Only Interests

Bureaucratic maneuvering born of sharp elbows
Directing the ultimate operational examples
We have only interests and shades of gray

So. Thoroughly flesh out the preferred option
While presenting limp policy alternatives
These fig leaves adorn the poisoned chalice
We have only interests, it's worth the price we pay

Constructing straw men in this intellectual game
Realpolitik when it comes to brass tacks
A balancing act of supposed hard choices
We have only interests, tough decisions have to be made

Deflection, play down the issue of an embargo
Encourage accommodation and liberal treatment
Throughout, proffer expressions of sorrow
We have only interests come what may

Moral blinders in the form of dual purpose equipment
Facade of toothless sanctions against de jure illegality
Exchange programs in all categories, including military
We have only interests, suffice to say

As to the unfettered pursuit of power and wealth
Cynical calculation asserting favored preferences
The strange architecture of misdirection
We have only interests, the decisions have been made

After National Security Study Memorandum 39 And The Future Of United States Policy Toward Southern Africa by Edgar Lockwood


File under: USA, politics, policy, cynicism, rogues, war, language, hatchet job, Great Game, Strange Bedfellows, Africa, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: May 24, 2023

Word Choice

She wrote "gathered". He was intrigued by the word choice
"Would you have preferred 'stolen'?", she said in reply
The silence after her retort was pregnant, loaded with reflection
Clearly many far more graphic words could well apply

She was being diplomatic, the occasion called for euphemism
There was no need to bring up the conqueror's catechism
The damage was done, the crown jewels were befitting
Why mention the earlier propensity for looting?

Those from the land of gold are connoisseurs of opacity
Who feel little burden in wearing masks of civility
There's a time and place, we aver, for plain speaking
But the sphinx modalities inform our private thinking

And, yes, the word gathered belies those fraught histories
An apt pointer to past abuses and enduring legacies
And, of the frayed fabric of memory still awaiting reparation,
A reminder: it's a choice to forgo truth and reconciliation

After King Charles' coronation: How would it happen in Ghana? (BBC, May 4, 2023)

Listen also: Loot, a playlist (spotify version)

File under: colonialism, euphemism, language, Africa, culture, observation, perception, memory, history, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log. May 4, 2023

African Travel Narratives

I've been thinking of The Traveler's Africa; the view from the Torrid Zone. Some readings beyond Equiano's Travels taken from my bookshelf (oh, and a playlist...)

Classics of the Genre

• The Modern Traveller by Hilaire Belloc
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley
• Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh
• Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene

From savage satire to the impressionistic to the documentary.

Hilaire Belloc's satirical eye is sublime. Nothing escapes his immaculate rendering of the essence of thousands of travel narratives. From antiquity to, say, the great explorers tomes (Mungo Park's travels in the interior) to near-contemporaries like Stanley and Livingstone. All that and more are highlighted in The Modern Traveller.

He dismantles the kind of writing lionized in the prose of empire by Kipling and others. Where we'd now say God, Gold and Glory, Belloc straightforwardly put it as Blood and Sin in vicious light verse. The cover by Basil Blackwood is apt. All the tropes of travel writing about Africa are outlined, the mystery at its heart, and all that made it evocative. Writing at the height of empire in the wake of the British victory at the battle of Omdurman in 1898, there is much to deflate in Victorian triumphalism and he sets about it avidly. The Modern Traveller is his early masterpiece.

The Journalistic Impulse

The journalistic impulse weighs heavily on travel narratives and Africa gives great material for the genre.

The travel writer ofen emerges jaded from the encounter with Africa despite the initial optimism. The people steal your heart but also destroy you. You might start to merely document but hallucinations often follow, such is the burden of the heart of darkness. Joseph Conrad, of course, had great influence on popular perceptions of Africa, and for good reasons: metaphors and urgent storytelling will always strike a chord.

It would take more than half a century and Chinua Achebe's own urgent storytelling to begin to change the perspective and to show that African voices need not be drowned out in the travel narratives and treated as mere backdrop. Indeed, they can lead the way.

A Burnt Out Case is probably Graham Greene's most focused entry, a lush hatchet job of the Conrad template, but Travels with my Aunt is his purest distillation of travel writing. An entertainment, perhaps, it captures the fecklessness and the roving eye. The kind of observed behavior that Evelyn Waugh savages with vicious fun in Black Mischief.

Contrast with the relatively sober yet similarly roving eye of Mary Kingsley. Hers is rooted in her search for botanical specimens but there is a richness to what she uncovers in the process. She was genuinely interested in the place she traveled to and the culture of the people she encountered. Her observations make for a treasure trove for historians and sociologists alike.

In a more literary bent in the 1920s, consider André Gide's Travels in the Congo and a delightful memoir Then I Saw the Congo by Grace Flandrau. The book covers tend to follow a distinct pattern.

• The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński
• Report in Africa by Oden Meeker
• Call Africa 999 by John Peer Nugent
• Stringer by Anjan Sundaram

(I hesitate to brand Kapuściński as a journalist, he was so much more. The journalistic impulse is, rather, what I'm getting at when it comes to the tenor of his writings. Denis Johnson in Seek treads much of the same terrain as Kapuściński but with a stronger punch).

How to take to the tropics is a delicious survey of travel writing in Africa by Oden Meeker. His and John Peer Nugent books are recent discoveries, wide ranging as befits these restless souls. Anjan Sundaram's Stringer follows Conrad by way of investigative journalism, archetypal of the mold of journalists that have had to report on conflict (e.g Fergal Keane).

African Perspectives

The Wife has long taught an African Travel Narratives course; we, each, have our favorites and trade new finds as we discover them. Our modern canon:

• An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
• By the Sea, Desertion and Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
• Everyday is for the thief by Teju Cole
• A Stranger's Pose by Emmanuel Iduma

A semester length course will cover readings in many styles and from many perspectives. The ones we tend to find most engaging highlight the African perspective. And things do change once African voices are in the mix.

An African in Greenland is revelatory, Tété-Michel Kpomassie's story is so engaging, he grabs you with the force of his personality, his curiousity and his drive.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, of course, in his brilliant body of work inverts the perspective and the frame that Conrad may have set and, with this freedom, makes it his own. I've lost count of how many copies of By the Sea I've had to buy as I keep recommending and gifting it to others. I'm thankful that the academy have rightly rewarded him and I no longer need to be on the street team.

A novel like Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North contains a lot travel observations but doesn't read as a traditional travel narrative and indeed there is far more sophistication in it.

Our blog era has produced two perfect little books in the genre. Teju Cole aims for close observation in Everyday is for the Thief while Emmanuel Iduma goes for the poetic in A Stranger's Pose. They are both lyrical writers with dauntingly sharp eyes.

It's fun exercise to contrast, say, The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami with Mimi and Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika by Giles Foden. The one written from the ground up and periphery, the other taken with main character energy.

And the narratives ripped from archival material carry a heavier burden that the typical travel dispatch, I'm thinking of The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi by Arthur Japin or say Ama: A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein - there's no lightness to be found in the slave trade or the earlier patterns of exchange in the colonial era.

I never quite got into the former Peace Corps memoirs although I keep reading them for what they reveal despite themselves (and George Packer's clear-eyed Village of Waiting - and Central Square which I loved, doesn't excuse his later hubris see: Iraq war).

Still I much prefer Packer over Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari. And in the same vein, I favor Graham Greene over V.S. Naipaul.

I also can't resist missionary and explorer narratives, even as I read them in the same vein, mostly for what is left unsaid or for the people that linger in the background. Sometimes, however, you find gems in second hand bookstores: Cowboy Boots in Darkest Africa by Dr Bill Rice is an all-time favorite. But that one, like Belloc's Modern Traveller, deserves its own tale.

There's all that and more in The Traveler's Africa. And to close, a cautionary note to the would-be readers of travel narratives; not all is as it seems:

T
for the Genial Tourist, who resides
In Peckham where he writes Italian Guides

Moral
Learn from this information not to cavil
At slight mistakes on books on foreign travel

— A Moral Alphabet by Hilaire Belloc

What are your favorite Africa travel narratives?

African Travel Narratives, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Traveling by Burning Spear
• Africa by D'Angelo
• Traveling Miles by Cassandra Wilson
• Vasco Da Gama by Hugh Masekala
  The chorus goes "He was no friend of mine"
• Congo by Amel Larrieux
• Torrid zone by Nucleus
• River Niger by War
• Explorations by Lonnie Liston Smith
• Africa by Toto
• The natives are restless tonight by Horace Silver
• Afrodisia by Kenny Dorham
• Africa by Abbey Lincoln & Max Roach
• Travelin' light by Shirley Horn
• River Niger by Roy Ayers
• Tropical zone by Angel David Mattos
• Columbus by Burning Spear
  Cheating here perhaps, but one can never have enough Burning Spear
• Torrid zone by The Afro Soul-Tet
• Great explorer by Louis Smith
• Torrid zone by Andre King
• Dr Livingstone, I presume by Moody Blues
• Torrid zone by Timmy Thomas
• Great explorers by David Burns

Bonus beats: Searching by Roy Ayers

See also Types and Faces and The Stereotype

File under: travel, writing, storytelling, literature, review, appreciation, culture, observation, perception, Africa, history, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: November 2, 2025

Juju

He had cloaked himself with his layan zana
Touched the soft leather amulet with its coil of goat hair
The few grains of paradise and base of shea paste and kaolin
The talisman that worked to render him invisible to adversaries

Skimping on protection, he was mindful of what many forgot,
That, for greater effectiveness of camouflage, one also needed baduhu
But you take what you get in these foreign lands, what have you
Moreover these were inflationary times, you made do with what you could afford

Still, you had to be careful when sitting to not show your soles
Avoiding also that the leather bag would touch water - taboo
Worn close to the body, he whispered thrice the name of the jinn
Spirits alighted and settled next to this Cartesian thinker

He could never understand those who closed the door to the unseen
Was it the faint hope that the invisible would pass them by? Hubris
It was a wonder that otherwise intelligent folk would speak mockingly
Of naive superstition, countering with harsh words and disbelief

A full grown man, degrees and all, steeped in the best of western education
In his business, he dealt with derivatives and complex financial transactions
A weariness overcame him, for he knew that even with the best preparation
It was touch and go with the spirit world, the strength of his protection

He'd heard the arguments about proof, reproducibility and evidence
That the signs and wonders we'd all witnessed were mere chance events
They'd plead so-called logic, rational they'd say, appeals to authority
And dismiss known cases as one-offs, charms that spoke to religiosity

And it was not even a matter of African electronics
Rather it was an unearned fealty to methods scientific
Oh well, he'd keep his juju close to his heart as if for safekeeping
As the proverb went, you can't convince someone who's sleeping

Juju, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Eri Okan (Conscience) by King Sunny Ade
• Afro Juju by Sir Shina Peters
• Iba F'Oluwa/Ajokodabi Ile by Ebenezer Obey
• Ja Funmi by King Sunny Ade
• Afro Juju Center by Sir Shina Peters

See previously: Articles of Faith

File under: superstition, tradition, Africa, culture, observation, perception, faith, religion, poetry, toli

Writing log: January 21, 2023

Three Centuries

Voyagers through the terrain of time
Living out three centuries simultaneously
Time travelers in the torrid zone
Navigating its fraught territory

The near past is nothing to speak of
Replete with close encounters with dread
Luckily therefore, we shy away from nostalgia
After all, these were labeled our lost decades
Moreover, even the earlier eras bore a taint of calamity
Of pawnage at home and, in middle passages, chattel slavery

We made our accommodations, and devised our survival strategies
At times resisting those who marked our lands as uncharted territory
They came with breech-loading muskets, Maxim guns at the ready
Meanwhile we had nature's usual afflictions too as adversaries

Mindful of the mosquito principle, we cultivated fever trees
Prepared potions of bitter roots contra miasmas and rank diseases
Plainly the ancients suffered the ailments but didn't have the vocabulary
The graves were getting full - these days we'd call it excess mortality

Black gold and crown jewels extracted, there were protection treaties
Signed under duress, some of the chiefs yielded to malign authority
The structural adjustments of yore, a taste of excessive liability
A short sale, in retrospect they put a human face on ugly realities

Young, ever hopeful, unencumbered by the past, we look forward
As an article of faith, trusting that better days lie ahead
In time, as well as in place, removed from the burden of deference
We bring forth the elements of survival to charge our present

Fumes, fragments abound, shards of memory
That the storytellers left, the faint glimpses of glory
Elements of our present could do with a touch of modernity
We hold on, we hold fast, and we will tell our story

And so some of us, by default, have found ourselves living in three centuries
Simultaneously navigating tradition and modernity
Overlapping frames, for humanity knows no boundaries
No one is coming, it’s up to us to shape the memories

Off kilter, confronted, as we are, with many uncertainties
We wear, as protective armor, our masks of civility
Treading a fine line, but finally in charge of our destiny
Comforted, we attempt the choreography of normalcy

So, the battle enjoined, charting our own direction
The upshot now, the nature of our contribution
Clear-eyed, is to press beyond a naive sentimentality
And demonstrate that we move forward through community

Truth and reconciliation, a conversational strategy
Social living, the antidote to manifest destiny
In the torrid zone, then, this was a matter of necessity
We paid our premiums, soul insurance was the remedy

Three Centuries, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Out of the Past - The Three Sounds
• Side by Side - Dianne Reeves
• Let's forget about the past - Clyde McPhatter
• Now's the Time - Charlie Parker
• Back to the Future - D'Angelo
• Jazz in the Present Tense - Solsonics
• Out of the Past - Art Farmer
• I Can See the Future - Incognito
• Out of the Past - Benny Golson Sextet
• Til It's Done (Tutu) - D'Angelo
• The Past, The Present - Kupla

See previously: The Torrid Zone and Soul Insurance


File under: Africa, culture, observation, perception, identity, strategy, Social Living, memory, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 18, 2022

The Reach of Hill House

Close to the Masonic Lodge,
Near the order of Odd Fellows
By the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy,
Around the block from the cathedral
With the mosque in the background,
The calls of muezzins and roving preachers
The distractions were many, but one could see Hill House around the way

Where a society of friends would gather in quiet devotion
Mindful of the other faiths in their midst,
   the fierce competition for souls
No exuberant dancing
  as with the nightclub vibe of the new christianity
A meeting of minds in a circle close to the ground,
   theirs was solemnity

Eschewing ostentation, riches were to be expended on the spirit
Sharing thoughts, joyful worship but always in a minor key
The paths that life may take you on, the fateful journeys
Ever outwards, sometimes worlds away, yet reaching back to that weekly home

The comforting silences of friends, the keen observations
Most of all, the peaceful reflections and the fellowship
A region of the mind centered on earth, grace fixed in memory
The enduring appeal, sustaining; the reach of Hill House

Hill House, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• This is my story, this is my song by Thelonious Monk
• Abide with me by Thelonious Monk
• How my heart sings by Bill Evans Trio
• Be Not Always by The Jacksons
• How Can I Keep From Singing by Pete Seeger & Arlo Guthrie

File under: memory, culture, religion, Quaker, Ghana, Africa, observation, perception, Social Living, poetry, toli

Writing log. October 8, 2022

Mercy is the Gift

In those days we had a choice to make
Whether to raise our voice and be counted
The dilemma in the face of violence
For oppression is a determined foe

And even if silence was our blanket of loss
We marked the times of dread with patience
Consoled that relief would surely come
But always, in faith, we bore witness

Oh the threats we endured,
The heat of cold fury
Such threats that we faced
Those foregone opportunities
Survival carves its blood-tinged imprint
The mold is the human animal

Speak, memory
Of fond flesh departed
Of bonds disappearing
Speak of absences enforced,
This life of ellipses

Speak of unease and timeless worry
Of the heaving bodies we saw drawing their final breaths
Even as throughout, we listened and we stared

But even if a look only deflects the blows of a willful detractor
A burdened soul beholds a shield of grace
Protection that turns into a weapon
For mercy is ours to give

This, the gods have long made known:
Mercy is the gift


...

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals

— The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell

Mercy, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Mercy Mercy Mercy by Cannonball Adderley Quintet
• Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) by Marvin Gaye
• Mercy Mercy by Don Covay
• Somebody Have Mercy by The Memphis Horns (ft. Bobby Womack)
• Have Mercy by Mighty Diamonds
• Somebody Have Mercy by Sam Cooke
• Mercy Mercy by Wilson Pickett
• Mercy Mercy Mercy by Caleb Quaye & the Faculty
• Quality of Mercy by Michelle Shocked
  Ending with a devastating take on the immortal line

...

And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

— The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

I've always loved the way the Bard echoes Southwell... the quality of mercy is not strained.


See previously: The Voiceless Past, Speak, Memory, Wrath is for the Weak, Truth and Reconciliation


File under: culture, memory, observation, perception, strategy, displacement, mercy, empathy, Ghana, dissent, Africa, reconciliation, philosophy, Social Living, poetry, toli

Writing log. October 7, 2022

Intimate Legacies

The height of fulfillment for a Ghanaian woman
The measure of a life well lived
Is to be surrounded by loved ones
Sought out for consultation
And to leave a trunk of fabric
Packed almost full with cloth, new or barely worn
To be shared amongst those she leaves behind

Kente, Dutch wax prints, indigos and batiks
Some with Adinkra designs, and lace too; these are heirlooms
True, some would also cite the beads and the jewelry
Gold sovereigns as befits the site of the Gold Coast
And yes, monies and land, cars - modernity, are fitting contributions
But it is the cloth that is the prized intimate legacy

...

Daa left me some fabric, my inheritance was a sleep cloth
Dark green, a GTP wax print, lightly faded
So soft after years of use that the merest touch
Transports me to happy places
Skin to skin, in contact with her quiet ways
Remembering her voice and her laughter

She left a scarf for our daughter
White lace, a welcome present
She'd held out to meet her, her great granddaughter
The yearslong campaign on her granddaughter-in-law
Had borne a delicate fruit
She carried her with joy that day
And fussed, and gave advice, we listened well
Ineffable joy, she slept well that night
Remembering the long journey, the twists and the turns
Those who had walked along with her
Those now lost, and those who still remained
The happy times - for there were many like today
The reversals, and the times of privation
Internal exile and the hunger seasons
When some had to sell, to empty their trunks
To empty their very souls to provide for their family
But she had made it, and could pass something on
She was ready. She passed it on and carried a glow
She eased through the few weeks that remained of life

...

In this meeting of minds
The foundations of identity
Home, the veins of belonging
Sleep cloths for the children
Memories rest on the fabric itself
Pieces of intimate legacies

Intimate Legacies, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Pass it on by Omar ft. Terri Walker
• Grandma's Hands by Bill Withers
• She Gave Her Angels by Prince
• Sacrifice by Elton John
  In the same vein as the Purple One's ode, the album is fittingly titled Sleeping with the Past
• Sacrifice by Gregory Isaacs
• Grandma's Hands by Gil Scot-Heron

Let's place this under the banner of Social Living

File under: family, memory, fabric, cloth, legacy, history, culture, observation, perception, personal, sensory, Ghana, Africa, textiles, tradition, poetry, Social Living, toli

Writing log: September 22, 2022

Drop, Chain and Accordion

Harbingers of malnutrition
The Four Horsemen of hunger season
While the first three duly entered our vocabulary
The fourth, left to shame, was pushed to the recesses of memory

The drop was the most embarrasing of these musketeers
Because, when first encountered, he caught you unawares
The sudden drop of your clothing - you were now half your size
Exposing your nether regions to the fresh air and curious eyes

By the time you got to the chain or the accordion, you'd find yourself spent
Having long made your peace with this state of affairs: eternal Lent
Accustomed as you were to - call it by its name, starvation
After all, you were living through a proper People's Revolution

Marking the spot on your belt where you would pierce the extra notch
Or wearing belts where you previously had none - acceptable loss
Improvised contraptions for your skirts and trousers hopefully holding
Under military rule, we were at a remove from skirt-and-blouse voting

The second horseman, the chain, spoke to tears and sorrow
A cynical description of a neckline that was now hollow
Jewelry of a sort, a macabre, if fashionable, decoration
Thriftiness embodied in your very person, a celebration

The third horseman, the equal opportunity composer, the accordion
Orchestrated skinny rib cages visibly appealing to both old and young
A skeletal music of fatigue, unmet needs and quiet exhaustion
He devised a twelve bar blues, if you will, of quotidian suffering

As to the fourth, rickety, he mainly dealt with little children
Confounding in his physicality as should be readily apparent
Kwashiorkor, quite a mouthful, the dreadful disease
The characteristic bloating, the ironic mark of the beast

Weight loss, hair loss, failure to thrive, and apathy
And then we come to those now-distended extremities
And even with the outrage and the sense of violation
The question still remains, why were these men laughing?

Nature may be a cruel companion, what with droughts and brush fires
Yet it was a man-made disaster, preventable, and caused by these liars
With limited food resources, this had all the makings of a tragedy
Worse, they were warned well in advance at the time yet they carried on stubbornly

Quite bewildering though, and damaging to the psyche
To be branded as requiring all the world's charity
Stalking horses of hunger seasons past, harrowing and dubious legacies
Ancestral memories passed across the ages, fear and survival strategies

The fourth horseman, although it must be said, was rather solicitous,
Didn't lend himself to a coinage that was quite so felicitous
The lived experience was stark and dispiriting, disturbing in its dismay
Awful enough that even that angel Euphemism couldn't summon an uneasy phrase

Drop, chain and accordion, then, were the fateful entries
Albeit History gave unkind placement in the dictionaries
They would be prefixed in the lexicon by his name
To the Flight Lieutenant's great and everlasting shame

Such however is the way of privation, the nature of its exigency
That, even in the darkest hours, in the depths of an emergency
Gallows humor reigns, it calls forth linguistic innovation and whimsy
Proverbial zingers, sharp aphorisms, etched forever in memory

...

Basket cases
Tiny coffins
Circling vultures
Calmly watching

Weeping mothers
Hunger pangs
And the crowds
Scrambling for crumbs

...

Starving children don't cry
Tears waste too many calories
Shame, that so many had to die
Shame, again, their swollen bellies

Hunger, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Pearls by Sade
  Melodramatic as befits the tragic scene she describes, mournful this ode to wounded pride.
• Hungry Blues by Jimmy Johnson & His Orchestra
• Never Mind the Hungry Blues by Larry Carlton
• Got the Hunger by Alice Russell
• Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) by Bob Marley
• Man Hungry by Sugar Minot
• When Hungry Walks by Gregory Isaacs
• Hungry Belly Pickney by Freddie Macgregor
• Hungry Belly Dub by King Tubby
• Very, Very Hungry by Brian Eno & David Byrne
  An instrumental track from the experimental album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Bonus beats: Hungry Belly by Frankie Paul & Pinchers, mainly for the title for this is a story about girl from Flatbush named Aisha. And of course, three live versions of Sade's Pearls, a show stopper ever since she composed it.


...

After Hunger for Sale (Talking Drums, October 3, 1983)

And also for that friend who startled me with the vehemence of his reaction when I teased him about his short stature. "Some of us didn't have our growth spurt during those years, we had Rawlings chains instead". A brief, damning silence ensued before joviality made its return. With my vaunted exile meshed with his explicit denial, our friendship, perhaps, was salved by the balm of the musical imagery. But the bitterness lingered.

And if archeologists can detect the evidence of famines and stunted growth like tree rings, etched in human bones, linguists and social historians can similarly escavate matters. Both earthquakes and man-made disasters leave their marks. Dzorwulu becomes 'the place that dropped', the valley of urban remembrance. Drop, chain and accordion as pointed modes of resistance in our hunger season.

Poetry as cultural memory then. Coinages bear the tide marks of social distress. In any case, this one's for you.

See previously Identification Haircut and, retrospectively, AFRC Member

File under: humour, hatchet job, satire, culture, observation, perception, language, Ghana, Africa, coup, rogues, dictator, military, famine, disaster, failure, outrage, memory, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 18, 2022

Mercurial, They Call Him

Portrait of a narcissist, a few essential traits
A slight never forgotten, don't you make that mistake
A double heart filled with unspoken threats
He wears the mask the audience deserves

Portrait of an opportunist, moral flexibility in abundance
Reversals galore but he rolls with the punches
His interests always trump friendships, let's call it expedience
For survival beyond the day's end is his sole allegiance

Portrait of the vain, hollow on the inside
Entitlement in stiff competition with pride
His secret weapon, a genuine sense of self importance
Chock full of certainty about the rightness of his cause
To call him self centered is to merely state the obvious

Portrait of a deceiver, all things to all men
Lying with a straight face, his enduring strength
Pitch perfect delivery, you could swear he believes every untruth
Surely, to impugn the purity of his motives? What are you, uncouth?

Carried Fanon's book around for a full year - wretched
Still occasionally tries to read it (practice makes perfect)
But underneath everything is a fundamental insecurity
Mommy and Daddy issues, the bitter roots of his immaturity

The need for speed, horses his first love
But anything with an engine would do
Nights out with the running partners
Booze, the hard stuff, ladies of easy virtue
After dark, how exciting, and all in the same room

It's fair to say that there are multitudes inside of this man
Characterized, everyone says, by his tremendous charm
Unrestrained, unfiltered, half baked, half-cocked
Empty but empowered, half truths, half thought

Absolved, then, of the burden of any sense of responsibility
Free to be a political actor altogether allergic to empathy
A chameleon - mercurial, they call him, the luckiest man alive
Just your luck that you're stuck with him, the best years of your life

Bad, a playlist

For what it's worth, this playlist was intended to stand alone but seeing as I haven't written up the liner notes in the 17 years since I made it, I suppose I can repurpose it as the soundtrack for this note. A couple of hours on a bad man (spotify version)

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

...

See previously The Conqueror's Catechism


File under: humour, hatchet job, rogues, satire, culture, observation, perception, military, dictator, blood, sin, greed, gremlins, Africa, violence, strategy, Fallen Angels, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 18, 2022

At the Africarib Market

Late afternoon at the Africarib market,
The brothers in the know were picking up some yam
Man cannot live on bread alone
(A fresh shipment of puna yam had just arrived from the motherland)

I was more interested in the kenkey
 that had also arrived that Wednesday,
Driven up from Houston by an ex-military man in a jeep;
His wife was the one who prepared the kenkey
The Nigerians were out in force -
Yam for their swallow obviously, and much more:
Stockfish, herring and even snails.
The shop was well stocked today

One of the elders recounted a long tale
 about how hard things were back home - believe him
We learned about the three year old child who was suffering,
  crying when he'd last called home
The story was that two ears of corn had been prepared in the morning -
 his share for the day
But that before it could be given out, a fowl -
  unclear whether it was a chicken or guinea fowl,
Had gone behind him - poor thing,
  and absconded with the corn

And the child had set about on the chase,
  and duly tripped and fell,
And was now disconsolate,
  bleeding, and still crying hours after the deed
And hungry too, for the corn was long gone
There was an object lesson in the tale
 about the hardships that our people were facing,
Inflation, poverty and worse - how for do? Na wow
Now even little ones have to compete with fowls for their daily corn

Just then we saw the headlines
On the screen above the check out counter
Breaking news, school shooting... CNN...
Two children killed... many injured... More to follow
"So these people...
School don open just this week and they go shoot am...
America..." Shaking heads all around.

Our laments about the continent were cut short - these people
I quickly settled with Walter. And made my excuses to the circle:
"I need to pick up the kids from school"
Head nods. We all sobered up promptly,
The expected banter postponed for another time
I'll admit, I drove rather fast to the school

Defensive Posture, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. Musical protection. (spotify version)

Bonus beats: Immigrant by Sade

See previously Silt and Sediment, Action Items, Prone and Defensive Accounting

File under: immigration, culture, observation, perception, social, Africa, USA, blood, violence, modernity, guns, outrage, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: August 28, 2025

The Memorial Lectures

In a time, then, of intense ferment and revolutionary fervor
When bishops were imprisoned, and judges were being murdered
Amidst vituperous outbursts, obscenities, from the leaders of the junta
Who would set upon any opposition their cadres, commandos, and militias

It took personal bravery from this eminent historian
More inclined to dusty archival work than the realm of the politician
But everyone had to play their part, not just the journalists
The man on the streets, even the poets and the satirists

The call still resounded after six years to stand up and be counted
For, even in those days of despair, the challenge had to be mounted
In the face of random, yet purposeful, terror and violence
To confront head-on the prevailing culture of silence
Up stood the good professor to give those memorial lectures

Political parties were banned, so they were couched as educational sessions
Our intellectual life in those days reduced to Green Book study lessons
Featuring long-winded missives from our friends in Cuba and Nicaragua
East German ideologues too gave input, as did theoreticians from Romania

It's fair to say that this minor act of defiance prompted a revival
A reappraisal, in many ways, of Ghana's philosophy of survival
Methodically and deftly explained with his customary sensitivity
What we choose to remember and forget, the workings of cultural memory

He stepped up to outline the essence of these fraught histories
Provided the background to give strength to quiescent identities
We owe him a debt of gratitude, this mild mannered man of qualities
For laying out the Ghanaian context of the sphinx modalities



In memoriam, Professor Alfred Adu-Boahen

Memorial Lectures, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Think by Curtis Mayfield
• So Much Things to Say by Bob Marley
• Sorry Ain't Enough by SAULT
• Culture of Silence by Jhelisa
• It's Enough by Lenny Kravitz
• Le Silence n'est pas un Oubli by T.P. Orchestre Poly Rhythmo
• Had Enuf by Al B. Sure!
• In a Silent Way / It's About That Time by Miles Davis

Part II of Sphinx Modalities, putting a human face to Sphinx

Further reading: The Ghanaian Sphinx: Reflections on the Contemporary History of Ghana, 1972-1987

I nominate this piece for the Things Fall Apart series under the banner of Social Living

File under: Ghana, appreciation, resistance, dissent, courage, politics, coup, dictator, strategy, culture, history, oppression, observation, perception, Africa, values, social, Social Living, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 11, 2022

We Don't Talk Politics

I saw him once in person, Eyadema père
Must have been a few months before his death
At ease in his dark suit and sunglasses, standing there
The big man, unsmiling as ever, impassive and stern

Almost forty years deep into his rule by then
His éminence grise was attending the gentle giant's inauguration
He stood out, sour minded, even as others were celebrating
The hard earned lessons fully learned by his subjects

None of my Togolese friends have ever discussed politics

No surprises, however, about his exercise of power
At that point, he was the longest serving African ruler
Everything had to pass through him, it was all about the money
Contracts, wives and daughters, all tributes to his authority

My Togolese friends don't talk politics, they won't be drawn

Still, unlike some of the others, he wasn't too flashy
The trappings of the personality cult weren't too ornery
Funeral minded however, there was no chance of a smile
A quick death for his enemies instead of a show trial

They laugh and cry like everyone but my Togolese friends don't talk politics

Favored client of Françafrique, pal of Jacques Foccart
All respect due to the Knight of the Legion of Honour
The indomitable son who received the Order of the Yugoslav Star
During our lost decades, he would even play the role of mediator

Sports, relationships, religion even, but my Togolese friends never mention politics

But the many prizes couldn't launder his reputation
The curdled bloodstains at the heart of a tyrant's reign
Lingering, the squalid and tawdry murders underneath it all
Worse still, the dynasty continues apace, his son succeeded him

Almost thirty years now
The silence of my Togolese friends weighs
Never once have they slipped
And so we discuss the weather

We Don't Talk Politics, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• I keep forgettin by Michael McDonald
• Weather by Amel Larrieux
• I don't want to talk about it by Rod Stewart
• Don't mention my heartache by Nathalie Cole
• No politics by Amp Fiddler
• Talk about the weather by Yves Paquet
• N'bo Eyadema Mobutu by Napo de mi amor
• Murderer by Barrington Levy
• Talking about the weather by Tess Parks
• Don't talk about it by Culture Club
• Let's talk about the weather by Michael Hill's Blues Mob
• I don't want to talk about it by Rita Coolidge

See previously The Conqueror's Catechism


There was a touch of poetic license if not despair when I wrote the above in 2023, I hoped then, and hope now, that a new generation would prove me wrong; 58 years should be enough, right?

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried


File under: fear, rogues, dictator, gremlins, Eyadema, Togo, Africa, humour, culture, blood, observation, perception, huhudious, hatchet job, violence, Fallen Angels, Observers are worried, poetry, toli

Writing log: October 23, 2023

Near the Weeping Trees

Poetic license, a grove of weeping trees
Is said to mark the spot where Babatu's wife perished,
Abandoned by his retreating raiders

Vitellaria paradoxa, the botanists would precise
The creeping shea tree takes 15 years to start to bear fruit
The site of her execution, an arboreal memorial of resistance

The historians would argue about the accuracy of oral history
Questioning how these stories have come down through the ages
That the battle of Sandema most likely took place
Somewhat at a remove from where we now celebrate it
That the invention of tradition prevails

That, yes, Babatu was the prime slave raider in those times
But that the invocation of Samory was a touch of artistic license
Embellishment by the griots,
Born of his fearsome reputation
For the record shows he confined his empire's reach
To the west of the coast

Thus, while Samory's troops did overrun Bole,
They never made it to Sandema
No, Babutu was the prime mover
In what is now northern Ghana

The Zabarima depredations he led
The forced marches, the trail of dread
Spilling over from the East and North - Niger
Shackled, back to the market at Salaga

It follows; the dread that the Gonja faced
Was in the same vein as what the Bulsa bore
The specter of their adversaries
Commingled in the tales of the griots
For it was the same threat, the same suffering,
And the same wounds

And, yes, Bulsa children should run
At the mere mention of either foe
The griots had it right:
What is 200 miles in the grand scheme of things?

So, Salaga market
Or Kasana market near Tomu
Ominous since their founding
The former now a tourist site a century later
With a few exhibits

The footpaths trod by captives,
Marched from Bulsa and Kasena areas
And shackles, so many shackles, symbolic,
And other items that bear reflection
Earth shrines in modern times,
Northern doors of no return

...

We leave faint traces in our stories,
Signposts of intimate legacies
Fumes marking cautionary tales,
The touchpoints and the villains
And heroes too.

Years later, we gather and celebrate the victories
Feok they call the annual festival,
Harvests, and a "time of plenty"
Where warriors gather in performance
And recount the shared memories
And it all happens - historians may debate,
Not too far from the weeping trees

Near the Weeping Trees, a playlist

I recall when the then 3 year old entered the daycare center singing Burning Spear's refrain: "Do you remember the days of slavery?". The looks from the front desk, of those proper, Southern Texas ladies... I decided to keep things light with my playlists going forward. Still, these are living histories, the legacies of men.

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Slavery days by Burning Spear
• Wolves and Leopards by Dennis Brown
• The Invasion by Burning Spear

Bonus beats: a few live and dub versions of these joints

See previously Running Away, my first piece on the tales of Northen Ghana and, just to confuse things, Samory's Old Camp

This note is part of the Things Fall Apart series under the banner of The Bulsa Way.

File under: slavery, Bulsa, Ghana, Africa, culture, memory, history, observation, perception, fear, dislocation, escape, griots, Things Fall Apart, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 10, 2022

Aliens Must Go

Legitimacy and exile
Aliens must go

Papers and passports
Inspection of identity

Stamp of approval
Proof of residency

Overstayed welcome
Fairweather friends

Fiasco
Exigency

Scapegoats
Contingency

Indefinite leave to remain
There's a price to be paid

Fraught deadlines
Tight timetable

Hasty evacuations
Explicit threats

Swift deportation
Fractured boundaries

Unkind labels
Verbal taunts

Herd of illegals
Circling touts

Overnight precarity
Status in doubt

Expulsion orders
Border crossings

Crowded ports
Land checkpoints

Dispersed families
Rushed upheaval

Overstuffed bags
Hurry

Tension, loss
Worry

Official decisions
Informal penalties

Enforcement actions
Emboldened gatekeepers

Entry permits
Mournful exits

Brethren
Neighbors

Rivals
Strangers

State of emergency
Failure of diplomacy

Ancestral memory
Histories of dislocation

Politics of closures
Season of migration

Internally displaced
Traditional evacuees

Modern travelers
Sudden refugees

Aliens must go, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Gone baby, don't be long by Erykah Badu
• Uptown by Raphael Saadiq
  The plaintive refrain and coda is the sound of wist: "I'm leaving this town"
• I gotta get away by Gloria Barnes
• Pack'd my bags by Rufus ft Chaka Khan
• Leavin' by Tony Toni Tone
• I gotta go by Lizz Fields
• Don't talk to strangers by Prince
• Gone baby, don't be long by José James
• Don't talk to strangers by Chaka Khan

Bonus beats: Don't leave me this way by Thelma Houston


See previously Bags and Stamps (Ghana must go) and Expulsion orders

...

Postscript (June 3, 2025)

My current publishing schedule means that what you read above today was written three years ago (Indeed, if I don't pick up the pace, the trifle I wrote today will only see the light in 2038, 12 1/2 years from now). That being said, I am struck that the above musings on displacement, forced and otherwise, that I wrote in 2022 still seem timely.

I was then in the process of digitizing the Talking Drums archive and taking in the reverberations of arbitrariness and the reign of strongmen in khaki in what I read in those pages. The ripple effects continue over the surface of our regional politics.

My friend Senam had just published her dissertation and was sharing some of the stories that she'd unearthed in her excavation of this, our signal topic. Ghana must go has a very tangible legacy beyond Nigeria and Ghana. It is a living history, disclosed often by artful omission and subject to the opacity of our elders. It a family history and, in its sweep, marks its bearers.

More recently, I've been thinking about the exodus from Sudan and what that country has suffered in the past two years, the reign of locusts, if you will. You don't hear much about the strain on the surrounding countries and the fodder for resentment that any old demagogue could harness if they chose to do their worst. I've been thinking of the smaller but no less disruptive waves in the Sahel region where many leaders are indeed inclined to do their worst for fear of losing their positions. Displacement seems to be the rule and many of our neighbors' houses are on fire.

This is a time of brutes.

And here, again, I welcome the US to the Third World. The Stephen Miller incited and Trump led assault on everything is hitting many near and dear to me. Things have long moved far beyond rhetoric. Livelihoods and personal safety are affected, even moreso than usual for those darker than blue. Unspoken threats now explicitly verbalized. And horizons have contracted. Many now adopt a fetal pose to shield from the incoming blows heeding the warning: protect yourselves at all times.

This is a time of precarity.

And exhaustion. Take, say, immigration for example. Many of my cousins are on student or other immigrant visas in the US, and are currently weighing the calculus of just being themselves versus adopting a studied pose of neutrality and normalcy.

No sudden moves is the refrain, don't become a target etc. It looms, that culture of silence. It's present, the retreat to that mask of civility that we wear all too well.

This is a time of erasures.

People disappear, sometimes literally pulled off the streets, bodies are snatched with glee. But worse is the eclipse of the soul. Pieces of identity are being erased. The spark and joie de vivre in many is being extinguished, curtailed by cruelty and disembodied by vindictiveness. I can't recognize so many folk.

Sidenote: one of my cousins was recently accepted by Harvard, all his hard work paying off. After the initial celebrations, however, everyone in the family has been holding their breath as we watch that institution and others being targeted. The saving grace is that he was born in the USA and so is somewhat shielded from the trials of non-citizens. (I'm still somewhat curious about whether the currenly stymied attack on birthright citizenship would notionally affect him, or if that strange interpretation would only affect births going forward). I don't envy him. He gets to wear multiple mantles as a living embodiment of Stephen Miller's worst fears, a foreign student but also an American-African and that's before he even opens his mouth. I really don't envy him. What paradise have we lost?

Anyway... Perhaps, this is all background noise, and, as I'm often reminded, the virus sets the timeline. The ongoing pandemic can make all this turmoil in the world moot, a sideshow at best, in very short order.

Aliens must go. I too will make my accommodations. I continue to focus on small things and move to my own tune. The present collection of toli, being doled out every week, bears a title that is all I aspire to: A Comfortable Unease.


File under: Ghana, Nigeria, culture, immigration, displacement, exile, memory, Africa, history, politics, dictator, coup, loss, observation, perception, refugee, Things Fall Apart, Ghana must go, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 6, 2022