Circumspecte

We won! My writing capabilities are in shock. For now, thank you everyone :) All glory due Allah.

I woke up this morning to news that Nigeria's prolific author Chinua Achebe had passed. I'm sad, but I'm also grateful - for his life, his work and more importantly, his influence. Prior to attending Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast, I had virtually no idea about what "African literature" was. If you meant the stories submitted by readers to The Mirror , a Saturday weekly in Ghana, then maybe. But if you meant stories that capture the sometimes mundane details of daily life in an African country, complete with the kola nuts, local proverbs, and complexities of traditional and contemporary African life,  then not really. Then came Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Efua Sutherland's The Marriage of Anansewa - and a whole new world was opened up to me. I can't recount the number of times I read Things Fall Apart , it was just that good. Achebe's descriptions of Okonkwo, Unoka and Obierika - some of the main characters - were al...

Art by Setor Fiadzigbey As I write this, Ghana's 56th anniversary will be over in about two minutes - GMT-wise. March 6, 2013 has been...quite unusual. For one thing, it's probably the first time in my higher ed career that I've actually had a holiday on Ghana's independence day. All because of a supposed snow storm which never actually happened (Call it 2x4). Not that I'm complaining. I got the day off, and while I missed President Mahama's Independence Day address  (and his singing), I participated in GhanaThink 's Twitter Fiesta Debate on whether Ghanaians are more united after 56 years of independence. Personally, I think we have more tolerance for one another. Unity would mean a deep understanding of one another - and our differences - and I don't think we've reached those depths yet. We still look down on one another and hold deep-seated prejudices. Nevertheless, some (tolerance) is better than nothing abi? After the Fiesta Debate, I watc...