Fading laughter (A Ghanian poem)

It is not all laughter, all the time.
Who can laugh when the roof leaks
And the walls give way to floods?
Laughter is the seasoning of salt, and
Salt is not food, but a seasoning for food.
They have their sorrows, these men of the land
Poverty stalks them by the hour
And the Kente is a flesh in their lives: (Kente is a ghanian traditional cloth)
Handed down through the rungs of the years
From uncle to nephew through mother's stream
Times disintegrating fingers, have by stealth,
Loosened the threads
Where the weaver of bonfire had joined the strips
The dyes in the colors, red, blue , gold and green
Sapped by the devilry of age,
Have paled to where they can fade no more
But, to them, there is no matter to grief:
Life has other gifts.

By Kwesi Brew

Raw Happiness. Some thing we lost in my land......

" I think we modern people have forgotten the taste of real happiness" i said to ertyass, and she frowned at me as if not understanding what i really meant. I was sitting with a kind girl who invited me on a local Ghanaian music concert, the ambiance was quite bohemian, with people who were still trying to live the hippie dream and the university students who were still forming their dreams....... the musicians started playing instruments i never seen in my life, instruments you may laugh at seeing them but all having such raw but mellow and pure sounds that you become entranced as if some old voodoo spell is poured onto you ... the singer(wearing a traditional goatskin cape) like a witchdoctor was conducting the matters of winds and rain with his lorldy gestures and filling the empty spaces with his musical notes..... the lyrics were a bit funny, the singer being the only child in the family was singing for the lord to get him enough strength to serve the family and tribe, the singer singing "i walk alone, i talk alone, i eat alone, i am a lonely lonely lonely man", and "hallelujah, praise the lord"........and i found my self on the dancing floor dancing the beats of nature and life....and then i saw the African man who in that moment was the happiest person in the whole universe, dancing as if the whole world is dancing for him and with him and that he needs to return the dance to the world in the most earnest way he can, and i realized i was unhappy because i forgot how to dance.....and i danced leaving aside all shyness and civility.....remembering Zorba the greek's words "when i am unhappy i dance"......
Long after that episode Ertyaas said , " i know now what you mean we forgot the taste of real happiness" and we danced alone again for a long time.....and i thought when my country people will come even close to experiencing this raw free happiness........

Holly Un-happned...

" I know we have just met but can you promise me some thing….." I was lost in my thoughts when she asked and I for no reason was ready for everything, and still I don’t know whether she asked much off me or given more....…. It was a long night, and I am trying to collect those past butterfly moments now …. She had a very sublime but blunt style of entering into your thoughts and then letting you fly with the flow, moment by moment, sentence by sentence, note by note, setting up the overture, raising up the tempo, as if a musical conversation is happening between two instruments, as if its not about discussion but making of a great opera, and though all the notes move towards their eminent death but not forgetting their living moments on the thread of time... …... …. We discussed everything that was intangible, abstract, and beyond what is real, as if we were on a different plane that day, perhaps the rosy water was taking its toll on us old souls, perhaps the gods were playing moves not understood by we mortal pawns and we like the vanguard battalion were ready to move and die without thinking for the greater good of saving the queen or creating the music................." but you know we can not clap with one hand Holly" I said and she said why you think the other hand is not there for you "'.. " but what I am able to give in return, I have nothing" ….. " you have something"she said,"there is a Ghanaian dish called Li , you can give Listening and Intellect" ……."Oh Holly, this Egypt that you have awaken in me is burning with hope soldiers fighting with the fear-monsters and the queen Cleopatra still seems far far away" ……."Fear monsters easily kept at bay with a piece of cutlery & a good sense of humor, just don’t let the closer-then-you-think Cleopatra see your fencing style.. Stripey socks and a pair of jester shoes are also considered useful" and i know she was smiling .....

So that was Holly, whose un-happening was as sudden as her happening and I am still thinking this world is yet to be unfolded for me in so many ways…. Perhaps some wise man said quite truly, " When the student is ready, the Teacher appears".