Nana Awere Damoah
Nana Awere Damoah (born 3 June 1975, Accra) is a Ghanaian author. He has six books to his credit. Damoah, who is a British Council Chevening alumnus with a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Nottingham, works as a Technical Manager in Lagos, Nigeria.
Quotes
[edit]- Be controlled from the inside of you. Be controlled by your standards. Be motivated by your decisions. Have high standards of behaviour that ride over the negative noise of others. Laugh with those who laugh, mourn with those who mourn, but don’t mourn when you don’t want to, and laugh at those who laugh at you if you want to. Determine not to be a photo-sensor that brightens the lights only when people are nice to you.
- Loss taught me the strength of faith. Faith in a God who understands. Faith in a Saviour who gave His all. Faith in a Comforter who walked by my side.
- We love to quote the saying “Rome was not built in a day” but we fail to remember that Rome was eventually built, and it must have been so magnificent that when people admired it, they were told that it didn’t happen in just a day. The question, then, is: if Rome was not built in a day, how was it built? Answer: It was built every day.
- Collectively, as a people, we have to upgrade our standards and expectations of our political leaders and ourselves, hold them and our own selves accountable for the promises we make, and insist on specifics – projects, deadlines, processes, funds to be committed, and follow-up! Otherwise, we will continue to be dribbled and deceived, and nothing would get done.
- Stupidity, once it overcomes its initial state of inertia, is sustained by its own momentum.
- My cardinal belief is that it is the natives of the land that till the land best, with passion and meaning. The advanced nations of this world built their countries by the sweat of their indigenes.
- It is only by our hands that we can build this continent to the standard that we envy and admire in the advanced countries.
- Don’t under-rate the scope of your influence in your youth. Don’t think you have all the time to make a difference in this world. Recognize that both brown and green leaves fall to the ground.
- The youth. The youth of Africa. The youth of this world. Are we harnessing the potential of the youth enough? Are the young ones… giving off their best to the continent, the nation, the universe that is giving us so much? Why do we think we can only contribute something after age forty? Are we not causing wealth loss to our generation?
- Don’t cause wealth loss to your generation! Life is too short to be little. You have an impact to make on your generation and the time to start was yesterday.
- Come to Africa and help! Wherever you may be in the world, there is something you can give back to the continent that gave you a name and an identity, at least.
- Looking around today, I see a lot of young people who act as if they have all the time in the world, and older persons who think this attitude is alright. It is unfortunate that there are young citizens who still believe life begins at forty and that life before forty is non-scoring, and older citizens who still insist that unless you are old, you have nothing to offer, equating age with wisdom.
- Young men and women are causing wealth loss to their generation because they are sitting on inert ideas, bottled-up potential energy and scratching the ground when they should be gliding the skies and perambulating with the stars. These people are so disillusioned they live life without any urgency.
- Oral tradition is practised in most African cultures: ideals, family histories and legacies are handed down from one generation to the other physically or verbally. However, this system is flawed in the sense that a lot of African innovation, experience and culture have been lost, undocumented.
- If your strength is small, don’t carry heavy burdens. If your words are worthless, don’t give advice.
- You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who've never had any
- Social media has helped make the world flatter and reduced the degrees of separation, leading to the situation where many can interact with people who, but for this platform, they may never have had the privilege to meet or speak with. That is the opportunity social media brings.
- But it does come with responsibilities. Not to take this opportunity for granted and not to throw decorum to the dogs. The line between virtual and real life is getting thinner and is lately made of morning dew.
- Manners matter on social media.
- A big nose does not necessarily mean a sharper sense of smell.
- If you won't push someone up, the least you can do is not to pull him down.
- Are we really ready to hear views without forming opinions about people? I write to reach a wide spectrum of people. Will my political views alienate many who are here or bring more here? Can my friends here see my views either for or against the government or opposition as views of an independent-minded person?
- Our mental blocks are more formidable than the physical ones. Bob Marley said it when he asked us to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. You first think what you become. The physical starts from the mental and the spiritual.
- A well-rounded head doesn't necessarily house a well-rounded mind.
- Political roads Are not made To last.
- In the election year
When dams are Built for villages hurriedly
- the rains come
down To wash away the village And the dam.
- My association with Joyful Way goes back to my secondary school days in Ghana National College, Cape Coast and in 1989 when I joined a singing ministry of the Scripture Union (SU) in my school – Burning Fire. At the time, the patron of both SU and Burning Fire, John Gordon Egyir-Croffet, was a former music director of Joyful Way and a patron of the Mfantsipim branch of Joyful Way, so Burning Fire got affiliated to Joyful Way. My first official meeting at Joyful Way was in 1992. I must say the ministry has had a great impact on my life and even on my writing, because we used to write poems and sketches for our crusades and concerts.
- I prefer being referred to as a reflective rather than a motivational writer. I will explain. I like being motivated to being inspired to develop speed. A person can move fast but in the wrong direction. A quote I love – ‘It doesn’t matter how hard you row if you are headed in the wrong direction.’ When your speed comes after reflection, what you have is velocity – speed in a specific direction. That is what I aim to achieve with my writing; for my readers to pause, think and act. I hope to think motivation is encapsulated in this.
- I am a quotations buff. In 2004 when I started writing the series of articles from which my first two books ensued, the idea was to write about my daily experiences and the lessons I derived from them as I reflected. So you realised that the articles are as eclectic as their settings. Coleridge’s words ‘From whatever place I write you will expect that part of my ‘Travels’ will consist of excursions in my own mind’ aptly captured the essence of what I was doing. It is interesting how that expression has stuck with a lot of my friends and readers. On good days, when interesting issues come up as they do often in Ghana, we have fun taking excursions in people’s minds!
- That is right and this buttresses my previous answer. I have had readers tell how bold I am to share such personal experiences and thoughts. Yes, some of them have been painful, such as the chapter ‘Loss Taught Me’ – that article took me three years to finally put down. In some way, I see writing as therapy. When I write, it is like transferring the pain from my heart to the paper and when I do encounter similar situations again, I go back to read and minister to myself. I can say that I take the prescription ‘Physician, heal thyself’ very seriously.
- For my non-fiction books, I try to mix most of my varied styles. Story telling is natural to most Africans and even when we sat by the fireside to listen to our parents, a lesson was delivered in the form of a story. I have been doing poetry both in print and on stage for some years, and I don’t want to do a book of only poetry, which I think is usually for a specialist audience. I like to experiment and not pigeonholed. My pieces are diverse – this writer can be described by the same word.
- I started my writing journey with essays, but moved swiftly into short stories. In 1997, I entered and won a national competition for true short stories. I got into poetry in the University, during my undergraduate years, and used to recite my poems in church. I started writing these essays which form the material for both books, in Oct 2004 and circulated to my friends via email. When I was in the UK for my masters, I started updating them on my first blog.
- I write fiction, non-fiction, and poems.
- I like to refer to my non-fiction as reflective, rather than motivational. The analogy in the differentiation is this: a motivational book may provoke you, positively, to start running, in whatever direction -- that is speed. A reflective book, which is more than (yet inclusive of) motivational, will cause you to run, in a direction, knowing where and why you are running -- that is velocity. Because it matters not how hard you row the boat if you are headed in the wrong direction.
- I write with young adults in mind, mostly.
- I have, however, had middle-aged readers react very well to the books, because I believe the lessons adduced in the writings are universal -- across ages, cultures and social classes.
- We practise oral tradition in most African cultures, where the thoughts, ideals and knowledge of the family, tribe or clan are transmitted from one generation to the other without a writing system. However, this system is flawed in the sense that a lot of African innovation, experience and culture have been lost.
- In sharing through my writings, my earnest hope is that I may be able to change even one mind. If I can change one such mind, I would have contributed to the agenda of building our nation, our continent, our world. That is why I ensure the reader is not left hanging without an action point, each article provokes the reader to take an action, upon reflecting on the main points.
- My humble view is that it is beginning to rise again, progressively. A new set of writers are coming up after the golden generation of Ama Ataa Aidoo, Ayi Kwei Armah, Efua Sutherland and Atukwei Okai; this is encouraging. We don’t have a dearth of writing talent, I am sure of that. The formation of book clubs also must go on, we need to excite our people, especially the youth to read. We still have a long way to go, and we have only now started the drive upwards after the decline. I hope I am contributing my quota with my books. I have also observed a growing trend of public readings and poetry events – that is great!
