Nana has a whirl of projects going.

The Sankofa Fund is a grassroots development project.

Village Rainbows: Words from Africa – the "Home of All Mankind" is an exciting missive from Takoradi & Busua Beach, Ghana, West Africa.

Poetic Embers celebrates his writing.

African Rainbow Resort is the most hospitable boutique hotel in West Africa (and, maybe, all the world!)

Now, here's Nana Amoako Agyeman, honorary development chief. --JGR

________________

The writing mood
by Nana Amoako Agyeman

The writing mood

comes from time to time

Spirit directs the pen

to the paper

says you should write about the

sun/rise/set/shine

or

something else

unrelated

and pen complies

how many topics are there that require intense

scrutinizing?

analyzing?

elucidating?

Go ahead

Pick one

any one

one that catches your

fancy

and then

WRITE

Go ahead

I dare you

Because you are a

natural

you have the power to

amaze

to amuse

you have the capacity to

razzle

to dazzle

you have the ability to

berate

to create

your power is in your pen

pencil

keyboard

notebook

scrap of paper

write

just write

write anything

not nothing

cause nothing is not writing

and writing is something

and something is power

and you have the power

so WRITE

Because I'll only be staying in two locations, I'll be taking a few more things with me, including my laptop. I hope to pick up a mobile phone once I'm there for calls within Ghana. I have SKYPE on my computer, so if I can get wireless access, that would open up a new option as well to keep in touch with friends and family in America. We'll see.

I'm mostly there to visit old friends I worked with 30 years ago and make some new friends. I'll being staying first in Busua Beach at African Rainbow Resort. Go to their website to see where I'll be staying and some of the wonderful side trips from there. I'll mostly be writing and swimming and relaxing. I'll turn 60 on December 29th and feel better about this birthday and my life as a whole than I have in quite a while. That's really my best birthday present...this greater feeling of being well within my skin.

From there I'll move back to Accra, the Capitol city, where my old friends live. I'll be staying independently and connecting with them as their schedule allows.

For those of you whom GHANA is a new place, here are a few coordinates. It's in West Africa, near the equator, and on the Greewich meridian. It is bounded in the NW by Burkina Faso (Upper Volta), on the eat by Togo, on the south by the Atlantic ocean, and the West by La Cote D'Ivoire (known as the Ivory Coast).

Ghana's total area is 238,537 sq. km (92,100 sq. miles). Other large cities beside Accra are Tamale, Seckondi-Takoradi, and Kumasi. The terrain is composed of plains and scrubland, rain forest, a tropical climate...a population of 17.7 million as estimated in 1997.

There are 10 regions namely the Northern, Upper West, Upper East, Volta, Ashanti, Western, Brong-ahafo, and Greater Accrra.

Therefore, whether you are new to our community here or whether you are a long-time reader, I invite you to browse the archives. They are rich and full. And the top bar contains information about my poetry book "Sightlines: A Poet's Diary."

We'll see you, reliably back in this space in after January 10th. Until then, Darlings, it'll be catch as catch can.