought about that, and also thought about similar companies in the town that Nkrumah built, which ran aground as they continued to live like sons of previously rich (but now poor) parents. Like the one that dealt in iron distins.
At independence, A.G. Leventis and UAC existed, with Leventis becoming GNTC. UAC eventually merged with sister companies into Unilever Ghana. We all know how the story ended.
We can’t borrow from frugal countries to fund our lavish lifestyles. We can’t continue to operate as if the topline and the bottom line of Ghana PLC are independent variables. We can’t have our leaders wearing elastic belts whilst asking us to tighten our belts (to quote PAV Ansah).
If Ghana PLC were a business, it would surely have been sold off by now, I am very certain of this. Or referred to the Diversification Implementation Committee.
Let the conversations continue. Better still, let it lead to changes in both our appetites and the response to same.
18 May 2021
We like to pad. We like to create allowances. We like illusions.
So we overprice so we can give discounts to arrive at the original price.
We overstate the starting time as 7am when we know we will start at 8am so, when we are an hour late, we start at the original time we intended.
We include the cost of delivery in the cost of product so we can offer free delivery to arrive at our original price.
It is not WYSIWYG with us. You don’t get what you see. You get a variation, which can vary from nought to infinity.
We have a way to go around the truth with a few lies. In a way mimicking Churchill who said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
We are in a perpetual war with truth.
We don’t say what we mean and we don’t mean what we say. We operate on the principle of hidden costs. We are opaque.
Compiled by Nana Awere Damoah
Contributors: Reuelah Addae-Mensah, Samuel Fahren Otoo, Theo Osei, Nii Okai, Seth Bokpe
This year’s Awards were sponsored by GHBasket.com, WearGhana, Booknook.store, Chopbox Express, Buelandland Flowers, Queens of Hats, Kasuwah.store, Beulahland Floral Products & Services, Horseman Shoes, Smino Detergents and Meannan Foods.
This year’s Awards are dedicated to the memory of my friends Sena Dey and Kotei Neequaye and to all our loved ones who departed in 2020.