Circumspecte

I stumbled across this great initiative on early education in Ghana through good ol' facebook. Titagya Schools is a new project started by Fatawu Abukari, Andrew Garza, and Habib Manzah and aims to provide high quality early education for children in Northern Ghana. What's interesting about this project is the fact that it's a partnership between Ghanaians and an American who never thought they'd be working on early education. As someone who's from northern Ghana and who believes that Ghana's educational system needs some fresh ideas, this was quite a happy find. Hope you guys are as inspired by Titagya (pronounced Ti-tahi-ya). -- Circumspect: Tell us about yourself. Andrew Garza (A.G.): I graduated from Haverford College in 2008, majoring in sociology and minoring in economics. After that I worked for another organization that consults with small and medium enterprises in Ghana. Throughout college I’d done a number of internships with similar organi...

Hi Everyone, I was recently contacted by Kathryn Buford, one of the creators of Live Unchained . She and her co-creator Miriam Moore have set up a virtual community and are developing a multi-media anthology for and by black women across the African Diaspora. I feel so honored and humbled to be profiled alongside some of the most phenomenal women on their site like Nigerian author and professor Nnedi Okorafor and would like to share my interview and Live Unchained's amazing project with you guys! You can access my interview with Live Unchained   here . And you can check out other interesting profiles and works on the Live Unchained Blog . I hope you guys find their project as amazing as I have, and please share with interested individuals! Much love, Jemila -- Photo Source: Live Unchained Website

Circumspect interviews Maame Sampah and Emmanuel Lamptey, Executive Board Members of the Representatives for Equal Access to Community Healthcare (REACH) Ghana to find out how they got started, what projects they're currently working on, and what they're looking forward to. -- Circumspect: Tell us about yourselves. Maame Sampah (M.S.): I’m currently a graduate student. I’m with an HIV group right now, and so I basically do HIV research. Before then, I did undergrad in biochemistry and French at Grinnell College. I’m doing grad school at [Johns] Hopkins now. I went through the Ghana education system - Wesley Girls, Bishop Bowers before then. I can give you the name of my nursery school. And yeah, so here I am. I’m going to be in school for a while, and basically I’m going to end up in a career in clinical and research medicine. I have a huge family, I have four siblings. My parents both live in Ghana. My siblings however are kind of scattered in the U.K and here [U.S.] an...

Happy holidays to everyone and Merry Christmas! I hope you all got some family-time in, or if you went at it solo, that you had a great time eitherways! I got some much needed down-time, and then I spent the rest of the day working on this! The first vlog (video blog) on 'how to blog.' I know many of you have been waiting for this, so without further ado, here goes! Part one of the Circumspect "How to blog" series! Photo Source: http://lawinquebec.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/how-to-blog-blackboard-classroom1.jpg?w=300&h=228

Alicia Keys: "And the day came when the risk it took to remain tightly closed in a bud, was more painful than the risk it took to bloom." Original quote by Anais Nin (BTW, she has the most amazing quotes ! ): "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- I get bored really easily. And not just that, boredom is painful for me, as it usually results in migraines (weird init?). So I like to keep busy and I'm usually on the lookout for new experiences. When I did the post on my new year resolutions ,  I noted that I would "experiment" and "continue this love thing". Deciding to go natural falls under those categories, and coincidentally, under "let my hair down" as well, in a literal sense. Alors, if you want a short version of why I decided to go natural, it's because it's a new year, I'm trying new(or rather old?) things, and I'm taking an extra s...

[I always found this kind of writing fascinating. So I decided to try my hands at one. Would be interesting to see what peeps make of it. Enjoy! ] Good Cop: Don’t click on it . Bad Cop: Oh, why ever not, you know you want to. Good Cop: Just don’t! You’re setting yourself back. Bad Cop: C’mon, it’s just a photo, geez Mother Theresa. Good Cop: Don’t, don’t…please. Too late. The page was loaded, and she succumbed herself to the painful pangs that slashed at her heart. He looked so happy. So dashing. So…without her. Good Cop: Why do you do this to me? To yourself? To Us? Why? She didn’t know why. But she kept coming back to this place. This no-man’s land. Where she saw everything she ever wanted, but never achieved. Bad Cop: You need this. You need to see the reality of the situation, and deal with it. And maybe, just maybe, after seeing it so many times, one day you’ll take a look and be numb to it all. But that day hadn’t yet come. So instead, she kept going...