KOBY'S CORNER: WHY I CHOOSE TO BE GAY!

KOBY'S CORNER: WHY I CHOOSE TO BE GAY!: Please don’t judge me. I am human. I think and act like any other human should. I love my fellow humans. May be… it’s just that I am pr...

WHY I CHOOSE TO BE GAY!

Please don’t judge me. I am human. I think and act like any other human should. I love my fellow humans. May be… it’s just that I am privileged to have that kind of awkward feeling others do not have. But… I am still happy. That’s who I am after all. I choose to be gay because I am not a gay!  

We are living in times when there’s only a thin line between what is right and that which is wrong. We keep on making right what is supposed to be wrong… and tagging as wrong what is supposed to be right. Things are not the same anymore.

Morality today is subjective. What may seem moral to one may sound as nonsense in another’s ears.

Moral decadence has eaten so much into the foundation of society that we have accepted such a distasteful thing as homosexuality. Chai! How did we get here!? For the same sins that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, we have today not only accepted… but legalized and forcing it down the throats of others! 

We have shamelessly tied it to grants, loans and what have you. If man were God, I know he would have similarly tied it to the air we breathe, too. I wish God would judge us with our human-rights-based constitution. Quite unfortunately, He would judge us with His expectation-based decrees. 

There’s nothing right about gay rights. Even if scriptures didn’t condemn it, our human conscience was enough to condemn it. At least, I am yet to see a goat or dog jumping onto another of the same sex. I am yet to!

When God was instructing man to multiply and fill the Earth, he had in mind Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve. Homosexuality is not only a threat to human conscience but also to human existence. The human race is gradually going to grind to a halt sooner or later with the embracement of this abominable act.

It is interesting how such ‘couples’ are quick to adopt children in the name of starting ‘families’. A man and a woman start families; not two women or two men. But for such, I never knew ‘families’ were for ‘rent’. 

Imagine a family where the child grows up having two ‘fathers’ where one supposedly is a mother. How strange! However, this child would grow up to assume that it is a norm in the society, though it is not. We are gradually painting what is abnormal as a norm.  

 The pace at which the world keeps legalizing almost everything in the name of rights, it would eventually give the greenlight to other grave crimes like murder, terrorism, among others. After all, it would be others fighting for their rights, too. Rights should be right; not wrong!

We have a charge to keep as a family; a society; a nation; a race; a world. We need to be each other’s keeper. We need to keep our race moving. We need not break down the family system where there’s a father, a mother and children. 

A man can’t obviously double as a mother and a woman can’t play the role of a father either. We have all been made to play specific roles in society! 

 

The society is built on families and we shouldn’t allow anything to get into its way; not prostitution, adultery, divorce or even homosexuality. A family built the right way means a society built on a strong foundation. 

If you have any such attraction to the same sex, it is not usual as the world is trying to paint it. Seek medical attention. Don’t bottle it up. We only battle with issues like this until we admit and open up about them. And then… we can get help. 

I can’t judge you. No one can judge you either.    

Of all the many blessings I have been privileged to be endowed with, it is only recently that I noticed my affection for the opposite sex was indeed another big blessing. At least, I wouldn’t need to dread wearing some pampers or contracting some avoidable cancer someday.

Indeed, I choose to be overly gay for not being a gay. I know you do, too. Great weekend!

KOBY'S CORNER: LESSONS FROM MAYWEATHER IN A MAY WEATHER....

KOBY'S CORNER: LESSONS FROM MAYWEATHER IN A MAY WEATHER....: I was in Las Vegas last weekend. Thanks to my television. Don’t mind me. Haha. The bout of the century saw the undefeated Mayweather st...

LESSONS FROM MAYWEATHER IN A MAY WEATHER....

I was in Las Vegas last weekend. Thanks to my television. Don’t mind me. Haha. The bout of the century saw the undefeated Mayweather still holding onto his enviable title, though others thought he should have lost. In Ghana, we don’t only have millions of ‘self-styled’ football coaches; boxing judges, too. Chai!

I admire Floyd Mayweather for many things, especially for the fact that he’s not complacent, unlike most boxers; Ghanaians especially. He still trains as hard as anyone else despite his feat. Often, some of us become drunk with success too early. This is evident in all areas of our lives, even in politics. The greatest threat to your next success is your last success.

We can barely aspire for greater heights. We are just satisfied with only little. When others are painstakingly trying to beat their last record, we are helplessly trying to only defend ours. Such a pity!   

Serafim Todorov. Does this name ring a bell? Obviously not. I’ll tell you about him pretty soon and how this dude very much bears semblance with today’s GH. He was supposed to be a big thing in boxing; far greater than Mayweather. 

Today, he survives on a measly $400 per month. I know what a fortune it may sound in your ears considering our drowning cedi. But… his contemporary lives on ten thousands of dollars in that same month!

What’s the connection between Serafim Todorov and Floyd Mayweather? On August 2, 1996, Serafim beat Mayweather in Atlanta at the Olympics! He was indeed the last man to beat him before he (Mayweather) started his undefeated professional journey. 

Why hasn’t Serafim’s name being a household name then?   

After that bout, the Bulgarian was approached by a couple of American boxing promoters to start a professional career but he turned it down “with little thought,” he admitted. Like seriously!? He confessed that all he wanted to be was an Olympics gold medalist. That’s all. 

The same promoters approached Mayweather and set him on a path of fame, wealth and luxury. Mayweather envisaged beyond his amateur boxing.

Our Bulgarian friend eventually lost in the final bout during the Olympics games. He went back home and his career took a nosedive when he was plagued with disappointment, depression and life’s headaches and ever since… he’s been as poor as ever! Today, Mayweather is the best paid athlete… because he seized an opportunity!

Is poverty indeed the absence of money? I guess not. Poverty is the absence of a mind to see opportunities; the absence of an eye to have vision of tomorrow from today. Opportunities keep on knocking on our doors and we keep shunning them. Thanks to the absence of vision, thus, the presence of poverty!

How did Ghana get to where it is today? How did we get to the place where light became as scarce a commodity as the breath of life? How did we eventually become a nation which went on a loan-taking spree when we could easily have generated such internally!? 

Like Serafim, we have decided to be blind to all the opportunities we are blessed with. Imagine all the resources we have; from human to mineral. In the abundance of all such opportunities, we are still as poor as ever.

Tell me Rome wasn’t built in a day and I’ll tell you it was obviously not built in darkness. Our nation has been plunged into stark darkness and someone somewhere thinks it’s not a great deal after all… because they can afford a generator set. 

We need to get serious as a nation if we indeed would want to be another Rome. The absence of money is not our headache. The presence of ignorance is. Most of us do not want to think; at least our political parties would do so for us. We refuse to think through a matter as long it’s coming from ‘our party’. We think politically and act same. Everything is politics and not patriotism. This dirty game is gradually driving the nation into a ditch!

Serafim looks back and admits he regrets for not taking the opportunity that came his way that fateful day; the same that turned Mayweather’s life around. He thinks if he had instead lost that bout his life would have been better. I shake my head.

I prefer to take opportunites. I prefer to see beyond what the natural eyes admit seeing. If there are no opportunites, I would prefer to be carpenter to build a door. At all cost, an opportunity would come knocking one day.

Our nation can be better than what we see today. We have human capital with such rare, profitable skills we can invest in. Take a look at our youth. We can invest so mightily into them.

We have great institutions we can invest in. We should aim at finding ourselves somewhere in space rather than limiting ourselves to the sky. Our nation can be a hub of home-made modern cars. Thanks to the likes of the Kantankas.

Instead, like Serafim, we just want to be mere Olympics gold medalists. We want to give the citizenry everything except the best. We have reduced good governance to providing ‘temporary solutions’ when elections are drawing near. 

We refuse to think any farther beyond today… courtesy politics. Politics is supposed to be good leadership; a solution to society’s challenges. On the contrary, it has become another headache of our society. 

Our nation is opportunity-rich. The multi-million dollar question is whether our leaders have the ‘mind’ to see these opportunities. Visionary leaders see with their minds; not eyes. We can’t keep on wallowing in abject poverty and darkness in spite of all the resources we are drowned in. Such ignorance!

We kill the local market by patronizing Chinese goods, chairs especially, at the expense of our own. We don’t give a hoot about home-bred skills… always giving privileges to foreigners instead of ours. Am I preaching xenophobia? Hell no! I’m preaching empowerment of Ghanaian talents and skills. The Ghanaian is as good (if not better) as whomever as long as their skills are well honed. Let’s for once see opportunity in the Ghanaian. 

Today, Serafim lives a life of regret boasting of being the only one to have last beaten Mayweather and shamefully prays no one beats him so he can be the only one who chalked that supposed feat. Can you imagine such mediocrity? Someone who could have been a bigger and better Mayweather now aims for something less of him. 

Our nation boasts of such mediocrity too when we blow trumpet of only our peace when indeed we could have been living in affluence, too, amidst all our resources. We can be a Mayweather as far as our economy is concerned. Let’s not settle for a Serafim!

 

In the meantime, I need a shortcut to Heaven. It’s still May and the weather is not bad. I want to fight Mayweather! Yes! Anyone here who makes coffins? Haha.  

   

DROP THAT YAM!

Many things make Ghana stand out of the many countries in this world. China, for instance, has earthquakes. Malaysia has missing flights. Ghana has dumsor! 

How we mention our independence with such pride! Yet… we all know how we are very much dependent today even more than the days we were under colonial rule. Dependence in independence! 

Have we ever learnt to live an independent life after close to six decades? Can the black man indeed manage his own affairs? I’ll say “yes” and “no”! 

Independence Day is such a pride to us. Yes, why not? But… fact is, what are we celebrating? Dependence? It stares us in the face each morning and here we are living under the delusion we are independent. Such deception!

Ghana at fifty-eight (58). A Ghanaian at (58). If a Ghanaian today is fifty-eight (58) years old and is living their life as Ghana is doing today, obviously such a Ghanaian won’t be enough a model for the young to learn from. He would be a cast away. 

He would own nothing on his own though he has every resource at his disposal to make it in life. He would be as poor as ever courtesy waste and mismanagement! It would be such a mystery why such a Ghanaian is poor despite all the abundance they’re surrounded with. Ghana’s poverty similarly amazes me!

If the maxim “life begins at 40” was anything to go by, Ghana’s life should have begun a long while ago. Unfortunately, it seems not to have yet. We still are trotting when the world is galloping. When the world is talking about solutions to problems, we keep on living in the problems despite their solutions!  

We pay our leaders to occupy positions and not to solve problems. We pay citizens for titles they’ve acquired for themselves and not for the problems they can solve. Our priorities are titles and big certificates not solutions… at fifty-eight (58)! 

It’s about time attention was focused on how we could solve what we have plagued ourselves into if we indeed don’t want Kwame Nkrumah to keep on turning in his grave. 

We have to drop that yam of mediocrity; yam of ill-confidence. We trade in foreign currencies right here in Ghana. Anything Ghanaian, in our estimation, is worse than their foreign counterpart (even our currency). We import everything except human beings. What a country! And… we are all comfortable. Drop that yam!

‘Dumsor’ is now a national disaster. No one knows exactly why we can barely have lights for ‘only’ 24 hours. Businesses are collapsing. Families are getting broken. Armed robbers and thieves are having a field day. Our leaders don’t give a hoot after all they can afford plants and generators. All of these are happening in a fifty-eight (58) old Ghana. Chai!

I don’t celebrate the length of the years of people; countries same. I instead celebrate the worth of their years! It’s not enough to be fifty-eight (58). Show me the worth of those years!  

Most of the ills we have brought upon ourselves were very avoidable. The little things we took for granted yesterday have become giants of problems today. Our nation is not growing any younger. 

The matter is not about comparing ourselves with other nations like Malaysia. No. It’s about comparing our today to our yesterday. If there’s not much difference between our today and yesterday, then obviously we are as stagnant as anything we can’t imagine. We are in competition today with our yesterday. Forward ever, backward never! However, we have chosen to stay still.

Our nation (not our politicians) is all we have. It’s either we make that conscious effort to build it to be the world’s destination or we perish with it. ‘Dumsor’ will affect you as long as you’re in this nation. Bad roads will affect all of us. 

Whatever ill that comes to mind when you think of Ghana would eventually affect you and me… so the earlier we solved them, the better it would be for us. 

We have only one legacy to hand over to posterity; a better Ghana (not the politically-driven one). A Ghana that won’t be battling challenges their ancestors should have solved. A Ghana that would be thriving on a problem-based education so solutions could be provided, not a Ghana which is almost always divided by politics! 

Ghana at fifty-eight (58)? I only shake my head. I want to celebrate Ghana at maybe a worthwhile sixty (60) or beyond. It might only be another dream if we all won’t drop our yams… a yam of no patriotism; a yam of corruption; a yam of mismanagement; a yam of you; a yam of me!    

  

MEMORIES

Look at me not for long

For as you are

So I was

And as you walk

So I did toss

And indeed…

I passed this way once before

One, two, three, four

At the snap of a finger

Memories are but no more

Back then…

Glitteringly glaring graves of grave graves

Body safes

Eternal caves

Beautiful beds, man-made

Made not for the living

But for those bound for Hades

As you were

So I was

Carrying a weighty cross

Cross of sorrows and loss

Loss of friends; true and false

Loss of family; hidden in death’s jaws

As you weep

So I dug deep

Into mysteries worth not the seek

Look at me not for long

For if I had been strong

As strong as a baby; man’s young

I would have laughed

Laughed my heart out till it was all torn

Though born of thorns

My headaches I would have ignored

My strength I would have brought on board

And the pleasures I could afford 

I would have afforded even if they were odd

Once we live to live

Only myself I live to please

Look at me not for long

For as I am

So you shall be

Pampered to the parish by pallbearers

Mourned by a multitude who care less

Friend, live on your papers

For where I am

You will be as lonely as the friendless