Thursday, March 8, 2012

Happy Women's Day,

From the freaks, the ladies, the quiets, the crazies,

the ones we once loved who now have babies...

To the naggers, the playettes, the feminists, the divas,

 the afrocentric fashionistas rocking Davivas...

From the old, to the young, the fair, the dark,

To the tall, the short,

even the ones who play sport...

 

From the smart, the awesome, the downright cumbersome, 

To the A cups, and the D’s, even those who're troublesome 

From the ones who flaunt it and make us quake in the knees,

To those who stare and just say ugh, please...

From the made up, the natural, the woven on, the bald…

To the manicured, the pedicured,

the wont be bothered, cant be cured...

 

From the hard to get, the difficult to maintain,

the long life partners, the hard to explain...

To the bold, the strong,

the ones who keep this world moving along...

 

From all the women who inspire us

even to those who must always get their own way...

here's a note just to say, 

Happy Women's day.

 

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Analogy.

55 years ago, Ghana was a start-up and Nkrumah was the entrepreneur behind it. The Patrick Awuah of his day, if you will. He put toil and blood into it and made it flourish as much as possible. He was passionate about his business and he invested in it.

But now the founder has gone away and the business has lost it's soul, inspiration and drive. Now it's being managed by people who dont see it as theis and just want to milk it dry. The've formed unnecessary alliances, there's so much office politics - pun intended - internal power struggles, ass-kissing and unecessary pettiness. Innovation is stifled. Stagnant mediocre groupthink sets in.

New management has no empathy for the employees. Once in a while, the management does something that seems nice, and because the employees are so used to such crappy standards, even the littlest things seem... ahem... gargantuan.. But the saddest part is that these little things aren't perks, they're things that management is supposed to do! But, HR is not too effective, so there.

Management grows detached from the employees. The leaders eventually stop leading and focus on enriching themselves. The employees lose interest, arent as dedicated, and just coast and stop demanding. At least the paycheck is constant. And so it continues. Everybody just dey.

Nkrumah's generation was a much prouder generation of Africans. They believed in themselves. Even the way they spoke was different. Had a tinge of learnedness. They made things happen and became an active force to reckon with internationally. But now this entire generation seems to have low self-esteem. We've dropped the ball. Woefully. But all isn't completely lost. We're 55. There's still time to grow up.