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In the Streets of Accra
- from THE TOWN
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- By Andrew Amankwa Opoku, Presbyterian Minister
- Edited by Victoria Ellen Smith
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- Book:
- Voices of Ghana
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 02 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 21 September 2018, pp 164-166
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- Chapter
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Summary
This is the road!
This is the main highway!
Shouters, we are in the street!
Shooters, restrain your guns!
This is Accra.
This is the road!
This is the main highway!
Shouters, we are in the street!
Shooters, restrain your guns!
This is Accra.
This is the town.
The street of the municipality.
Strangers, we are in the streets.
Townsmen, stretch out your sleeping mats
This is Accra.
This is the beach,
This is the pilgrim's haven—
A vast town, but where is the sleeping place?
A great crowd but where is an acquaintance?
This is Accra.
Why this tumult in the street?
Where are the pursuers
That harry every one so?
Let me join the throng.
This is Accra.
Why this head turning
Or is something approaching
That makes you turn jerkily
To look round about you?
This is Accra.
What is this buzzing noise?
What means this paa! paa!
Is this where you walk daily?
And you have lived so long!
This is Accra.
Stay let me have a look.
If such a collection of merchandise
Crowd even the streets so,
What of the market?
This is Accra.
What does this ringing of the bell signify?
This shouting and tinkling noise
This running in the blazing sun 165
This sweat that is skimmed off with the hands?
This is Accra.
Could women monopolise a street so?
In vain you try to elbow your way through
If you stop they will roll over you
If you turn away a vehicle is knocking you down.
This is Accra.
Step out, son of the valiant,
When you look about you too much
ͻkete's children will mark you for a rustic
No one shuns the simple fellow for a bargain.
This is Accra.
Bestir yourself always
When someone pushes, hit him back
When someone bullies, scare him in return
Stranger and citizen are both alike.
This is Accra.
Across the Prah
- from AKAN
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- By Andrew Amankwa Opoku, Presbyterian Minister
- Edited by Victoria Ellen Smith
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- Book:
- Voices of Ghana
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 02 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 21 September 2018, pp 60-72
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Summary
Departure
There is a popular saying: ‘When your neighbours are taking snuff and you do not join them, they say that your finger nails are dead.’ In other words, whenever a new fashion comes in, everybody tries to indulge in it. When cocoa cultivation came, several people embraced it and migrated into the forest belt to make a start. But we Twi know that the starting of a new enterprise is not an easy thing, not the sort of meat an old woman's teeth can chew.
Kwame Antiri also made up his mind that he would go into the forest to try his hand at cocoa and see if he could succeed there. He had a small farm at Krabo, so he decided to wait till after the harvesting season. Besides, the year had not been a good one. His old cocoa trees had begun to die out. The farm had been seriously attacked by akate and swollen shoot. Concern about this alone had forced him to go and ‘eat’ a fetish, in order that he might be protected from any possible enemies with the evil eye and who might be responsible for his troubles. Why, he had not realised that season even 50 loads from his farm! But the previous year his first plucking alone gave him over 400 loads.
One evening in December, Antiri called the head of his clan, his wife, children and other close relatives together, and told them about his plans. He made a long speech indeed. ‘Barima Ofori, listen and pass it on to Nana and the rest of the abusua, that if I call them together this evening, I do not do so for any evil purpose. The elders have said that if you sit in one place you sit upon your fortune; and because of that, the fortune-seeker does not fear travelling. I am sure you all know that this new cocoa industry had made travelling a fashion. I do not need to go far to find you an illustration. Not many days have passed by since our neighbour and friend Kofi Tuo and his family moved to Apragya (the other bank of the River Prah) to start cocoa farming. It is true that no one has followed them there, but it is also true that we have not had any ill reports about them.
Afram
- from AKAN
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- By Andrew Amankwa Opoku, Presbyterian Minister
- Edited by Victoria Ellen Smith
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- Book:
- Voices of Ghana
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 02 August 2019
- Print publication:
- 21 September 2018, pp 86-97
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Summary
River, I am passing
Red River whose head lies in the mountains
I have pointed my face to the sea.
I am from Kwaforoamoa of old
Ɔdomankoma the Creator's time
I started not today
I walk on the way still
River, I am passing.
River, I am passing
Red River that flows through red earth
I go over stones
I go over sand
I have traversed a long way
I have meandered and meandered
Nothing can stop me
River, I am passing.
River, I am passing
I am passing at dawn
By sunrise I shall be on the way
Noon will bring travellers
To crowd my fords
When the rowers plead with me
I shall not stop to make them pass
River, I am passing.
River, I am passing
I go over roots
I go over the depths
I bid it foam up before it foams
If you dare me and measure with your foot
I shall make you slip and go before me
A wayfarer companion is what I want
River, I am passing.
River, I am passing
I am passing with my children
Set a basket trap
Or string in hooks
Neither of these to me is foam
There goes the Otidie fish
The mudfish sallies forth
River, I am passing.
River, I am passing
I am overflowing your dams
If it is for Odom and lobsters
That you dam me up
You had better go home and rest,
Only the crab and the river snail
Deserve to be pitied
River, I am passing.
River, I am passing
Ogyamma fruits are ripe, calling upon farmers to mark out their farms
New settlers have gone to start new farmsteads
The palm fronded shed on the bank calls me
The monkey has espied from the tree tops what is approaching
The eagle has seen afar through the telescope,
Civilisation and inventions ushering in calamity, but
River, I am passing.
River, I am passing
Let farm-goers pass on too
The forest is on yonder bank
If you fear the crossing, your farm will be in the grassland
I am diverting my tributaries and lagoons from you
If you do not cross, you have nothing but roots
You can drain my waters to catch the fish only when I dry up but
River, I am passing.
DETERMINANTS OF FERTILIZER MICRODOSING-INDUCED YIELD INCREMENT OF PEARL MILLET ON AN ACID SANDY SOIL
- ALI IBRAHIM, ROBERT CLEMENT ABAIDOO, DOUGBEDJI FATONDJI, ANDREWS OPOKU
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- Journal:
- Experimental Agriculture / Volume 52 / Issue 4 / October 2016
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 20 November 2015, pp. 562-578
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- Article
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Recent studies have reported the benefits of fertilizer microdosing in increasing crop yields in low input cropping systems. Little information is however available on the mechanisms underlying this effect. The objective of this study was therefore to explore the root-based mechanisms governing the growth enhancing phenomena of the fertilizer microdosing technology. A two-year experiment was conducted at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Research Station in Niger. Four treatments comprising (i) 2 g hill−1 of diammonuim phosphate (DAP), (ii) 6 g hill−1 of compound fertilizer NPK, (iii) broadcasting of 200 kg ha−1 of compound fertilizer NPK (recommended rate) and (iv) unfertilized control was arranged in a randomized complete block design with four replications. On average, fertilizer microdosing treatments (2-g DAP hill−1 and 6-g NPK hill−1) achieved 86% and 79% of the grain yields recorded from broadcasting of 200-kg NPK ha−1, respectively, in 2013 and 2014. The leaf area index and leaf chlorophyll content significantly increased with fertilizer microdosing at the early stage of millet growth. At the same stage, fertilizer microdosing enhanced the lateral root length density in the topsoil (0–20 cm) by 72% and 40% at respective lateral distances of 25 cm and 50 cm from the centre of the hill compared with broadcast of 200-kg NPK ha−1. Fertilizer microdosing did not significantly change soil pH in the root zone. It is concluded that the positive effect of fertilizer microdosing in increasing millet yield results from the better exploitation of soil nutrients due to early lateral roots proliferation within the topsoil.