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"On our third, we are 3".

"On our third, we are 3". I am tempted to just use one line in this piece: Use your imagination. But knowing me, that will not happen. Perhaps because I hate anti climaxes, I am going to go all in. In 2018, I saw our friends who got married a year ahead of us do a photoshoot with their baby which was captioned "On our third, we are 3". I was completely in love with the concept. Kojo and I pushed having children a bit to enable us settle into our PhD programs. After passing my candidature exams, I felt ready to try. I had planned everything carefully for it to tie in with my data collection back in Ghana. So the plan was to get pregnant and then take a leave after the data collection, and then I was going to stay in Ghana, have the baby with support from our mothers I had spoken to a few female mentors who thought a baby was going to slow my momentum as you never know how the journey is going to be for a pregnancy. I was told that a difficult pregnancy will almost m

Year 3: The Social Media Matter

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The third anniversary post  has finally arrived . Almost 3 years late but better late than never so here it goes. I always imagined that we would be one of those couples who would be replying to each others tweets and having a good banter, commenting on each others Facebook posts and all of that. As is apparent, I am a very social person and I love to have fun both on and off social media. You won't believe this but on my mental checklist of the qualities I wanted in a man, the list included being active on Twitter with at least a 1000 tweets. Oh yeah, I was that specific. You can imagine my disappointment when I met Kojo and he had a paltry 500 tweets or lower mpo. In that moment, I am thankful that I was sensible enough to see that the number of tweets were not as important. Now that I look back, it is so funny. W hen Kojo finally hit a thousand tweets, he dedicated it to me. Smh. So in the beginning when we were dating, even though Kojo was not as active on social media as I wa

"Aloe Vera": A resurgence of the Ghanaian movie industry?

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In the past few weeks several Ghanaian A list actors and actresses have been sharing photos on set of a production with an accompanying hashtag #AloeVera. Aloe Vera is a movie being produced by Peter Sedufia and he announced in a moving post last month that shooting has wrapped up and the post production will now begin. The cast is blend of of oldies , younger faces and and everything in between. I don't want to say they are middle aged 😊. So for the oldies we have names like like Kofi Adjorlolo, Akorfa Adjeani Asiedu and Fred Amugi. Aaron Adatsi from YOLO and the "Good Old Days" fame obviously represents the newer generation. We have many greats like Nana Ama McBrown, Naa Ashorkor Mensah Doku, Adjetey Annan,Gloria Sarfo etc representing a middle group. If the pictures from the set that was build from ground up is anything to go by, it looks very exhilarating. Even before "Aloe Vera", "The Burial of Kojo" by Blitz the Ambassador was released to

"KOMLA, YOU ARE BECOMING UNBECOMING!"

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"You are becoming unbecoming" was the phrase that was meant to straighten you if your teacher or parents thought you were straying from the straight and narrow. If you never had this used on you while growing up, you must have been a really good kid. I heard it so many times while growing up. Anytime I heard it, it was time to do some self-introspection to see what my elders were saying was true. In most cases, later became apparent that my elders were right. "You are becoming unbecoming" is or was popular with everyone. I don't know if the phrase is still as popular but in my days, lol, it transcended class. The charcoal seller screamed it, the teacher bellowed it and the civil servant used it to chide their children. How it became so popular, I don’t know. Maybe someday, I will trace it origins, Now that I am old (somewhat). I miss hearing it. I can’t wait to bellow it out at my children. Lol. “HERH, KOMLA YOU ARE BECOMING UNBECOMING” Is

Year 2: Finding Balance

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I thought I will be here spewing new knowledge and lessons after year 2 but I find myself still working on the lessons I put out in Year One  especially the part about not sweating the little stuff. We've adjusted quite well with each other and have had minimal squabbles. Lol. I guess the seniors will say this is normal. The one thing I am proud of is how I am able to maintain a cool head while talking super slowly when it happens. If Kojo will not give me accolades, I will award myself the accolades. The one thing I want to emphasize in year 2 is finding balance. Before I got married, I was one of those people who always had something to do during the weekends. It might be a wedding, Rotaract activity, funeral, naming ceremony, meeting up with friends, church meetings, you name it! However, after moving to Hong Kong last year, my social activities dwindled drastically. The social environment is very different and apart from church and a few friends from the University, our

Marketing 101 : Sell the Female Body

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Football is generally considered the terrain of men as opposed to women. I hate to make this sweeping gendered statement but it is the fact and essential to what I intend to say. So why did Citi FM; the acclaimed “wokest” of all the radio stations in Ghana have a picture of a woman with evidently long legs taking center stage in this advertisement of a premier league match? Why not a man or none at all? Or a picture of the act of football being played? Are the crest of these teams not enough to advertise the game? It is in these sma ll often not thought about ways that the body of a woman continues to be sexualized and objectified. The far reaching effects of such images are not really appreciated but the constant bombardment of such images to sell food, cars, sports and anything you can actually think of only reinforces the thin and slender ideal of what a woman is supposed to look like. The service industry is probably the most complicit in this; usually using femininity t

Year One

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Lesson One: Sleep Lighter Let your spouse know you are not “fine” with them otherwise, you will keep a grudge and realise you were on your own the whole time! There was one night I was so upset, I don’t remember what I was upset about even though its not been 3 months yet. That shows you how trivial some things are. I was steaming the whole night. I could barely sleep and was wondering whether I should wake Kojo up for a face off. I woke up with a frown and had a long face. Then I could not take it any longer and decided to confront Kojo. He was totally baffled. He thought we were cool. He did not have any idea that I was giving him the cold attitude and that I had a fight with him. For him, it was a really good day because I let him have his piece of mind to watch his series. To think that I had spent the whole night and morning steaming when the person I was beefing with was not even aware, was downright hilarious. I could have got whatever was worrying me off my chest and slept