Live your life

The Secret Affirmation: “Life isn’t happening to you; life is responding to you. Life is your call! Every area of your life is your call. You are the creator of your life. You are the writer of your life story. You are the director of your life movie. You decide what your life will be – by what you give out.”

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.secret.affirmation.daily

Karma

Rhonda Byrne says: “When you’re feeling joyful, you are giving joy, and you’ll receive back joyful experiences, joyful situations, and joyful people, wherever you go. From the smallest experience of your favorite song playing on the radio to bigger experiences of receiving a pay raise — all of the circumstances you experiences are the law of attraction responding to your feeling of joy.”

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rhonda.byrne

Do Gas hate Ashantis?? Read this!

​Credit: Nii Amu

Do Gas hate Ashantis?? Read this!

NANTE YIE – As Nana Asantehemaa joins the ancestors.

Funerals are one of the few occasions where old connections are remade and genealogies retraced. The bigger the funeral, the bigger the reconnections. The funeral of the Asantehemaa presents such a big occasion for some lessons in history for those willing to learn. Freely I receive, freely I give.

This lesson is about Ga-Asante relationship. I have this scattered in many of my articles.

By 1483, there was a Ga federal kingdom at Ayawaso. That kingdom collapsed in 1680 after its defeat by Akwamu. That led to full coastal migration of the remnants of Ayawaso. Akwamu ruled Ga for 50years. With the help of Akyem, Akwapim and Fante, Ga defeated Akwamu in 1730.

Asante was founded by Anokye and his friend Osei Tutu in 1701 after defeating Denkyira. Within a generation, Asante was the supreme politico-military force on the land. The youngest Akan kingdom had become the strongest ever. The last shall be the 1st and the 1st the last. Scripture fulfilled.

In 1740, Asante signed its 1st ever treaty of friendship and co-operation with another kingdom – GA. Asantehene Opoku Ware signed this treaty with Ga Mantse Tetteh Ahenakwa. Asante was attacking other coastal kingdoms but never Ga. The treaty held for 84years.

In 1824, the British deceived Ga and the latter joined the former in the 1st Anglo-Asante war – the Asamankow war. British boss Sir McCarthy was beheaded. Asante won. Ga broke the treaty. Asante was infuriated. Asantehene Osei Yaw vowed to punish Ga. The result Katamansu war of 1826.

Ga and its allies Akyem, Akwapim and Fante (with a small contingent of 60 British troops) defeated Asante. The outcome of this war was very important for Ghana, Ga-Dangme and me personally.

Asantehene Osei Yaw’s wife Akoa Basoa and her 2 daughters Manu and Yaa Dom were captured. Akoa was released to Kumasi but the daughters were married to 2 Ga prominent men with deep business connections in Asante. Manu to Henry Richter of Osu and Yaa to James Bannerman of Jamestown.

My great grandmother Osekua Richter was a great granddaughter of Manu and Henry. Who is more Asante than myself? Karikari Bannerman is from Yaa Dom and James line. I have relatives with pure Asante names – Agyeman, Osei, Tutu, Karikari all living in Osu.

I met my great grandmother. I was her pet. I used to read the Ga Bible to her from the age of 8. She told me many stories. Do you know why the 2nd largest suburb of Osu is called Ashanti? Blighted bees seek wisdom. Some of you are just too rootless.

The tension between Ga and Asante persisted for another 120years. In 1946, Asantehene Nana Agyeman Prempeh thawed the ice with a state visit to Ga Mantse Nii Taki Kome. Brother became brother and friend became friend again.

Those days when the Asantehene got to Nsawam, he would send a delegation to Ga Mantse who would send a senior priest with the delegation to go and pour libation before Nana would step his foot on Ga soil. Beautiful, mutual respect. Who said we didn’t understand governance before?

That meeting between the 2 friendly kings I was told had to do with Asante entering into the Gold Coast legislative council for the 1st time. Apparently, Nana had been promised the ceremonial head of state of independent Ghana. He came to Ga to seek the blessing of his brother Nii Ga. He got it. ‘’Eba kɛ nine kome, ahere lɛ kɛ nijii enyɔ’’, he came with one hand and was received with two hands.

Yes, I said they were brothers. One of the 2 royal clans of Ga is AGYEMANKESE We. Nii Taki Kome was from that We. Nii Amugi was also from Agyemankese. The royal house of Asere, the largest Ga sub-state is called FRIMPONG WE. Are the agent provocateurs listening?

Nana Asantehemaa, please take this message to Nana Prempeh and Nii Kome: great Kings, please send us some of your wisdom. Some of us are too stupid.

10years after this meeting, Asante was under pressure, NLM and CPP were tearing the kingdom apart. Where would help come from? Attoh Kwashie packed his supporters from Ga into a train to Kumasi to support Asante NLM. Yɛ de Nkrafuo aba oo!!!! Who says Ga hates Asante? What for?

When UP was formed, Attoh Kwashie was mandated at its 1st Congress in Kumasi to choose a Ga Chairman. He chose Dr. Johnny Hutton-Mills. Johnny was threatened by Kofi Baako for arrest. He chickened out. Attoh then appointed Solo Odamteen. Attoh is alive in Chorkor. I can take you there.

Just as Nii Taki Kome was confident so accepted headship of Asantehene, I am also very confident so I write about Asante and have adapted aspects of Asante political system into Afremocracy – Anokye Federal System, TSEMPE (proportional parliament) and Ghanamanshiamu Council of State. I have written more about Political Asante than most in my generation. So why hate Asante? What for?

Some are just too fragile and they make their fragility everyone’s headache. I remember someone telling me that signing off as ‘’Tswa Omanye Aba’’ may alienate non-Gas. Well, the aliens can go to Mars. If I had said the same thing to this person who is Asante, I would be an instant anti-Asante. Many now use “TOA.’’ Thank you for accepting our linguistic diversity.

Rev. Reindorf from Osu published a book in 1895, ‘’History of the Gold Coast and Asante.’’ That tells a story. All Ghanaian kingdoms evolved. Asante was created, so attention to detail is 100%. That is the difference. ARM is like Asante, meticulously created. We’ll lick all before us like Asante did. The Asante phenomenon is an inspiration to any wise Ghanaian. Amanfuo, learn this from me today.

We are a young artificially created nation-state. We are bound to have inter-ethnical differences just as we have intra-ethnic, intra-family and even intra-sibling differences. It’s all part of normal organic growth. Only insecure people will see such differences as hatred.

Politics has made a difficult situation worse. There is obvious ethnic preference for political parties. The simpletons therefore see everything tribal. But Nkrumah, an Nzema won all but one seat in Asante in 1951 and 54. Why? Ethnophrenics, it’s not always about ethnicity. People need bread wae.

Nana Asantehemaa, nante yie wae. May you find eternal rest. But please don’t forget my message to the 2 kings.

Tswa omanye aba.

Evolve or die

​Be prepared to change your career (Part 3)

__Always invest in the “tools of your trade.”

Shortly after I completed my engineering degree in the UK, I had to go to work in a manufacturing facility in England to get “practical experience” as they called it. The technicians, many who’d been there for many years, had certain routines from which I picked up some real “life experiences and practices.”

It’s always amazing what important principles you can take away, even if you go on to do something completely different in life.

# Have pride in your tools.

Every technician had a “toolbox” which they looked after lovingly. It was almost like a “rite of passage.” At the end of each day, they’d boast to each other about the tools they’d managed to acquire, and what they were used for. They would clean their tools after the day was over.

Buying and investing in good quality tools was considered a technician’s personal responsibility, not the employer’s.

“I feed my children with them tools, don’ I?” one of them once explained in his colloquial English.

Fast forward:

I would always lose my plastic pen. Then someone said, “You would not lose it, if you invested in a proper pen.”

“Wow,” I thought. “This is just like those old English technicians and their tools.”

That day, I went out and bought myself a nice set of pens. I immediately stopped losing pens!

Question: What are the “tools of your trade”?

Do you have your own computer? Everyone who runs a modern business, or works in a profession, should have a laptop.

A computer is not even a “tool”; it’s the “toolbox” in which most all the modern technological tools are kept.

Are you on the Internet? Do you have it in both your business and your home?

# If not, you better sell your car, if you have one, and walk, but you must have a computer and be on the Internet

# If you have a house, it would be far smarter in today’s world to have a smaller house with Internet, than a bigger house with no Internet.

# It would be far, far smarter to have a smaller car, or none at all, and be able to afford a computer and Internet for your business and family, than to have a luxury car or the like.

# Those who understand what I’m saying here are better positioned to make the career changes needed as a result of disruptive changes to the workplace, and the jobs we do.

Whatever work you do, or plan to do in the future, you have to upgrade your “toolbox” for the changing times ahead. I want you to be prepared. Remember what I wrote last week about your mindset? And the week before that, about imagining the horizon beyond today’s horizon?

As I’ve written you before, the “mobile revolution” has already given way to the “Internet revolution.” If the Internet were an ocean, then what you’re seeing today is just the shoreline. The Internet will even transform our villages. In the future, the village store and grinding mill will use the Internet, even to order and manage inventories. Even the village school will be changed by the Internet.

You will see it happen. Somewhere, somebody is already working to find a solution. Just five years ago, if I had said to you, “Villagers in the remotest parts of Africa will be able to receive money from anywhere in the world within five minutes or even less,” what would you have said?

You’re the ones called to make this kind of thing happen. It’s your time. Is your toolbox ready?

To be continued. . .