Burying the Ghanaian in Peace!

Komla Dumor aka the Boss Player

It has been five days since Ghana; my beloved Country was thrown into a state of mourning.  Komla Afeke Dumor - touted as one of the Ace-Journalists to ever walk this part of the earth has passed on, into the yonder and the gripping shock is yet to free some of us from our inactive state, to probably continue from where we left off.

Tributes from sitting and past Presidents, notable and unknown persons from every nook and cranny have trickled in, amidst suggestions of all kinds for the man who could neither consent to nor disagree with them. But, from all indications available on social media, there is no disputing that, the man lived par excellence; a beacon for Africa and the world as a whole.

Even though I cannot say for a fact, if these suggestions are from authoritative sources such as a family spokesperson or from the Presidency, but, they have given me much to reflect on. Firstly, how every group or persons are trying to associate with the once British Broadcasting Corporation Broadcaster, despite, he was a peoples’ person. Secondly, the good-hearted people who are proposing that a fund is set for the upkeep of his Children or nuclear family and thirdly, those proposing that he is given a befitting state burial.

Apart from the clamouring from the general public, the Ghana Journalist Association has officially come out to propose a befitting state burial for the Boss Player and an established fund to cater for his survivors and the first question I found myself asking absentmindedly was “why?”

As a nation, I think this is another opportune time to reflect on our values and what should be held in high esteem. Do we have a policy which is known to all sundry as to who qualifies for a state burial and whose surviving family should benefit from such funds if any exists at all?

Does working for a leading international broadcasting Corporation or other multinational companies of that comparative stature qualifies one for such benefits? Is the benefit only limited to only the top echelon of the political circle? How long should one work in such capacities to be honored with such benefits or just getting there is enough? Exactly, where do we cut the fine line to avoid this habit of talking and denigrating the efforts of people when they are dead and gone?

This is where we are: deliberating on what to do with the mortal remains of Komla Dumor and how to manage his lots when we should be pre-occupied with what actually made him a bright shining star in a dark world and the journey thus far.

Mr. Komla Dumor interacting with Ex-US President, Bill Clinton

Ghana, like any other Country is made of different ethnic groups and by extension, different cultural practices which is usually binding on the individual, but I still believe we as a people can come to a consensus to have common grounds and say, when matters of this nature arises. The policy makers have to be circumspect and proactive in projecting their foresight even before we are confronted with the imminent situations.

Can we propose for the Government to take over funerals in this Country just as it wades in to seemingly alleviate aspects of our lives such as the National health Insurance scheme and other instituted social programs to take care of its citizenry or leave it as it were, where some people conveniently erect billboards for their departed?

How about the Government subsidizing funeral costs of Citizens or scheming funeral plans in tiers, so you and I will know our fate even before we decide to die? 

I know that, the aforementioned questions have cost implications and may further dig a hole in the state coffers, not to talk about how governance will be worsened with the incidence of skyrocketing tax falling on the individual, but all I am trying to say is we need a plan. 

There must be a plan!

And in the wake of Government taking over by subsidizing or organizing free burial for its citizens, how do we handle the agitations from family and friends who would be denied the opportunity to organize upscale funerals for their loved and departed ones, especially if they made more money in their lifetime?

There would also be cultural insurgents and gatekeepers who would be denied the chance to bury their royalties according to accepted norms, not to talk about the businessmen who would be denied revenue from privately organizing funeral for families but somehow, there must be some kind of uniformity.

We cannot continue to characterize the death of notable people who have contributed immensely on individual and national scales with such uproar and non-uniformity, because the least we could do is to allow them to rest peacefully.

To this end, I can only express my condolences to the bereaved family and close friends of Komla Dumor, who would definitely feel the loss on a very personal level.

R.I.P. Komla Afeke Dumor!

Fare thee well 

Xede nyuie!

  

Sex: the controlling factor

Yes! Sex controls you and I. It dictates our feelings and by extension, where we go, what we do, which dress and fashion sense we wear. My mom is probably stuck with my Dad simply because they had sex, no, most likely because they gave birth to me, no, it possibly could be, because they got married. Sometimes, we don’t even know which one comes first, but unlike what pertains in our modern dispensation; I am cocksure, they did not jump the gun. 

Maybe these days of being online does not give anyone the luxury to really care anymore. Things have changed, but how long have they been like this? Perhaps, I have been oblivious of the fact that it has been same way since the days of Adam, but, thanks to whoever threw me the curve ball, I have finally arrived.

If you have noticed the sharp and radical contrast that characterizes a relationship when it transits into intimacy, then you probably may have had a firsthand experience with the context and situation I am trying to depict here. Even though, it is not always accompanied by a rude awakening we realize that, we are either being audited or queried or find ourselves doing same to our partners.

They ask us where we are and even deem it their preserve to know. Sometimes, we have to tell them our plans ahead of its implementation. We even feel less important in their lives when they don’t involve us in decision making processes, simply because of the sex factor. Either their fashion and sixth sense rubs on us or they subtly influence us to pick it up or in rare cases, allow us to be.  in the case of religiosity, their degree of inclination and how we fit into it generally becomes a warfare.

And to think that, these hitherto sex partners were meek, tolerant, understanding, self-sufficient, accommodating and probably independent thinkers before sex only makes it unintelligible. When people have sex, they become emotionally attached to their partners except in handful cases where they detach. We try to subconsciously demarcate our space in their lives and vice versa. We assume a partial sense of ownership which is why we become territorial and do not allow others to come around.

We have a propensity to think that, our partners are answerable to our sometimes miserable questions just to satisfy our ego which we don’t let go, even if the writings on the wall seem so legible for our comprehension. As conflicting as it can be, we subconsciously find ourselves wearing and choosing their favorite colors, appreciating and singing the songs they listen to and also conforming to their ideal definition of what their ideal man or woman should be – as we take a long hike into what their predispositions were.

I really do not care what you are thinking or which category you may have classified yourself to be in, but we all become stressed towards people we have sexual relationships with, several times before the sun sets, sometimes over petty issues like jealousy, their commitment or lack of it, simple dis-agreements over what to eat, wear, who to associate with or even where to do the association. Then, you would turn to yourself and ask, why all these unnecessary drama?

Dear reader, the answer herein may seem oversimplified but it is simply because you guys have had sex or still having a sexual relationship and if you are wondering why these drama and attitude of yours does not extend to your other friends you are yet to experience intimacy with or even in extreme cases, your Ex, then we are on the verge of discovering the answer together.  We may almost be concluding this article by agreeing that, sex controls our lives, so be careful who you initiate intimacy with.

Sex, Custom and the Law

Life is hard on all fronts trying to create a peaceful co-existence between fellow humans and to make ends meet, but trying to find balance between our biological needs which is almost a necessity and what should be, according to some group of persons can be more complicating and stressful. 

I have a penchant to sleep with a lot of women everywhere and every time my biological and emotional needs have to be satisfied, so as to create that homeostasis my body needs to function well in this crazy world we continually strive hard to complicate every day, but boy, do I get to make manifest my wild imaginations and desires?  I just bottle them up and I know that pretty shortly, my senses will explode and leave me in many tiny fragments.

Needless to say but, just like each of you reading my thoughts right now, I desire and lust after women almost so well that, it feels like a second nature. The ease and flair with which the underlying pervasive trait comes to the fore is even exhibited well when I meet a lady who likes my style. 

In the not too distant past, one of the singular acts among others that made men manly was having two or more sexual partners designated as wives,  but fast forwarded to now, it is a taboo and in most cases, a violation of the criminal code to have more than one sexual partners and the progress we have made thus far only makes you want to ask for the memo that mandated the smooth transition and initiation of the emasculation process. 

It may be a conservative way to see it, but I believe nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything has antecedents and it would be a fatal mistake if we as a generation, would consciously break part of the chain, probably because it is perceived as the weakest in the link. History, as a summary of antecedents has informed us about times and generations past, which is how come we will also be stringed together in the chain of happenings when our descendants take over from us and if the aforementioned paragraph is justifiable enough, then please, help me list the names of all the great men like King David, King Solomon, Abraham, the Pope and your forefather who all have had more than one woman or sexual partners at one time or the other?

Basically sex is for procreation, so why does it necessarily come with all these warped emotional leanings? Have we complicated the sex idea? Sometimes you realize that it is not even an issue of the number of times we have sex or the unavailability of it as depicted in the situation where the married are almost always cheating on their spouses. This and a lot more factors begs the question”why is it difficult for the married to simply stay with their spouses” since there is that natural pass, according to social norms and other statute laws. We are also told that, married folks are supposed to drink from their wells till they run dry, so what has happened? Issues!

Granted that I was married to just one of the numerous women who could have freely allowed me to do a thing or two with them, I am still very sure that, there would be days where my beautiful wife would decline my call to commune for so many reasons, among which would be tiredness, emotional instability, the need to enjoy serenity, the need to be with one’s self or probably out of sync, coupled with my annoyance and same would have applied too, if I was just picking women at random based on attractiveness, the need to cling and to feel accepted. 

However, no matter high the probability for one out of ten women who could have wanted to have sex with me on days where my ‘wife’ becomes inaccessible, I still guess that, the deal to even have a one-night stand is non-negotiable and a no-go area in our society. it is even funny when She is not ready to have sex or probably sick and indisposed, or may have traveled or all the aforementioned factors may still be applying, but the mere mentioning of something weird, such as that alone is enough to spark the third world war so you probably have to do is to resort to masturbation or praying. E hard o!

How many days, months or years should the willing spouse wait should all these prevailing conditions linger on? I sometimes shudder at what can become of us should our thought processes develop in the direction it is headed to, but I still believe in humanity to find a balance therein.

I always feel myself reveling in a claustrophobic world where I can’t live my life. There is so much limitations and dictations against all odds and in a supposedly liberal world which allows men to have anal sex but other men can’t have one or more sexual partners and it kills me to continually conform to some one time emotionally imbalanced and transient thought of someone’s utopia. Why do I keep fighting between the need to gratify my sexual desires and the need to conform, which is continually conflicting anyway?

Can Science answer how many times a man should or can have sex? I am just being hopeful it does for me to be a lot more hopeful because I know it can also provide the answer to how many sexual partners we are mandated to have. 

How can I forget that a society without highly esteemed laws that are so valued is soon thrown into a state of anarchy, but did we actually pass a law which binds one man to one woman even long after their desire to cohabit, procreate or just mate for the sake of it has ended? Evidently, no one person can satisfy our wants by being everything we have ever wanted in a mate or spouse, so why can’t we allow ourselves to arrange it in such a way that, a man can go for one woman who is blessed with exceptional culinary skills, another one endowed with a great sense of fashion, and the other with great sense of humour and oratory power and another with very delicate and beautiful features like that of an Akuaba doll?

Wouldn’t this make up for what we want rather than the compulsion to stick to one clueless life partner even after the realization that our fore decisions requires a little altering? What happened to the age old wisdom of only fools sticking to their earlier illogical decisions? I know we are living in dangerous times; times when it is easier to say we are all angels than to say we are fools and ill-willed, but why these unnecessary theatrics? 

How long are we going to arraign the numerous men and women before our guilty selves for having consensual sex because some group of people decides to call it scandalous? Ridiculous! So many great men and women have been publicly shamed and chastised regardless of their good deeds and attributes simply for having sex they practically consented to. Such a hopeless situation where those with sin are the first ones to be casting stones at the accused.

How long are we going to look on for homes to be disintegrated just because one fallible man or woman could not maintain a one-time balance between societal ethics or values and their primal biological needs? We move heaven and earth to encourage the not-caught-yet spouse to break away from the sinful other and where do they go, to marry another person and live happily ever after, no?

How about imagining an utopian society where the need to marry one or more wives or keeping other women otherwise known as concubines would be an individual choice based on some conditions rather than a collective one? Alcohol consumption is legal for everyone above eighteen and lower than that threshold in modern and extreme cases but it is not everyone who consumes alcohol so how different would it be when it comes to marriage. It still would be dependent on some factors like handsomeness or beauty, attitude, the ability to take care of multiple partners among others. We claim differences with regards to orientation, bloodlines, and environmental influences and still compel ourselves to do things the same way. Are you not tired of living in a cloned society where diversity and the need to be one’s self is always preached but not adhered to or I am just an incorrigible deviant? 

Dear reader, I hope you are not just yet judging my asking all these rhetoric, when all you can do is to take off a little time of your busy schedule that does not allow you to ask these kind of questions let alone come by answers to help me find answers to my questions and I just may stop indoctrinating those who are probably nodding and siding with my expressed thoughts. 

Alright, enough of the cynicism. I am sure the need to marry and stick to the one-man-one-spouse project is to create a just world where one’s partner would be the most beautiful thing that has ever beheld their eyes and also become the panacea to their numerous relationship and sexual needs. These spouses would always be there for and with us where bonds of varying degrees would be formed which we also refer to as, over-dependence. They would be everything ranging from that hairy-chested man who dresses to kill and at the same time, the most God-fearing person you have ever known. They would also be that hard working guy who would also have time to spare walking you through the park and still have time to work out their six-pack and tone up like the Vitruvian man. 

The question however is, is the one-man-one-spouse program working? Do we have that trouble-free and just world full of lovers who understands the very purpose of their being together? Sex can pass for one of the many causes that have killed men the most yet it is always met with closed-lips, uncanny attitude and funny postures.

Personally, I don’t cheat when I’m in a relationship which is almost all the time because I try to always make it up to them by playing the role they offer me in their lives. What I do is to protect their feelings by dishing out the right cards while holding the ace close to my heart. Yes, I do not cheat in a relationship; rather, I find myself sinning against God. If my religious inclination is still something to go by, then it is God, who has asked us not to fornicate or commit adultery, which I should be answerable to when it comes to the sexual institution and its related escapades. He is the one I have been ignorantly outsmarting, not my woman and I hope you got that? 

Mandating people to vow to keep to a spouse before all men or swearing the oath of celibacy, while keeping (other) women at the blind side of society is just not cool and smacks of hypocrisy. Even though I stand to be corrected, I think people should not be compelled to tow such hard lines which leave them scathed and insane. In other words and against the backdrop of all that has happened in the name of sex, we have to erode all the regressive and stifling laws or make some exemptions to allow responsible and capable people to satisfy their elevated animal instincts.

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Sex - Key to knowledge (II)

I have come to believe that the world basically revolves around sex, hence my affinity to the Freudian school of thought which postulates that, the existence of the libido is the underlying subconscious energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which also generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt. You would realize that almost everything we do as humans are directed at sex and if you think otherwise, then our worlds must be apart.

Sex with all kinds of accolades plays a lot of roles in our lives; it eases pain, reduces anxiety, heals us, and gives us joy and many more I cannot list and will always come calling, as long as our systems are functional. 

Is it any wonder our generation connote every object or even ideas to sex? Almost everything now has a sex appeal, e.g. cars are now sexy, dresses are sexy, we have human figures which are sexy and those that are not for both genders. Motorbikes comes sexily done, not to talk about houses, our postures, gestures and just anything.

Our wise generation discovered miseducation and everything went haywire. Ladies, now spend all their time pursuing non-practical education for a Certificate; a mere printed paper whose lost can be replaced by an attestation and at the expense of their biological developments, signs and warnings which is irreplaceable by any sustainable method known by man. 

Formal education as a social value has eroded the science of nature which is dictated by all the changes we undergo as humans; changes that cannot be altered in any way whatsoever. 

Since no one can actually cheat nature in its entirety, young men and women are not able to ignore their heat feelings, so somehow, they find ways to gratify sex but only for sensual reasons thus pleasure, when they ought to have been married and if possible, still pursuing their miseducation. And since sex for any reason other than propagative purposes primarily will only result in pain, sickness, sorrow and death, our generation is having its fair share of all the above.

Young ladies are always queued up to carry out abortions of pregnancies they could have kept while most of them are busily educating themselves notwithstanding the fact that they still fail in the end and others end up losing their womb which brings about untold hardships and its related misery.

Both young men and women are contracting venereal diseases every hour thus failing themselves and society as a whole in the process, and all these comes with depression, not to talk about its rippling effects. Our generation will surely discourage and possibly laugh at an 18 year old girl who wants to marry. She would be asked if she knows what she is getting herself into. She would be asked to narrate all she knows about love, as if, that is what it should necessarily take. The person is responding to the biological changes in her system like menstruating periodically, the need for companionship and the need to be sexually satisfied and you talking about love? 

Sex has plunged many individuals and nations into destruction. Scandals in sex has brought many respectable men on their knees and brought untold hardships on them. Many embittered people are prowling in our society calling themselves broken-hearted just because their partners have refused to have sex with them any longer or have initiated sex with another person who eventually has come to occupy their space. 

People are killing others everyday because they have either perceived or found out that their partners are having sex with others and by now you cannot underestimate the power of sex and all the thoughts it provokes in our minds. It will interest you to note that, most issues that emanate from marital relationships all revolves around sex. Either the man wants more or less of sex to which the other partner is not enthused about or one of them is having it elsewhere or both.

You must be out of your senses if you have been underestimating sex anyway. Whether you are religious or an atheist, sex comes with a burden most people cannot carry especially if you fail to have it for the right reasons which is propagation.

God in his ten commandments given to Moses emphatically commanded Christians not to either commit fornication or adultery which outrightly bars the unmarried from having sex and I am wondering how you have fared with these two commandments or probably, it’s just one of those fictional stories and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

Indiscriminate sex certainly has its consequences and no one can escape it even in the long run. Sex is an energy which must not be toyed with and if you are wondering how energetic sex can be, then watch how semen from a sex encounter metamorphoses a woman until she delivers another human being who becomes an extension of his family of procreation with an almost striking resemblance to its parents.

A friend of mine, Kofi Wilson, in a discussion sometime ago gave me an enlightened perspective on sex which has lingered on my mind for some time now. He sought to say, everyone has been bestowed with immense power or energy which is represented by sex or reproductive organs or even the number of sex we will have. As generative as sex is, every sex should be directed at propagating ourselves i.e. to multiply our empires to help us fight when the Armageddon war starts (Rev 16:16) 

We are supposed to be multiplying like the sand at the shore as instructed by God, our Creator, but the famed serpent whose encounter with Eve changed everything has managed to introduce to us, family planning methods, contraceptives, condom usage and other means of averting that generative force from coming into fruition. It doesn’t want us to be ready for the war. The serpent wants us to be powerless, frail, pathetic and hopeless soldiers even before the start of the war.

All other things being equal, if sex can bring forth another human being which becomes a force to reckon with, then, do you know how much energy in the form of human that you have been wasting which you might be compelled to account for someday?

Do you know how many other human beings you could have surrounded yourself with, with all the generative force which you have turned into a pleasure expedition and the pills you have been popping?

God must be very displeased with us but we can turn around and safeguard what is left of our curse where pain, humiliation, sorrow, sickness and eventual death will be our portion.

generative faculty. Let us stop using it as a means to an end. Let’s stop using it as collateral for school and hostel fees. Let’s not give it out for a film premiering at Silverbird or to make a fantasy come to fruition. Let’s stop using it as a means to securing a vacancy slot. Let’s also stop the practice of using what we have to get what we want because the only thing we should want from what we have is a child, lest we remain in our

If you know all about sex and respond to it accordingly but cannot stay without it, then get married and have it as much as you want so that you can also fall within the divine plan and probably get ready for the war.