Ghanaian musician, Okyeame Kwame, has opened up about his experience of celebrating Christmas in a household where his wife and children are Jehovah Witnesses, which means they do not observe the holiday.
Okyeame Kwame revealed that he respects his family’s beliefs and does not force them to join him in his festivities.
He asserted that he agreed to let his children follow their mother’s faith before he married her, and he does not want to renegotiate that decision now.
“My family, my wife, my children, they are complete individuals. Independent of what I like and what I don’t like. So the beauty of that is that the diversity or the unity in that diversity where we all let each other be. So you can celebrate this one. Go ahead and do it. It’s not about forcing people to like what you like. After all, the fewer, the merrier,” he said.
Okyeame Kwame also disclosed that he does not see celebrating Christmas or not as a big deal and that he focuses more on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ than on his birth or death.
“Plus, celebrating Christmas or not is not consequential. It’s not about the birth or death for me, it’s more about the life, it’s more about the forgiveness, it’s more about the service, it’s more about the kindness. It’s all about enlightenment, about being kind. I look at the life of Christ, quality of life. Can I be Christlike? That is where my focus is,” he noted.
Ghanaians Cannot Talk Of Respect
Okyeame Kwame questioned what respect is and described it as to behave in a way, a manner that is favorable to others because one wants to get something back or to get a vote or to deal with people honestly with integrity.
He asserted if one should put his hands behind him or her and his time is taken for granted regardless of how the persons demeanor is, the person has disrespected him.
“So I don’t think that we as a people in Ghana, we can talk of respect because the nation lacks integrity. There’s no integrity in education, there’s no integrity in religion, there’s no intergrity at home, there’s no integrity in relationship, there’s no integrity in business. The nation lacks integrity,” he said.
“The type of solution’s that I want for this country is not just walking on the streets. It’s for us to go to why we are so vile and it begins psycholgically. Something has happened to the African mind,” he further stated.
The rapper disclosed that Ghanaian education system is based on competition, adding that the one that comes first is applauded and given a gift and a car and the one that comes last is hooted at.
He noted that Ghanaians should come together to redefine what culture and moral is through progressive media activation.
“Retell people that this is the new way. This is the new Ghanaian. The biilboards that we put in town, we need to use that to discuss thinking. There must be a million billboards across Ghana that says think,” he noted.
“Africans are not thinking. If we think, how come we own only 10% of our gold. How come our gold is called Anglogold. The highest level of thinking is creativity. Because we do not have the creativity to create the machines and the shafts that can go down to fetch the gold. So the one doing the thinking owns 90%,” he bemoaned.
Also, he questioned the percentage of oil owned by Ghanaians, adding that they are all thinking problems and creativity problems facing the country.
He advised that once the problem of thinking and creativity is solved, then there’ll be more invention of stuffs, there’ll be more exports to other countries, adding that it begins with Ghanaians being honest.
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