Long Distance II

I thought battling infidelity will be the most difficult task for a man when faced with the situation of a long distance relationship. Well, for many, it certainly is but as you may know by now I am quite different.

It’s been 58 days since I last held my girlfriend in my arms and to put it in better perspective, I have seen her a total of 12 days in the last 4 months. We do speak periodically over the phone but as the story unfolds, you will later uncover that telephone conversations are more pain than joy.

Akua left for paramilitary training on 31 October last year as part of her recruitment process into the Ghana Revenue Authority. Although I thought the programme was utterly ridiculous given her profession as a lawyer, I supported her endeavour as she has mine in the past. After all, “a happy wife is a happy life”. 

Like many men with the GF away, I had sudden urges to call up the “ex”, “the one that slipped by”, “the naughty slut”, “Ms I’m still interested” and that crash that never went away. Come on fellas you know what I’m talking about, those numbers that you can never seem to delete from your phone book.

Anyway, I have been down this road before so I knew what to do...bury myself in more work and stay focused.   

However, as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months my urge to be promiscuous gradually vanished and in its place became the demon I now call “Cavum”, latin for hollow.

You see, as time passes in a long distance relationship, there is often that loss of connection. Conversations are no longer in sync, you get exhausted feeding off on mere memories, intimacy fizzles out, frustration sets in and sometimes you wonder even if it’s worth staying in touch.

She talks about drills all day, shooting rifles, Scrubbing pantry floors, weeding and bringing up discussions with fellow recruits I don’t give a hoot about. In return, I feed her an exhausting day at the office, deals I couldn't close, money I've lost, issues with my sister and wedding plans that can only remain on paper for the time being.

What happened to our mid-afternoon gossips when you randomly call and we talk about some silly person in your office or a mutual friend that is dealing with heartbreak or some infidelity issue? What happened to our Sunday “cheat days” where we eat pork, sautéed potatoes and garlic bread and pretend the little salad on the side makes it all healthy? Or that moment I walk into the kitchen and grab you from behind and your startled face and that pretty smile was enough communication for the remainder of the day. What happened...I miss you...I miss us.    

So imagine my excitement when March drew closer and all of a sudden that distance between Accra and Kpetoe felt much closer than it has been in the last 4 months. My baby is finally coming home.

Now imagine my frustration when I had to learn that you have to stay for an additional 8 months and your return in March is just for a week. What...the....fuck! I usually don’t cuss so allow me to rephrase that....WTF.

I am sitting here uncertain if I can do a whole year of this. I’m contemplating my capability to flee temptation for another 8 months while at the same time wondering if it was worth deleting all those contacts from my phone book. I am plagued between love, lust, anger and pain and the annoying part is I can’t blame anybody.

So in my frustration I turned on my Samsung tablet and as bored as I am begun to play Ed Sheeran’s all of the Stars. I flipped through my notes trying to find scribbles from my last investor meeting and bury myself further in my work. Then I saw it.

Etched boldly in your “ugly” handwriting were the words you wrote several months ago when you bought me the tablet.....I LOVE YOU AND NEVER FORGET THAT!

Suddenly I have the edge again.

Like the quote from François VI de la Rochefoucault ~ Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle it fans the bonfire.

It’s going to be a tough 8 months and I am still pissed at the idea, but I will rather we have 8 months of incognito love than a lifetime apart. For the hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. ~George Moore

Corny as ever but there you have it.....8 months it is. 

Mr.Page: My Acceptance Speech

http://www.facebook.com/derrick.mensah.315Mr.Page: My Acceptance Speech

My Acceptance Speech

Yesterday, I was awarded the Most Promising Young Investment professional of the year and I thank God for that. Though winners were not allowed acceptance speeches, kindly find my below.

First of all I would like to thank God for how far he’s brought me and for his divine guidance throughout my life.

I would also want to thank my family especially my mother for putting up with a stubborn boy when she really didn’t have to. Mummy, thank you for the support, your encouragement and your unconditional love.

To my sister, I love you, thanks for the prayers and we are certainly destined for greatness.

To Achiaa my adorable girlfriend thanks for putting up with the long hours of work and baby, it’s only a matter of time.

Uncle Thomas, thanks for being there whenever I needed a father and to my Dad, I hope I made you proud. Save a spot up there for me in heaven, I will just not be coming right now.

I would also want to cease this opportunity to express my gratitude to my employers; SIC-FSL for giving me the platform to reach for great heights.

To my boss; Joshua Boanya, one couldn’t have wished for a better mentor, coach and senior brother. Time spent with you has really unearthed potential that I had no idea existed before, I’m truly grateful.

Special thanks to Mr. Collins Appiah, he is undoubtedly one of the major positive impacts to my career. His lessons I will never forget and will continue to form the fulcrum behind my subsequent achievements.  

 

Thank you to everyone that has contributed to making me who I am today, shout outs to Charlene Hamilton and to the competition all I will say is.....keep watching this space.

http://www.facebook.com/derrick.mensah.315 

P/S

rLG, I will be waiting for my laptop.

FINDING EARTH

The past few months or even perhaps a year has not come easy to me at all and though much of the problem has little to do with finances, I have struggled to find my bearings.

In a world filled with several opportunities and many options, one would think making a choice should not be a daunting task. After all, if you realise that your first choice is not what you contemplated, you simply but have to change.

Now if only this philosophy applied to life changing decisions like; what career path should I take? Should I start my own business as against furthering my education through a Masters degree or even whom should I marry or choose to fall in love with?

These are not options that you can change once you make the choice; they come with life altering repercussions.

Well, this has been my dilemma for some time now as I have increasingly become obsessed with making the right choices. You see, due to the absence of a father or father-figure in my life, I have become the type of chap that lives on maxims and mottos as my guiding principles to life. Hence, my recent adage; “Failure is the result of a series of bad choices” has just compounded my current predicament.

Last Night, I almost got electrocuted trying to fix a faulty wall socket...My God, kudos to our electricians who do this thing on a daily basis. In my quest to perfect my electrical engineering skills, I had to refresh my memory on how to wire an electric plug.

After 20 minutes of an online refresher course and successfully replacing the fuse in my socket, it all suddenly became crystal clear.

Life is like an electrical plug, where we are born with the two default wires needed to function; the live and neutral wires. These wires are what bring the life in you; they are arguably your spirit.

It is what drives you to become who you are, it is the breath of life...a combination of your paternal and maternal elements and the “God” factor. Everyone has this.

What seems to elude most people in their journey through life is the optional earth wire. This is the wire that keeps the socket grounded and prevents the entire appliance from being electrified and thus harming the user.

The Earth wire is your protector, it is what keeps you focused when everything seems to be crushing around you or when you seem to be losing yourself. It is your pivot, your constant reminder of who you are and why you are here.

Unfortunately, the most essential wire in the human circuit system like most modern day gadgets is not always present by default.

Many a men search their whole lives trying to find earth, that element that makes them whole, the morning star that navigates them home. Some find it in wealth, some find it in respect, some find it in elevated social status but the people that truly discover earth find it in another being.

I am no longer scared of what choices I have to make or what the end result would be. My spirit; my combination of live and neutral wires is a never-ending thirst to succeed in everything I do and indeed so has been the case so far. I know my spirit will drive me to the top of the world irrespective of what options I am presented with, but what will keep me there and my most valuable asset is Earth; my beloved Akua.

She is my constant source of self-discovery, my reminder of who I am and why I am here, my pivot and my reason to do what I do.

So I will no longer waste time brooding over what is lurking behind door number 1 or 2 but be patient toward all that is unsolved in my heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. I will not now seek the answers, which cannot be given me because I would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. I will live the questions now, perhaps I will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

BREAKING MY “HOMO-VIRGINITY”

Who is to judge what is right or what is wrong and what is the yardstick for measuring a morally acceptable act? Is it religion or is it society, or is it the laws that we keep amending every now and then to suit our evolving lifestyles?

Tonight, as I pace the corridors of my apartment hoping to find sleep, these thoughts keep caressing my mind as I try to understand NATO’s invasion of Libya and why for the love of God that bloke is kissing the other chap live on national TV.

Oh! It was a talk show encouraging gays to come out of the closet in Africa and more specifically in Ghana.

My immediate reaction being as homophobic as I am was “What kind of nonsense is this and where is Ghana heading to?”

You see, I am your average Ghanaian young man brought up in an old fashioned way and even though I am just 26 with a lot of exposure to the western world, homosexuality was something I frowned upon with every fibre of my being.

I have been accused of being “narrow-minded” in this argument and more often been referred to as “old school”. In one extreme case my college friend referred to me as the “modern day Hitler” in a discussion involving gay rights.

Homosexuality has been the subject of extensive discussion in Ghana over the last few months, with some human rights activists calling for it to be legally recognised. Recently, there was speculation that the British government planned to cut aid to Ghana if Gay Rights was not enforced. How true this is, I have no idea.

For just a brief moment let us put aside our differences whiles we consider a few issues, letting go of what is morally right or wrong or what religion has to say concerning this subject.
Every human being has or must have the right to Freedom of association whether you are in Libya or the most democratic state in the world. It is your God given right to love and to love freely.

You can choose to be a homo or heterosexual lover; it really doesn’t matter provided it makes you happy. But in the act of making you happy have you considered its ramifications on society as we know it and the human race at large.

Yesterday it was gay rights and gay advocacy, today it is gay marriage and gay couples being allowed to adopt. There are even talks of permitting gay couples to have their own babies through stem cell technology or surrogates.

All these are wonderful if you consider how far we have come from the Stone Age, but how are today’s actions influencing our tomorrow. Are our kids going to have to find their identity through a database at some sperm bank or is Kofi one day going to have to attribute his high IQ to a father he has never met but his “mommies” claim to be some professor according to the donor data? Or we will one day wake up to an extinct race, where evolution in civilization took out the sacred act of procreation and turned it into a technological tool riddled with errors?
It is already sad that we are gradually losing the human culture, where our once sacred acts like hugs and kisses have been reduced to a simple click of a button. Have you ever wondered how 50 years from now you are going to explain a hug to your 3 year old son?

But as I near the end of my blog post I begin to wonder how different my views on homosexuality are from the views of the white man some 200 years ago, when slavery was being abolished. I might not be a racist or a modern day Willie Lynch, but I believe infringing on any man’s God given right to how or what to love makes me as evil as Hitler.

True love is the most perfect thing anyone could experience in his/her life and does it really matter how that experience comes. Whether it’s male-on-male relationship or an all female affair, the underlying factor must be love. Who am I to say what homosexuals share is not true love or a gay couple cannot raise the next president. It is tantamount to saying Negros are monkeys and no monkey can ever become president 200 years ago. Today, there is a Negro in the White House and a monkey’s formula (Allotey’s constant) is help keeping astronauts in space.

So I can decide to let my fear of what I do not understand (homosexuality) paralyse my judgement of tomorrow or perhaps, accept the various packaging love presents itself in. For what I have come to realise is civilizations come and go and cultures evolve but what has indeed withstood the test of time and is the core of the human spirit is love, without which we are living but yet extinct.

26 TO LIFE

It’s amazing how time flies whether you are having fun or not and it’s amazing what you would find once you begin to take stock of your life. You see, in less than two hours I would be 26 years old and as I lay here recollecting events in my life, I realise a fascinating trend. The great (or should I say the most significant) things that have had great impact to my very existence have occurred in the years ending with six and their multiples.

I call it “the Mensah Theorem”, a series of events that have led to my present state of mind, body and soul.

My father died just four months after my sixth birthday and as young as I was, I can remember the exact day it happened, where I was and how I knew he had passed away. It was at one of my aunt’s Boxing Day parties, the day’s she puts in the extras for her infamous chocolate cakes. It was also the day where I walked into the kitchen and found my mother sprawled on the floor weeping her heart out. It was also the day where my very innocent speech; “Mum I know daddy is gone but if you stop crying you can have a piece of my chocolate cake” initiated a mother-son bond that even Zeus can’t strike apart with his thunder bolt.

So fast forward six years after and I am twelve but back at the same dark place I was six years before and laying a similar wreath I laid on my father’s tomb six years before. Only this time, it was my grandmother, the only one of the pair I had ever known.

As long and tiresome as her funeral was, Grannies death and memorial service taught me a lesson that I will never forget. That no matter how well you live your life and how well you bring forth your offspring, it is the lives that you touch outside your family that makes you a great person. A resolution I remind myself every year and the flame that keeps my passion to put Baba through school every time he calls.

16, wasn’t much to go by but it was the year I got my drivers’ license and the year that acne took my pretty boy status away. Lesson learnt here; never mix Clearasil with Dettol.

Well at 18 the fun began. Death had gone past my family by and young Mr. Page was ready to live. Everything rebellious happened in this year. I broke my virginity (yes I am a late bloomer but trust me I caught on very fast), friendship with Sawan and Opoku took me from an innocent chap to an over confident fashionable teen. Mfantsipim School also gave me the best preparation a young African man needed to conquer the world. (Haters of the school should please refer to Mr. Kofi Annan).

For the immense heartache I brought my mother that period, I say I am sorry. To that lovely girl that I gave a reason not to trust any man again, I say sorry (but I think it is safe not to trust any man) and to the numerous parties I crushed and the several more I got invited to, I say thank you. (The MOBB in 2002 was still the illest party ever) To my now rickety car (GW 142 R) I tip my heart to you for all the nights you carried the boys to clubs, parties and car races safely. You truly did your duty, I love you.

18 was fun, care free and full of baggy clothes.

So two years before now I sat at this very spot, typing out a blog I had named 25 to life, (unfortunately that blog never saw the light of day) 24 hours to my 25th birthday (A bit confusing huh? So is everything with theorem at the end) It was a summary of how I felt I had not achieved enough to warrant the age 25.

But today, I sit here at 26 (clock just struck midnight), confident of what I have achieved and what I am going to achieve.

I have the best family luck can afford any random baby. Father died but his wisdom and wealth has kept me in the top schools Ghana can offer. Mum never remarried, so I never lacked a divided attention and sister always blazed the trail so I will never have to make her mistakes.
Friends gave me confidence and boosted my ego; two things that have seen me not fail any job interview till date. Ebo taught me to consider others’ opinion, a trait that has made me respected amongst my peers I love you for that bro. Randy was there to remind me that being popular doesn’t mean you can’t ace your exams. Pino was a solid roommate and Quest will always have my back. Tee-el my brother from another mother, you can piss the whole world off but you will always have a room in my house and Charlene I will always be grateful, you have been a true guide to discovering the real Mr. Page.

To you, I will always love and though I may bring tears to your eyes sometimes, my heart will never wander far from where yours beats. You are my true soul mate.

So on the night that I officially break my silence in blogville and celebrate my 26th Birthday, I say “Because time itself is like a spiral, something special happens on your birthday each year: The same energy that God invested in you at birth is present once again”.

Help celebrate my birthday with me and remember, we “balling” at Bella Roma this Friday Night; drinks are not on the house. 18 still lurks somewhere in 26 so be sure not to be the designated driver.

UNDER/STANDING

I once watched a kids’ television programme and witnessed the host try to explain to a toddler the meaning of understanding in the best way he knows how. He simply said understanding can never exist if both parties do not come to a compromise. For understanding to prevail one person must remain standing whiles the other agrees to go under. Both can never remain upright or both remain under if they expect understanding to hold.

I thought to myself that was the simplest and best description of an English vocabulary I have ever heard.

We often struggle for our opinions to be considered and voices heard forgetting more often than not that the person standing right next to us is also seeking the same attention. I shout and he shouts louder, both of us voicing out our different opinions. How can we reach a compromise if I am not ready to go under and him stand or vice versa.

It has been proven that in most dialogues, the concerned parties all agree on the end result but the differences remain with the approach in achieving this result. It is these differences that prevent the beautiful results from being achieved.

This morning, I read a note from a woman I love, wandering if her overwhelming schedule will drive me into the arms of another woman. Wandering if her recent mood swings and lack of attention to the man she loves will see her bidding farewell sooner than she imagined.

Well, I am not a sorcerer nor do I possess a crystal ball that allows me to see the future. Tomorrow is infinite and filled with so many different possibilities, so I cannot say with all certainty that all will be well. But I do possess two tools that I believe are more powerful than any sorcerers magic or a soothsayer’s crystal ball. These tools are my love for her and my ability to understand.

She may be overwhelmed in her new life and she may be sidetracked in knowing I exist but what will happen if I flare up and she flares up, then that beautiful end result we all so desperately seek will be lost.

We are different in so many ways and we possess so many different opinions but if I agree to go under when she wishes to remain standing and when she realizes she needs to go under for me to remain upright then we share a bond that can never be broken even when the right woman loves me wrongly.