A haiku in praise of

His grace all I need
Sufficient, abounding, love
Nothing can I add

-- Stolen from http://authspot.com/poetry/haiku/christian-haiku/

Thanksgiving!

It's been an eventful year. I've done a lot and a lot has happened to me. Both good and bad. And yet, I can't help but be thankful. For both. It's easy to be thankful for the good. It's another matter with the bad - especially with the most painful and horrible experiences. But when one steps back (at least this is my experience), one realizes that it is the roughest of experiences that imbue character. Character of the kind that can withstand future evils and form a better and stronger personality. Smooth seas do not make the ablest sailors - why should life be any different? Thus, this year I encourage you to be thankful, with me, for EVERYTHING, for everyone around you (from the greatest to the least) and for the simple yet wonderful gift of life. There is a song that comes to mind, in praise of Him from whom all our blessings flow, and to whom my thanks flow in reverse. I bless him and am indeed thankful. Here's the chorus to Chris Tomlin's 'How Can I Keep from Singing'. Oh, what glorious lyrics and how much more glorious is the one of whom they speak! :

How can I keep from singing Your praise
How can I ever say enough
How amazing is Your love
How can I keep from shouting Your name
I know I am loved by the King
And it makes my heart want to sing

"In everything I will give thanks."

What kind of Idea are you?

"What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world."

— Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses)

A Homecoming of Sorts pt.2

We touched down at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam at roughly 11am GMT, 5th of August. First phase of my travel done, kaput, finito. Just a few more hours, just a few more hours, till Paradise.
Schiphol Airport is quite reputable in Europe. Delay times are apparently unheard of and it consistently ranks as one of the better airports in Europe and the world. I did not have the time to explore though. Too tired - I'd slept too little and at the wrong times. I did go into a few shops though. I was not overly impressed - too few shops and a lack of personality, I thought. I'll be sure to explore more next time I'm there. Which should be very soon, if all goes well. Interesting fact: 15 minutes of internet at Schiphol costs 3 euros. I would know. Damn you, facebook addiction!
After about an hour of lazing about, it was time to go. Destination: Accra, home, family, la familia. Why does patience wear out when you're this close? Why do a few hours feel like eternity when you've been away for years? We left Amsterdam around noon local time - a horde of Ghanaians with a generous sprinkling of foreigners, or obroni as they're called in Ghana. It felt like Ghana already, even on the plane. Smiles. More impatience. The flight to Accra was just as expected (KLM is now officially second, only to Emirates, in my list of preferred airlines!): Pretty stewardesses, comfort, delectable meals, the whole lot. The flight was smooth except for the last 30 mins, when we experienced some very serious turbulence. For some reason, whenever I'm returning to Ghana, the last stretch is always turbulent, not-smooth, rough almost as if the Fates love to play hanky-panky on me when I'm only a few minutes away from where-I'm-supposed-to-be. Anyway I didn't mind - is it called death when you're on home soil? Can you die when you're that close to heaven? Behind me, there were loud prayers and requests murmured to all deities of the universe, known and unknown, seeking forgiveness for past wrongdoings, promising to do-no-evil if they were spared this time. Quite funny. Of course all this was forgotten when when we landed quite safely 30 mins later. For some reason, Ghanaians always applaud touchdowns. To be fair, flights I've taken back have always had the worst turbulence. So, what else to do when you've spied Hell's very gates and lived to tell the tale? You'd applaud too. Not saying that I did.
I couldn't get out of the plane soon enough but once I did, I looked skywards and wiggled my toes in my shoes. Solid earth of Ghana: I was home, I was home, I AM home.

A Homecoming of Sorts pt.1

I left the USA for Ghana on the 4th of August 2009, roughly two years after I had first left for Princeton University, New Jersey and the first time I was going home since then. It felt, for lack of a more suitable word, weird. I think Ghana was beginning to cease to exist for me - it was becoming a land of distant memories, of a past that I could no longer dream of. I'd told myself and you (earlier) that I thought it was time to go home when I felt a distance growing between my family and I, when we talked over the phone. So the time had come and I was going. But yes, it still felt weird and surreal.Fingers crossed.
My last day in Princeton was eventful, to say the least.For some reason I can't quite make out, I'd left the most urgent things I had to do until then. I had to pick up malaria medicine, suspend phone accounts, say goodbye to quite a few people and run errands at the bank including informing the bank that I would be in Ghana (Just try using your bank card abroad without doing this - your card gets blocked! Good luck if you're trying to book a hotel!) Very predictably, I missed the last train out of Princeton that would get me to JFK on time so I had to take a taxi. Never mind that it cost $200 - it was the most hassle-free trip I've had to an airport ever. And it was probably a good idea because in retrospect, I cannot fathom how I would have made it to JFK with my clearly overweight bags, if I had to drag them even for a few metres when changing trains etc. Check-in was even smoother- I got to use the self-service machines for the first time (usually I can't because I'm not American or because I'm foreign, alien, untouchable, you-name-it) and the whole process took less than 5 minutes, instead of the usual half-hour or hour it usually takes for me. To make matters even better, my bags were not weighed at all - it appears KLM doesn't do it. Awesomeness! - because my bags were clearly at least 10 pounds over the limit.
In no time, I was onboard. Destination: Amsterdam. Exciting - my first time in Europe. Well, I would be in Schiphol Airport for at least 3 hours. I think that counts. The service onboard was amazing. Meals were frequent and great, seats were comfortable, stewardesses were pretty beyond imagination (or, perhaps anything looks good after you've flown American Airlines once or twice) and even the economy class had personal in-flight entertainment comprising about 100 hours of movies and a host of TV shows etc. (KLM, how I love thee!) My time onboard was mostly spent reading, though. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushie. Apologies to all who feel betrayed by this choice of novel - I just wanted to find out what all the hype was about. If you don't mind the content, Rushdie's possibly one of the most gifted storytellers I've read -- only Dickens and Garcia Marquez come to mind for comparison. Anyway, so my time onboard was spent thus: reading, eating, sleeping, repeat, repeat. Good times!

Now here's a song I like!!

'Orange Bubble' by Drew Fornarola '06
Performed by the Princeton University Glee Club

New Haven has its murders
Philadelphia decays,
And in the town that’s home to Brown
They smoke away the days.

They kill themselves in Ithaca
In Hanover it snows,
There’s violent crime in NYC
In Cambridge egos grow

But nothing ever happens in Princeton.
Of change and conflict we are unaware.
The same few rich guys fail to shut down Prospect Street.
The same six townies sit in Palmer Square.
’Cuz there is never trouble within our orange bubble,
Come back in twenty years
And nothing will have happened in Princeton,
Which I guess is why you’re all in here.

Comparatively speaking
Things are really pretty boring.
What passes for exciting here
Leaves normal people snoring.

But let things go on elsewhere, we’ll just
Keep paying tuition.
We’re satisfied to live inside this
Dull town, it’s tradition

That nothing ever happens in Princeton.
Of the real world we are in the dark.
Policemen here are just for decoration.
Blue light phones constructed for a lark.
‘Cuz there is never trouble within our orange bubble,
Come back in fifty years
And nothing will have happened in Princeton,
Which I guess is why you’re all in here.

Princeton Newsflash! Rob and Jane are through.
Princeton Newsflash! They changed the window at J-Crew.
Princeton Newsflash! Phillip drank too much and spewed,
And Jenny got a new high score in Snood.

Princeton Newsflash! A tree near Nassau Hall fell down.
Princeton Newsflash! Jack’s belt is black and shoes are brown.
Princeton Newsflash! That girl misused a preposition,
She must be sick. Quick! Go call her physician.

Outside terrorists threaten,
Famine wipes out populations,
And people die as tyrants try
To suppress rising nations.

But we don’t have to worry
Because with our cash
We know that we could feed two or three
Small countries in a flash.

So nothing’s gonna happen in Princeton,
Like nothing’s ever happened through the years.
And if we ever really have a problem
We’ll throw money at it till it disappears.
’Cuz there is never trouble within our orange bubble
Come back year after year.
Nothing will have happened in Princeton,
And Glee Club will still be here!

[I'll return to posting soon -- I promise. Too much is happening at the same time!]

The Joys of Family AND a Sermon

I was in Blue Mountain, PA, for independence day weekend. The area is known for its retreat centres and skiing, and for very good reasons too: I don't think I know another place more serene or more in tune with nature. It's my personal theory that the serenity and closeness with nature over there brings out a sort of reflectiveness and happiness that is crushed out by the hustle and bustle in more urban areas. I want to live there! Back to the weekend: to put it in the mildest terms, IT WAS A BLAST!! I don't really know what a high feels like (not yet, no) but this must have been it AND it was legal!

It was a Bible conference but much more than that - lots of talk with friends from Princeton and with my bible teacher's family. By the time we were headed back, I truly believed I had found family. They've always been extremely nice to me - and they are the nicest and kindest people in the world if you ask me. I have not said, and will never say, that they are the nicest people because they are Christian. No! Some of the funnest, most moral people I know are not. (I had to say this - I find people assume I mean this a lot) I am no Jerry Falwell. But this I KNOW: they are the way they are because they have given their life over to Christ and to the radicality of love that he stood for. And that is what I want for myself too. I'm glad I can share in the joys of family with them.

On another note, I gave a bit of a sermon on Independence Day, not that it had anything to do with independence. I preserve it here for my own future reflection but if you wish, I invite you to read. It's rather long. But the main points are these:

1. I am both a Christian and a skeptic. I see no contradictions. Life is not all white and black -- tints of grey permeate everything.

2. The main thrusts of the Christian life for me are threefold, as reflected through Jesus' life: --1.) a commitment to the weakest among us (the poor, needy and the sick) -- 2.) a commitment to the search for God and the truth through prayer, reason and meditation on scripture. -- 3.) a transformation of the self and re-ordering of our desires that can come only through the two commitments above.

Actually, no, I will not post the sermon. It's way too long. But the above points, I believe, sum it up. One image will stay with me perhaps for ever from the conference: One of the guys on the trip has a son who's autistic. So one night, his son comes back with moss and grime all over his feet, shoes and pants. And then, without even batting an eyelid, his father took him to the bathroom and washed his feet. The bathroom door was open -- and I watched. I want a world where such love and kindness is abundant. This love and kindness is what Jesus was about - what God's message is about. He sided with the suffering, with the sick, with people like me - certainly not with the firebrand pastors and the proud of today who pronounce anathemas on other groups and measure their faith by how much they think others do not live up to it. Love is the answer.

Shalom, Peace and Life to You,

Kwesi

A tale of a forgotten blog and 200 bags of tea ...

So it's been a while, and I promise I have an excuse! I've been fairly busy, although I must admit that I have been consciously putting this off. Keeping this up is going to be harder than I thought!

I had the opportunity to attend a conference of the Pentecostal Students Association (PENSA) of Ghana last weekend in Valley Forge, PA. And it was the funnest thing I've done in a while! At least a thousand Ghanaian youth showed up - mostly Ghanaian natives, with a generous sprinkling of second and third gens. It almost felt like home - the music, the jokes, the laughter - and I realized, as the weekend progressed, just how much I missed being at home. And then it hit me - I've been away for two years. Two years. That's the longest I've ever been away. Just four years ago, I could not stand been away from my family for more than 12 hours - I avoided boarding school like the plague and had no plans whatsoever of leaving. In an age where teenagers seem to want to cut the bonds to their families, mine was the rock of my existence. My life revolved around home, school and church - these were my reference points. These points dictated my life. And now, I realize I've been removed from them for two years. These days, when I call home, I realize the laughter of my parents is a tad more distant, that the playful banter with my sister has gotten less vicious, and that my little brother doesn't quite know how to relate to me anymore. It's been too long - it's time to go home.

On reading, I'm slacking off - a lot. I'm supposed to have read 'A Case for Christ' and two other books by now, but I'm still stuck on 'A Case for Christ' partly because of the demands of my job and the excessive number of movies I've been watching. I'm hoping to be done reading that by early next week so I can move on - I have a long (and perhaps unrealistic) list of to-reads this summer. 'A Case for Christ' has been illuminating so far, asking the right questions and providing convincing answers for skeptics and the unsure Christian. I hope I can give you a rundown on that by next blog, when I hope to be done.

On research -- we have major progression! I'm looking at lamprey locomotion and how this effect called vortex shedding affects the forces on the body of the lamprey during swimming. In short, I'm going to model the swimming in MATLAB along with the vortex shedding effects. For this problem, I'm using code produced by a PhD candidate about six years ago, in which he modeled the swimming of a three-link robot. I'm tweaking this so that we can use it to the purpose I stated above. The code is THE most sophisticated program I've ever seen - there are at least 10 subroutines (Hey, I'm a MECHANICAL engineer!). That said, the real complexity lies in the math. MY GOD!! It's a lot of math but thankfully, I understand the code quite well now -- so let the tweaking begin! I'm going to make a movie of the motion of the three link robot sometime tomorrow, hopefully -- I'll post that up when it's done. I'm actually getting a kick out of this!

In other news, I'm learning to sightread. No, that's not quite right - the pianist in my church flew to South Korea for two months and apparently I'm first in line to fill the post of pianist! So, Kwesi must learn to sightread or perish! Until now, whatever I could play on the piano, I played from memory. But that won't do anymore so I'm crawling along and learning. However, its been fun so far and they're not putting too much pressure on me (my catch-phrase whenever something goes wrong: But I can't read!!) so it's actually nice and it will do me good. I'm no Chopin yet, but we're getting there.

Movies. Two words - too many. I can't even remember how many I've seen - Kill Bill, The Hangover, The Proposal etc and I'm seeing almost every movie that comes out... But it's summer, right? So what could go wrong??? Problem is this: new movies are popping up at a rate greater than I can realistically watch them. Not good - this could go horribly wrong! As it is, I'm sleeping at 5am everyday (lol).

And does anyone know of a cure for an addiction to Taylor Swift - because I fear my roommate might overdose soon. And it might be contagious, because I think I'm catching it too. (Fight it, aargh!)

Well, I've got to go -- except I have a rather funny (maybe not to you!) incident to recount. I went to CVS the other day and, for some inexplicable reason, I was comparing two boxes of Lipton Tea. I had no intention whatsoever of buying any tea. I had a lot of things in hand so I must have forgotten - all I know is I got to my room with two boxes of tea bags, 200 bags in total. 200 bags of tea! It's going to be a fun, over-caffeinated summer!

Shalom, Peace and Life to You!

Kwesi

Reflections and the Genesis

'The unexamined life is not worth living' -- Socrates

'Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun' -- Ecclesiastes 2:11

I am no fan of diaries, blogs or things of that sort. Believe me. My father had to try, for five years, before I got my first diary, which I then lost in no more than two days. So why this blog, you ask? To be truthful, there are no deep answers. It's only, lately, as I look back on the journey that has been my life, I realize I have undergone very radical changes. Changes of the sort that would have surprised the timid, introverted young boy that I once was. Certainly, the Kwesi of yesteryear would have laughed his head off if you'd told him he'd be anything like he is today - and oh, good luck on telling him he'd end up at one of the most prestigious universities in the world! And then, of course, there are the more subtle changes, that I hope you become privy to as I continue to write, and which all the same count for who I am and the sort of person I want to become.

And so, I have reached one of my primary motivations for this blog. I would like to track these changes and to have the ability to look back on my past and identify it as my own. I want to reflect on and know what decisions I made, why I made them and how that informed the person that I am at every point, if that is in any way possible. Especially, I want to be able to stay true to the conditions that helped me reach where I am today - I speak of my family, friends, teachers, community folk and everyone who influenced me and touched my life positively in any way as well as the relative poverty in which I grew up. I believe I can rightly call these my roots. In this vein, then, I say: Roots, roots, if I forget you or whence I came to be what I am, or the nourishment you gave me so that I have bloomed, may you shrivel up and smother the life out of me! (Adaptation of Ghanaian Proverb)

I do not think I have ever lived life as fast as I am living it right now. College life is filled with deadlines to be met, papers and problem sets to be mulled over and meetings to rush to and from! I have certainly never done as much in a day before as I do (perhaps) in an hour today! And the odd thing is this - we like it! It feels oddly good to be as busy as we are. The seconds between activities are spent twiddling our thumbs in expectation of the next 'big thing'. I find, and I think you must have too, that time seems extremely slowed down outside Princeton, or any other college, and it can be really disconcerting! In this vein, I hope this blog helps me to slow down and reflect on what I give my time to - it is only too easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle and to go through life here without thinking about the big things such as why we're here in the first place or why we do the things we do. (By the way, you should read David Brook's article 'Organization Kid' on life in Princeton, and college, in general. It's fairly accurate and a great read albeit a bit on the long side: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200104/brooks It's definitely a worthy read though and I highly recommend!) I hope this blog helps me to think about these 'bigger' things.

Did I say 'bigger' things? I think that was the perfect cue for my third motivation. Brooks mentions the lack of a search for virtue as we rush from activity to activity. I believe that the search for virtue coincides with my search for God. Yes, I am religious - specifically (and unabashedly) Christian - and I will not apologise. Psyche. There was a time when I could have said that - when I thought I was sure of what I believed. Then came a time of utter confusion in which I would have described myself as agnostic as best (I do believe there is a God. As to whether he cares about us at all, that's what I'm out searching for) and questioned all the assumptions I'd been raised up to make. Thankfully, I'm gradually getting back the foundation for my life and I'm eternally grateful that the search for truth, in whatever form it exists, is alive and within the grasp of whoever is willing to search for it. I am still struggling in my search (and make no mistakes, I will not be disappointed if I find nothing. I think it is worthy, though, of my time. Yours too!) This blog, then, will serve as a space where I collect my thoughts as I go through my spiritual journey. I am currently reading 'A Case for Christ'. A truly fascinating read. Will keep you posted on that.

Lastly, I should have told you, and I should not forget, that I am an engineer! I'm not exactly sure why I said that and particularly in that way (lol). Anyways, I am involved in a project currently with Prof. Holmes of the Mechanical engineering department. It's basically modelling the swimming motions of lampreys so that we get the thrust and drag on the bodies of lampreys right. It's actually really exciting and although I'm having to wrap my head around math that I'll probably never use in the rest of my undergraduate career, I'm learning a whole lot and reassuring myself that engineering is the best thing you can do with your life (I can't hear you, naysayers!) More on that project later - I will use this space to log my progress as much as I can.

Shalom, Peace and Life to You!

Kwesi