Bentsifi’s Tattle…Guy About Town
Bentsifi’s Tattle…Guy About Town
The Birthday Celebrations Continue Unabated!
More gifts are coming. You are NOT late at all! Let them flow…
Just like the love that flowed at last night’s stimulating Under the Odum convocation.
The rooftop vibes came alive. The gathered sang me the birthday song and even lit sparklers to celebrate me.
Charming stuff!
But the delicious story of the evening was the wonderfully eclectic collection of exciting minds who joined us for dinner and conversation with our featured guests, Ama Yeboaa Adi-Dako Seidu and Kabiru Seidu, Co-founders of Big Fat African Development (BFAD).
BFAD is using design thinking and storytelling to stimulate practical citizen engagement around some of our most stubborn urban challenges — sanitation, environmental sustainability and social housing — using the tools of media and technology.
And the movement is ON!
These two have stirred something I find particularly exciting: hope.
Hope for the few — and perhaps the many — who still believe that citizen action is worth something.
One step at a time.
They have locked themselves into a plot to get citizens involved in some seriously audacious missions:
- Clean up and transform part of the filth-infested Odaw River into a transport canal.
- Plant 5 million trees around Accra in five years.
- And perhaps the most challenging of all: build affordable housing for urban dwellers.
What fascinates me is their simple, almost stubborn, common-sense rallying call:
Citizens, too, can act.
Not necessarily waiting for government.
Not complaining endlessly about what government has failed to do.
ACT.
And that, to me, is the delicious part of the story.
Because sometimes all it takes to move a seemingly impossible idea from “somebody should do something” to “let’s do something” is a couple of people crazy enough to start.
Last night, we talked. We ate. We argued. We imagined.
And with copious amounts of passion fruit and sobolo Kokroko servings from The Republic Bar which had taken over the rooftop, somewhere between the food, the stories, the birthday song and the rooftop fire, a little more hope was stirred.
The Yellow Chair was in the house!
And apparently, so was hope.
