Thu, 09 Aug 2012 Feature Article

To My Uncle Tarkwa Atta – A Tribute (24)

Plain truth
is no
inordinate
abuse…
Uncle Atukwei,
“Some country
in which
we live
in it,”
indeed –
fifty- years
and one sitting
dead president
later,
we are still
laying
our illustrious dead
in state
in banquet halls,
and my appetite
has been
hijacked
by hypocrites
and
greedy
bastards…
fifty-five years
of liberty
and sovereignty –
our hospitals
have degenerated
into dingy morgues
and graveyards,
and our leaders
routinely troop
in a beeline
abroad
for health help,
while the rest of us
left-behinds
and nobodies
contend
with herbalists
and patent-medicine men
and women,
with snake-oil
salesmen and
women sprinkled
somewhere
in-between…
alas,
this is what
exemplary
leadership and
humility
have come to mean
on this side
of our
universe…
in solemn times
like these,
one would have
hoped for a
National Cathedral
for our heroes
and saints,
not that this sorry
state of affairs
is totally
out of whack
with the regressive
times in which
we live;
a lavish funeral,
a bare-knuckles
memorial,
it is all the same
to me…
alas,
our priorities
are contorted
beyond reason,
and the living
are locked
in a frenzied
debate over
the size
and cost
of casket
and burial
the deceased
would have
brooked –
and so
fifty-five years on,
we still
tread water
and walk
backwards
in the dubious name
of progress and
advancement…
they call us
to unite
in grief
and pain;
but I choose
to have none
of such tripe;
I choose
the sacred path
of probity,
honesty,
integrity,
empathy and
sympathy and
altruism over
unity in
rank corruption,
vengeance and
cynicism…
let justice rain
hurricanes and
hailstones over
the heads of
the corrupt
and crooked,
let there be peace
which promotes
equal access
to the national
coffers reign
all over
the land
like manna –
8/8/12

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD, taught Print Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City, for more than 20 years. He is also a former Book Review Editor of The New York Amsterdam News.. More He holds Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude) in English, Communications and Africana Studies from The City College of New York of The City University of New York, where he was named a Ford Foundation Undergraduate Fellow and the first recipient of the John J. Reyne Artistic Achievement Award in English Poetry (Creative Writing) in 1988.

The author was part of the "socially revolutionary" team of undergraduate journalists at City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY), who won First-Prize certificates for Best Community Reporting from the Columbia University School of Journalism, for three consecutive years, from 1988 to 1990.

Born April 8, 1963, in Ghana; naturalized U.S. citizen; son of Kwame (an educator) and Dorothy (maiden name, Sintim) Okoampa-Ahoofe; children: Abena Aninwaa, Kwame III. Ethnicity: "African." Education: City College of the City University of New York, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1990; Temple University, M.A., 1993, Ph.D., 1998. Politics: Independent. Religion: "Christian—Ecumenist." Hobbies and other interests: Political philosophy.

CAREER: Ghana National Cultural Center, Kumasi, poet, 1979–84; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, worked as instructor in English; Technical Career Institutes, New York, NY, instructor in English, 1991–94; Indiana State University, Terre Haute, instructor in history, 1994–95; Nassau Community College, Garden City, NY, member of English faculty. Participant in World Bank African "Brain-Gain" pilot project.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, National Council of Teachers of English, African Studies Association, Community College Humanities Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Essay award, Nassau Review, 1999.Column: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

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To My Uncle Tarkwa Atta – A Tribute (24)

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