Nkrumah Of Nazareth

It's my birthday today. If you know me, you know I love documentaries. So for my birthday, I've decided to do nothing but spend all day online watching as many films as possible to please myself. It's been a good day so far - with the phone calls and online wishes from family and friends.

I chanced on a short film about Osagyfo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president. A film titled; NKRUMAH OF NAZARETH by Nate Berkopec, an American who made the film as part of a school project. I think it's a well made film even though it might seem one-sided and negative. He told Osagyefo's story from an angle not often taken in Ghana. As much as I agree with the idea of telling our own stories, this film provided me with some insight that has gotten me thinking and wanting to find out more about our most loved president ever - to enable me create a more balanced view of the man and what he truly stood for.

Do watch it too and let's get talking. I'd really like to know what others(especially fellow Ghanaians) think about this film.

MLK is Happy; Nkrumah is Sad.

I put up the title of this post as both a facebook status and a tweet yesterday afternoon. It didn't get the response I expected. Fact is, it didn't get any response at all. Not a like, not a retweet. I was a bit sad though. It got me wondering if my internet family didn't agree or they were just forced to skip it due to the flooding of our timelines with MLK quotes the whole of Monday.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr. has a lot to be happy about. He had a dream. A dream that much of, if not all has materialised in half a century after he delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech and forty-five years after his death. Dr. King should be smiling in his grave. What can beat having the second inauguration of the first black president on his day?

Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah "the show boy"(I don't have the slightest clue as to why the Ghanaians of those days gave him that nickname). This man on the other hand has a lot to be sad about; so much to fill so many books to fill a decent sized library. As I write and as you read this, Mali is in turmoil. This same Mali that was part of Nkrumah's Ghana-Guinea-Mali "association", being taken over by French soldiers, probably clearing the path for influx of their other western allies. His fears and much preached about neo-colonialism lingers over the continent like a dark cloud in the wet season. Gadafi has been killed, Libya is going through her own post Arab spring struggles, the list can go on. But before we cut the list short, let's come home. No matter what one says, we have not built Nkrumah's Ghana, not even a good percentage of her, forty-one years after his death.

I'm sure you agree with me now that MLK is happy and Osagyefo is sad... 
 

photos borrowed from @DUSTAccra 's editor, Mr. @kobbygraham