Reading
I love reading. As a young person, I loved to go to libraries and browse through shelves of books, both fiction and non-fiction. I remember going to the United States Information Services, British Museum and Accra Central Libraries and disappear into the fantasy world that authors had spun, worlds in which I would disappear for hours, sitting on the toilet, in a tree (not at the same time!!), at the dinner table. A book inj my hand was my excuse to be allowed to leave the real world. I devoured writers in the African Writer's Series reading about characters in Lagos, Cape Town and Nairobi I understood that issues like corruption, disease, power, famines were not just real-life issues they held ore important places in books.
My favourite Library, though was the Kaneshie Children's Library. When I joined the library in 1973 or so, they would only allow me to borrow two (2) books at a time. By the time I had got home on public transport, I would be halfway through the first one, only to return the following afternoon to change my selection. After the first few weeks, the librarian decide to let me have 7 books at a time. Like Alexander the Great, I was disappointed when I read all the books there was in the library and had no more literary material to conquer. Then I was referred to the Central Children's library.
T M Aluko, Peter Abrahams, James Ngugi, rubbed shoulders with WM Thackeray, Mark Twain and Sir Walter Scott, all vying for my attention. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys one day, and then Henry David Thoreau the next. Clay boy from Spencer's Mountain with all the values that a white Virginian Christian logging family had were competing with Flora Nwapa's Efuru. Even as I am writing now, I am surprised how well my memory serves me. I wish my children would read like that.
We now live in a commercialised world that tells us that Disney has the "rights" to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" and distorted stories that I have held dear for years (101 Dalmatians is not a Disney book, it was written by Dodie Smith!!!).
Perhaps then, it is interesting that nobody has been able to do to the Bible what has been done to our best-loved stories. As I have read the Bible more, I now realise that it is a book that has so much to offer. Every time I read a chapter, there is new meaning; a new take; a clearer interpretation, an angle that I had not noticed before, a new discovery. There is no better description than the one that it gives of itself, "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12".
I would like to see Disney's take on that.
The Departure Lounge
In any station or airport, passengers ready to leave and their loved ones staying behind are hugging, kissing, lovingly holding onto each other, trying to squeeze out that last bit of togetherness before separation. Sometimes, it is laughter that signifies the importance of the group, sometimes its tears, sometimes there is a lull in the conversation as a loaded, heavy silence takes over. Once in a while though there will be a solitary passenger, sitting all by themselves, nobody to see them off. I sometimes think, "How sad". I heard of a departure tonight that filled me with sadness, and memories of another time, almost an epoch ago, I hear heavy footfalls of jogging around our house one early morning; I am awakened by the early arrival of a traveller who insists that household chores be carried out pronto; I am yet awakened on other mornings as our early traveller prepares their bag to leave. I am reminded of the authority that a presence carries into a room, one almost of palpable fear as people scurry around to finish off duties or face the consequence. But I also see shoulders that bore a responsibility of ensuring that their family was always fed. A leader who felt that they had to take on the mantle of authority. All I can say is RIP, Head.
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