africa

No nation has ever been able to transform by chance. Its always a deliberate and conscious process

Not a few millions of parents strongly hope that their own children will step in by instantly becoming their own parents_ foster parents, if and when the parents reach their second childhood.

But in Africa bureaucrats are usually too proud to accept a bribe, something I admire when I'm not the one being arrested.

America is a young dumb country and it needs all kinds of help. America is a dumb puppy with big teeth that bite and hurt. And we take care of America. We hold America to our bosom; we feed America, we make love to America. There wouldn't be an America if it wasn't for black people. So you have some dedicated black Americans who will die a million deaths to save America. And this is home for us. We don't know really about Africa. We talk it in a romantic sense, but America is it. And so, America is always going to be okay as long as black people don't totally lose their mind, cause we'll pick up the pieces and turn it into a new dance.

I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You're my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love your dark bush as I love the bush here, you change with the light as this place does, so that one all the time is loving something different and yet the same. I want to spill myself out into you as I want to die here.

The youth. The youth of Africa. The youth of this world. Are we harnessing the potential of the youth enough? Are the young ones_ giving off their best to the continent, the nation, the universe that is giving us so much? Why do we think we can only contribute something after age forty? Are we not causing wealth loss to our generation?

Don__ wait till you have grey hair before you believe people will take you seriously because scientifically, grey hair is a sign of old age and not necessarily of wisdom.

Looking around today, I see a lot of young people who act as if they have all the time in the world, and older persons who think this attitude is alright. It is unfortunate that there are young citizens who still believe life begins at forty and that life before forty is non-scoring, and older citizens who still insist that unless you are old, you have nothing to offer, equating age with wisdom.

Don__ cause wealth loss to your generation! Life is too short to be little. You have an impact to make on your generation and the time to start was yesterday.

Don__ under-rate the scope of your influence in your youth. Don__ think you have all the time to make a difference in this world. Recognize that both brown and green leaves fall to the ground.

Young men and women are causing wealth loss to their generation because they are sitting on inert ideas, bottled-up potential energy and scratching the ground when they should be gliding the skies and perambulating with the stars. These people are so disillusioned they live life without any urgency.

.... does a fair trial necessarily amount to a fair outcome?

Your eyes betray a sadness that only a worthy man can conjure, but never solve

Professor, when people say such things after impossibility smacks them in the face, we call it denial

... the poor always live on debt. At this point, time is the only thing I still have the credibility to borrow.

I had come alive here...this was my home, and though one day it would all trickle through my fingers like so much red dust, for as long as childhood lasted it was a heaven fitted exactly to me. A place I knew by heart. The one place in the world I'd been made for.

A traditional house smelled of wood smoke, the earth, and of thatch; all good smells, the smell of life itself.

He feels a second pang now for the existence of perfection, the stubborn existence of perfection in the most vulnerable of things and in the face of his refusal-logical-admirable refusal-to engage with this existence in his heart, in his mind. For the comfortless logic, the curse of clear sight, no matter which string he pulls on the same wretched knot: (a) the futility of seeing given the fatality in a place such as this where a mother still bloody must bury her newborn, hose off, and go home to pound yam into paste; (b) the persistence of beauty, in fragility of all places!, in a dewdrop at daybreak, a thing that will end, and in moments, and in a garden, and in Ghana, lush Ghana, soft Ghana, verdant Ghana, where fragile things die.