Canadian or Ghanaian, which one do I choose
This conflict I experience always leaves me confused.
Who am I and where am I from.
Do I say where I was born or what's in my blood.
First generation Canadian, should I be proud?
Is it okay that I can't speak any Twi?
If I don't know my parents language, is the culture still with me?
How do I identify, what is authentic, what is the truth, and what is right?
Some thoughts I think about when I lie awake at night.
I feel like my parents culture is just going to get washed away
That I'll have no trace of Ghanaian culture in me.
And I don't give learning the culture the time of day,
To help me become who I want to be.
Because I love saying I'm Canadian, I love what it entails.
It is the country that I call home.
But I love what my parents show me about Ghanaian culture.
I enjoy thinking about the unknown.
So you see my dilemma and why I'm so lost, why I don't know who to be.
Why I don't know how I should explain my culture, I'm still working on my identity.
And I guess there's no rush, I can use either or.
It'll depend on the context of the question that is asked.
But it's who I am, it means so much more,
It is how I define to who I am.
I take pride in both cultures, I want them both, my definition has no restrictions.
So next time I'm asked where I'm from, I'll explain that I'm a Ghanaian Canadian.
I guessed I'm not as confused as I originally thought, I know who I am inside.
A Ghanaian Canadian, that's my identity, and I'll identify with it till I die.

Sitting calmly aligning in-between the three sitters
Adorn with a silk from milk
Thinking about the libido of her crown
Like a star lost in the galaxy
After seeing a Ghanaian movie

A sudden push through her opening
as placenta push through during birth,
as water break through from underground
a cloth of blood,  fought  through
She felt it,
she saw it,
But what to do? What not to do? and how?
Was a question demanding an answer,
Like a man lost on the crossroad
On his wedding night,
On his bed
Close to the bride like a ****** bird
To be and not to be like Shakespeare

She shouted
What is this?
Blood!!!

This is the making of a woman
An end to her holiness
A new spring of emotion and pain
No more daddy and mummy play
Remember "Always" always
When the visitor is around
you are now a woman

The beloved country Africana can boast of is Ghana.                                                                                                                                                               The manana of Africana black star is Ghana                                                                                                                                                                                  A nation rich in culture and natural pasture.                                                                                                                                       
Its nature reflects the creatures’ caricature

We are black reflecting our true beauty.                                                                                                                                  
And we are packed with captivating ability.                                                                                                                                       The typicality of our nationality brings unity.                                                             Who knows whether our safety lies in our variety?

This unity amidst our diversity is our reportage.                                     About twenty-four million are surviving in our age.                                                               Over sixty ethnic groups and fifty-two major languages.                                                       There are hundreds of dialects which are to our advantages.

In W/A, Ghana records the highest percentage of Christianity…                                                      Yet the modernity of our sanity portrays minds of malignity.                                                 But the fraternity of our humanity builds our community.                                                        The variety of our morality and privity builds our society

Who said Ghana cannot be capaciously superfluous?                                                        We have the very illustrious and exuberant resources.                                                                The elites and the voracity are harnessing the recourses.                                                                      The destitute remains poor and the gentry linger the forces

Our democratic government is an African paradigm.                                                        Our peaceful political regime is of no pantomime.                                      Who of course would help us measure corruption?                                                The whole nation would have tensed up to eruption.

If not the gargantuan wayomelogy of the wayometer.                                                                                      Who knows whether the next tool would be attameter?                                                     Who wouldn’t love to be a proud Ghanaian to enjoy                                                        our hilarious fila and jargons tongue can employ

Take me back to the days of a Ghanaian sunset.
When hope dwelled above the waters of despair
And I gazed into the eyes of a sinking soul.
Where trust and fear were honest and pure --
Felt in the mountains, cities and fishing boats alike.

I want the hot air, the mango juice dripping down my hand, the dirt kicked up around my shoes, the roosters in the streets, the taxi cab dodgeball games, the eggshell passenger rides, and the shy children singing across from me on the shore. Because I want it all back.

It's the feeling I had when I was there in a wide space so open -- it is a feeling I call free.

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;[email protected])



In response to the United States versus European Union  deliberations on Ukrainian- Russian stalemate  that were concluded on 25th may  2014 at Brussels , in which President Barrack Obama looked at the Putin’s political  behaviour in global set up of the postmodern era as a weakness, I beg to take my position within my capacity as global citizen, to go contrary to this stand of Barrack Obama by positing that President Vladimir Putin is a fact of global urgency , but instead it is Obama who suffers from universal class intellectual deficiency often  observed as insensitive rhetoric but branded as unmatched eloquence.
Firstly, let me give the sequential enumerations of facts which validate my position and hence this discourse. Barely the facts are; Ethnicity, Islam, terrorism, Guantanamo prison, Sino-African relations,Arab-springs,politics and human psychology and American political culture as state and an international citizen.
President Obama has always refused and rejected his ethnic connexion with Africa, he always refer to Africa as the land of ancestors. This is a stand that has most irritated Africans. Both in Africa and in the diaspora. Obama never learned a simple pre-industrial wisdom that every man needs ethnic identity for positive reasons. Because as per now Obama still stands as a Kenyan and as well as an American. This connotes a political fact that he is neither a complete Kenyan nor an absolute American in terms of political emotionalism. The empirical position of all these abode in the fact that there are a thousand and one Americans who feel politically belittled to be led by a first generation African American. Thus, a leadership fact has to be indentified in this juncture by inferring that, their voter consciousness as Americans is not fit to be crystallized as emotional resource to be enjoyed by Obama politics. In a sharp contrast Vladimir Putin has acquired substantial political strengths from positive recognition of Russian ethnicity. Putin recognizes Estonia, Crimea, Georgia, Serbia, Moldova and all small and poor lands around Russia in terms of ethnic connection to Russia. He calls these lands as the dear burial grounds in which Russian military heroes were buried. In a comparison, America has a lot of racial connection with Africa, but president Obama has earnestly worn blinkers on this. He only looks at Africa skeptically as a land of injured civilization in which terrorists abode. He has been wrong. African folk wisdom has a lesson that, you may not need your tribe in peace, only to need it in war.
Why did president Obama masquerade as a Muslim when he was vying for his first term? Moslems feel that he duped them only to turn around and **** their leaders. In Islam it is a heinous sin to pose as a Muslim when you are not one. President Obama mobilized the plotting which had to occasion the killings of Muammar Gadaffi and Osama Bin Laden. These two incidents fuelled high strength in anti-American feelings among the societies of the Arab world. Reasons are that both Gadaffi and Bin Laden deserved fair trial the same way Henry Kissinger was not tried when he perpetrated macabarous mass killing in Vietnamcong war. Muslim community least expected financial and ideological funding of the political hullabaloo known as the Arab Spring, through which heroic Moslem leaders were killed, to come from Obama government. But the contrary was surprisingly a fact. The meaning of this is that , in this tussle of show of mental mighty between Putin and Obama, All African and Arab states are behind Putin, China is behind Putin. Maybe it is Tanzanian and Ghanaian presidents who are in Obama camp, but not the Moslems in Tanzanians and Intellectuals in Ghana. The perceived rationale for this positioning inter alias is that the Number of North African Moslems in Guantanamo prison is the highest of all the detained terrorist suspects.
China is all over Africa today; African schools are teaching Chinese languages with passion more than they do with English language. The University of Nairobi in Kenya, has established the most prestigious Kungu Fu tze institute. Students in this institute are more self-confident and hopeful than those in schools of English and literature. China has designed a special business city for Africans, known as the chocolate city. Africans are more dignified in this city than their counterparts in Chicago.Negroes in Chicago of today still taste a vestigial pepper of negative racism on daily basis. All these conditions have graduated into appalling status from George Bush high school to Barrack Obama state University. These at times confirm the Russian Joke that Barrack Obama is an avatar of George Bush without a Nobel Prize. A political condition not evident during the Reagan and Clinton administration. Obama did not benchmark the shrewd equation of Vladimir Putin; good politics is equal to putting people at center stage.
Psychology of politics has a theory that being eloquent is not a connotation of political effectiveness. It may be sheer rhetoric. This is not a necessary variable for effective policy formulation and implementation. History of politics also has a testimony in confirmation of the same. The French society goofed when it fell victim of Napoleon eloquence, same to the Germans when they became emotional captives of Adolf ****** due to the razor sharp garrulousness of Adolf ******, which he adopted when selling **** values to German voters. In Africa Tanzania is the poorest country without hope of initiating any development this century. And all this is a preposterous protégé of utopian communalism planted through eloquent tools of prosaic socialism wielded by the articulate Julius Nyerere. The American society has also gone into annals of history to have collectively failed in its political choices as a national society by succumbing to rhetorical but policy insensitive conference management knack of the one Barrack Obama. These have happened in a capitalist conduit in which capitalism is killed by its success, just the same way which ignorance is never murdered but at most commits suicide.


Alexander K Opicho, is a social researcher at Sanctuary Research agencies ltd., in Eldoret, Kenya.  He is also a lecturer for Governance Research Methods.

I am a Ghanaian girl born on Basotho land. I ask you why my relatives know how to speak Twi and I don't, it was then when I was aware of the decision you had made to keep me away. My family has been filled with Ghanaians who can speak their native tongue but you made me the only different. When it's all set and done I do not know my native tongue. The truth is my I'm filled with Basotho air rather than the identity of Ghanaian princess. I was born to you as a citizen. I am trying to join them but I am stuck. Also, I wonder, who am I?I haven't come to a conclusion. I am forever shopping for a new identity. So I am an actor, I did Drama in high school and usually I have my props on stage but in this poem all my props are gone. I'm just revealed with nothing to hide asking myself who am I?I could say I am diverse but then again I think not. It's sad how I can't even pronounce my own name.

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;[email protected])



I have been reading the old copy of Saturday Nation, a week end edition of the daily nation in Kenya. It was published some weeks ago. It has some enticing feature stories that have made me to reflect on a certain family value in Africa. The three feature stories I have been reading are ; Lupita Nyong’o stellar performance in the movie, 12 years a slave, in which she emerged a top American actor, attracting in the same course the most coveted Oscar prize, I have also read in the same paper the shooting literature star of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an American based Nigerian writress, who had had her last book Americana win the American Booker Prize, and lastly , I have also ready  a very captivating account of Wanjiku wa Ngugi’s spellbinding debutante in her book, the fall of saints. Wanjiku account was written by Proffessor Evans Mwangi a Thiong’o literary scholar based in Newyork. Mwangi being a Ngugi wa Thiongi’o, scholar wrote this article because Wanjiku wa Ngugi is also a daughter to the world famous Kenyan novelist, Ngugi Njogu wa Thiongi’o.
In each of the three above cases, emanates a significant observation that the fathers to the respective ladies are great men in their respective capacity, and that the ladies mentioned are now obvious heirs to the family names, family intellectual domain and family selling point respectively.
Lupita is heir to proffessor Peter Anyang Nyong’o, Adichie is an heir to the African literary heritage of proffessor Chinua Achebe, and While Wanjiku is a promising successor to Proffessor Thiongi’o.
These are actually a crystallization of strange unfolding that time has now challenged old mindset among African societies. The mindset in which Africans have not been counting girls as children .This family value has been there up to today. If an African man tells you that I don’t have a family it means that he is expressing three connotations; he is not married, he is married but he does not have a children, or he is married but his wife have only been bearing him girls, because if anything; an African man is only responsible for siring sons, daughters are a mistake of the wife.
This typology of family civilization got to its peak in the mid of  last year, when the Luo council of elders, hailing from Siaya County of Kenya, where Baraka Obama is rooted, expressed their open puzzle over Baraka Obama as per why he can’t take his time to have sons. They are now organizing a delegation that will go to America to counsel President Obama over the matter that he needs to re-organize his posterity strategy other than thinking in terms of Sasha and Malia.
What I mean is that Africans don’t believe if at all family interests can be carried forward through a daughter. They don’t believe if a girl can be an intellectual or command any wisdom that can go places. But realities from a historical experience that great African men don’t sire great sons but instead they sire great daughters must make this society of male chauvinists to have a mental paradigm shift in relation to child valuation and recognition. To accept a social déjàvu that daughters have a big capacity to carry forward the family name than the previously mistaken notion that they are only sons who can do this.
Facts on the ground range from the case of Julius Nyerere,Kwameh Nkrumah, Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Tom Mboya, Masinde Muliro, Nelson Mandela, Mutula Kilonzo, and Francis Imbuga just to mention a few African heroes. Justification of this list showing Africa’s reversal of Prospero complex abodes in the facts that; Susan Nyerere is currently the most outspoken in the Nyerere family. Similarly, Nkrumah’s daughter is currently a politician in Ghanaian parliament and very promising politically. Betty Shabazz X was recently reported to have put Louis Farrakhan on the spot over the ****** plot of her father the late Malcolm X.Mireille Fanon Mendes is the director of human rights activist organization known as Frantz Fanon foundation. This is the organization which recently recognized Mumia Abu-Jamal with a prestigious prize. Mumia Abu-Jamal is an African-American writer and journalist, author of six human rights focussed books and hundreds of similar spirited columns and articles. He has spent the last three decades on racially biased Pennsylvania’s death row. And now general population in America and in the world knows that Mumia Abu-Jamal was wrongfully convicted and sentenced for the ****** of Philadelphia Police man, Daniel Faulkner. His demand for a neutral trial and unconditional freedom is enmassely supported by heads of state, Nobel laureates, human rights organizations, scholars, religious leaders, artists and bioethical scientists. All this is nothing other than universal singing of the tune in the poetic writings of Frantz Omar Fanon entitled Facts of blackness, through his daughter Mireille.
And equally enough, those of you who have delved into posthumous family conditions of Richard Wright must have appreciated stellar performance of proffessor Julia Wright in respect to the genetic legacy of her father. Dr. Susan Mboya is currently living in South Africa and she is serving the society in the same tandem her late father Tom Mboya discharged anti-colonial service to the people of Kenya, Africa and world in general.Masinde Muliro has Mrs. Namwalie Muliro and Mutula Kilonzo has Kethi Kilonzo. The point is that, just like all of other heroes in Africa, these two great politicians have their daughters; Namwalie and Kethi as the heirs to their political legacy.
This phenomenon is not unique to Africa. But it is a universal genetic condition. The study of genetics has a concept that inferior genes of the mother are passed through an X chromosomes in XY to the sons, while superior genes of the father are passed through an X chromosome of the ** to the daughters.
Just but to wind up my story I want also to counsel The Luo council of elders that president Obama, their son who lives in America does not have misplaced values in projecting his posterity through Sasia and Malia. Personally I am aware that as per now there is no any African boy at age of Sasha Obama that has ever read Yann Martel’s Life of Mr. Pi. But in stark contrast the international media reported Sasha Obama to have vividly read this book until she commented to Baraka Obama that, ‘daddy, this is a very good book’.  And of course this is how an intellectual is made.

Ghanaian Girl

I saw her coming back,
Red-smocked urchin riddled with the dew of false promise,
Beaming as she spoke of bright tomorrows.
Couldn’t bring myself to tell her of the sorrows
That waited to strike us down.

Yes, we’ve been happy,
In moments stolen after work sharing dreams spawned by their lies.
She believed them, is believing still.
Yet, I fight to find the will
To raise my head each day.

They have our hope hostage,
Its holy nature yoked to their greed, deceiving us daily.
They shout to us often of pay rises,
Promising rewards and great surprises,
If only we gave more.

I hate to leave my child.
Some uncle’s wife is struggling to cope with the village young.
When she first bleeds I will be here,
I cannot know another year
In separation from my light.

Last month people came from Europe,
They saw their new school, fresh water and underprivileged smiles.
Such self-congratulation! Such effervescence!
I will not assuage collective conscience
With demeaning thanksgiving.

We yet have our dignity.
We know great honour and pride in the quiet suffering of our duty.
(Do you think He will stop the pain?
Will He pause in his great work to explain
Why I was singled out?)

I was born in a city and time where and when
things were described by their name in the name
of realism and truth, uncoloured nouns of honesty
depicting society as it was fearing nothing
while no one took offence, as none was intended

in the atmosphere of autocriticism and self-
deprecating humour. In the countryside village
peasants called my father the Greek, as there were
no aliens other than us and the English man
who lived down the valley. Black skins

only existed on TV, and Africa was far more distant
than maps ever suggested. Our Ghanaian origins
were a mesmerising fable to the curious ears
of those willing to imagine exotic airs, indefinite
populations they had never seen. Italians

were used to migrate abroad in search of dreams,
though no one came to dream in Rome until, they did.
First strange faces appeared for myths to become
realities integrating slowly fast-forwarding thirty years
to see, Filipinos housekeepers, cheaper butlers,

Rumanians and Moldavians caregivers to our elders,
Chinese empires beginning with restaurants and shops,
Selling almost anything one could ever think of affordable
to all, now expanding to own bars creating jobs,
employers of impoverished locals and new arrivals.

Bangladeshis taking over once-was Italian grocery cash
and carries working hard, a 24/7 policy just for some.
Those who don’t are found selling umbrellas on the road
a minute before the storm, or taking polaroid pictures
of tourists at night when the gypsies come out

of nomad camps to sell, unscented roses to lovers
unnaturally blue for the day is reserved, to picking
pockets on public transports everybody knows,
signs are put up for those who don’t. Lebanese
hairdressers hiring young Italian girls, eat in Turkish

kebab fast-foods buying halal ingredients in Iraqi stores.
Only blacks in Rome own nothing but their shoes
and reputation. Those from North African countries often deal
on sidewalks for drug addicts playing instruments
sitting next to dogs on Tiber bridges as they beg

for one more dose. Though Egyptians mainly deal
with chefs, closed in restaurant kitchens learning
pizza-making skills, while Pakistanis make excellent
dishwashers. Turning back to blacks Nigerians,
Senegalese, Malians and many more improvise

themselves as clandestine street vendors
of jewels and fake bags, the latter secretly supplied
by Italian mafia-like wannabes. Often spotted running
away from police, packing goods in white sheets, held
on their backs as they flee, leaving fallen merchandise

behind them. Finally some remain unseen, straight
from heart of darkness and surroundings they stay
strictly on TV, passing from satiric sketches of the past
to NGO adverts crying out, for help against famine,
poverty and sickness, calling for action two euros a day

via sms to keep, consciousness clean, as we close
our eyes not to see, pretend we do not know, hiding
behind words we call, politically correct not to face, take
distance from reality and truth, disguise inconvenience
and uncomfort with ridiculously embellished, jargon.

Some exceptions obviously exist, as many manage
to live outside the box, though alas and do not blame me
for speaking the truth, they remain to date exceptions
dear to my heart, as are all the characters of this portrait,
scattered pieces of humanity, pieces of me.

Infancy talked to me various languages, switching
Tonalities for different melodies, to be learnt.
Naturally acquiring the discernment, recognising
Faces and voices to choose applicable native tongues.

English with my father, whose name echoed as Plato,
Iranian with my mother, Italian with my siblings, French
With school teachers, Greek on summer holidays.

Growing up my hair and accents, led to the inevitable
Repetitive question, ‘Where are you from?’
Timidly answered as it was hard to comprehend, until I set
Myself to do so untiringly drafting precious family trees.

Investigations interrogating relatives to exhaustion,
Ignited my pride for every single drop of blood,
Composing me and drawing borders
On geographical maps delineating my essence.

My story was one of many, they labelled me a multi-ethnic,

For my daddy’s naissance in Accra from a mulatto beauty
Queen, daughter of a British doctor and his Ghanaian lady friend.
For her husband, his Hellenic pater, son of Chios, born in Sudan.

For my mummy’s naissance in Tehran from a noble
Banker, progeny of the Qajar dynasty originally Turkic,
And his pure blood Persian wife.

My parents met in England where they studied only
To marry and move to pre-revolutionary Iran. I was born
In Rome where they fled, when insurrections began.

Now if someone asks I forcefully respond,
“From planet Earth. A terrestrial little sphere at the heart
Of its star system, on the edge of its galaxy lost
Somewhere in space in the maze of the Universe.

My story is one of many, I labelled us humans.

When she first walked through the door
She was a Ghanaian priestess
A titan
Large and mythical and unbelievable
Her eyes held mystery
Deeper than poetry
And her walk
More grace than a royal procession
I can’t believe she looked at me

She sat detached from the lights
The crowd, the noise, the libations
Her presence was louder
I felt every inch of separation
Wanting distance to shrink
Wanting her eyes to question me
I can’t believe I talked to her

Weak prose and memorized verse
Why hadn’t I written something new
Of dreams with answers
Words that could entice her sight
Instead I opened a window
And shared a simple view
I really wanted to bust down a door
Or demolish a wall
Or flatten a building
As sacred space for her feet
I can’t believe I got her number

Insightful reels and pics
Over analytical data
Assumption of interests and realms occupied
I think she rose from the ocean’s depths
To swallow the earth whole
Or rebirth it
All this from 10 minutes
How exactly do light years condense
Into such time
I can’t believe she said yes to a date

Ears swoon at her voice
Tongue delights in sushi rolls
Heart pounds at something
I am unable to admit
I wish for more time to sip her tea
To savor her umami
I go in for the hug and omit my lust
I can’t believe I didn’t go for the kiss
I can’t believe I didn’t go for the kiss
I can’t believe she said yes to a second date

In a foreign house
with more comfort than my own
Fung shei challenging chaotic thoughts
Chaotic thoughts racing through her unknowns
A touch to feed her laugh
A look to feed my longing
My lips to her lips
In a time outside of time
When chaos and order dance together
I can’t believe I’m falling
I can’t believe I’m falling
I can’t believe I’m falling
But my stomach knows this feeling
And my heart knows this pace

I can’t believe I found her
In another lifetime
She can’t believe I ever left