1998 Class Notes - It's been 10 years!

Oh my! I thought, well, we live in a decimal dominated culture so I guess the number '10' must be significant and shouldn't pass without mention.

Now everyone is certifiably a growee. No excuses. What are you doing with your life?

Let's run through some opinionated 10-year time-out notes:
- If you wanted to run for president and are still living exile (economic or political) instead of where you are eligible to be president then my friend your time is running out. By this time you should be a district leader or planning to be one in the next year or two. Yes, I had to say it as I know many nurse lofty ambitions :)

- If you wanted to be a doctor/engineer/lawyer--the classic top 3 back in the bad old days, you are probably already are. But even if you aren't yet--you have plenty of time since there's no upper limit on age eligibility for these professions. Some are already planning to add even more academic degrees after their names. A word of caution here--letters after your name doesn't actually mean much to anyone except yourself. Most people measure you by your actual achievements not what you say you are capable of achieving.

- If you wanted to be a professor/teacher--in other words, the shapers of young minds, and the thinkers--then unless you're happy with taking the kidibubs and kidibabs through their 123s, you're probably still in school trying to finish that PhD. I say, finish hard! Hopefully in another 10 years you'll be on the tenure track and you'd have written some great papers about important topics or written a text book all our kiddies will use. Remember to befriend the artists--without them, your ideas might be lost to the culture which can best understand you.

- The businessmen--you are probably on your third business already; or you've made tons of cash from your first--and who will fault a man for sticking with a winning strategy. Remember to befriend the politicians. It's usually good for business.

- The artists. Now I must say that I don't remember anyone in my inner circle who wanted to do any more than dabble in the arts--but you guys are the important people. Novelists, playwrights, poets, columnists, coaches, designers. You inspire the rest of us to love, hate, happiness or sorrow. You make us proud or ashamed of ourselves. You mirror, reinterpret culture--our very way of life. Remember to befriend the academics--without them the best ideas in the culture will likely never be widely known. They'll probably still be speaking Latin when all we understand is Hausa--so help them to communicate with us the senior citizens :)

- The entertainers. Yeah--you've probably made your first million new Ghanaian cedis. If so, remember the artists--they come up with the jokes you use, the lyrics you sing, the product that you advertise... So remember them and make them happy--after all what's the football player without the coach? The actor without a script? You tell me...

- The senior citizens. You are hiding but doing your own thing small small. Some of you are already part of the fundraising committee for the church harvest. Others have started building a house for their parents and others have already finished that and started on their own. Kudos to you wherever you are and whatever good thing you are up to.

- The common floor members. Come on--the time for being spectators is over--jump into the action. It's time to decide on something to be known for and stop harassing those who want to look up to you for fish or other assorted tins. Buy your own flakes if you want to chill. Rev your own ride instead of crimping your mommy's style by always borrowing her ride. Or ride proudly in the front of a trosky like I do--at least you pay your fare with your own hard-earned cash so why not get the best view from the front?

Now the filla...
In the 'Just Married' column (ok, relative to the last time you read these class notes:) )--in alphabetical order,

• Emmanuel Akrong
• Emmanuel Paa Kwesi Amos-Abanyie
• Kobina Inkumsah
  
• Daniel Kokroko
• Paul Opare-Addo
• Andrew Ofosu
• ... and many more who should be on this list but about whom I have no filla
  

In the "I'm passing on my genes" column I have no filla unfortunately. But send them along--we want to see pictures too of the little people. Take them to visit your old dorms--show them the bad old days and tell them about the great fun we had despite it all :)

In the "OK guys--I'm going ahead" column I also have no filla. And I don't want to have filla since it's almost certainly true that they're narrowing the living or we are narrowing them. And we all know that narrowing is not cool.

I'll leave you with a tribute to growth. You may remember this if you didn't swerve every Tuesday morning's service and singing.




And we soldier on...

Afehyia pa!
PS: This is late because of Ghana's election--I planned to write this on December 7--fancy that.