Truth Floats by Nana A. Damoah
This story has been selected for the StoryTime anthology African Roar, please go to the African Roar site for more info on the book.
Truth Floats was written by Nana Awere Damoah.
Copyright Nana Awere Damoah 2009.
A British Council Chevening scholarship alumnus, Nana worked with Unilever Ghana Limited from 2000 till 2005 (when he left for further studies) and returned to Unilever Ghana in 2006 after his studies in UK. Presently, he is the Production Manager (Foods) for the Tema factory.
Right from preparatory school, Nana was involved in acting plays and reciting poetry. He started writing seriously when he was about 17 years, in the Sixth form; he began with essays, but moved swiftly into short stories, and has had a number of his short stories published in the Ghanaian weeklies ‘The Mirror’ and ‘The Spectator’. In 1997, he won the first prize in the Step Magazine National Story Writing Competition. In KNUST, he was part of the Literary Wing of the Interhall Christian Fellowship, where he acted and wrote poems.
His poems were published in magazines on KNUST campus. He maintains three blogs of his writings:
Excursions in My Mind (essays)
Stories from the Loom (short stories)
Patmos Collections (poetry)
He also publishes his writings and thoughts regularly on Facebook.com, and has been circulating his Excursions in my mind series amongst his friends via email since 2004.
His first book, Excursions in My Mind, a collection of reflective essays and poems, was published by Athena press UK in October 2008 and is available on Athena.com, amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, as well as in Ghana bookshops. He is working on his second book of essays and poetry, ‘Through the Gates of Thought’, due in March 2009.
As a writer, Nana sees himself as a distillation plant which takes issues around him - mundane, routine everyday occurrences - as his raw material, reflects on and processes them, producing various fractions, fit for use by his readers.
His work with Joyful Way Incorporated, a Christian Music ministry in Ghana, of which he was National President from 2002 to 2004, takes a greater part of his spare time. He is in the Prayer and Counselling Department of the ministry and also plays the drums, when drummers are not available!
He is married to Vivian. The couple and their sons, Nana Kwame Bassanyin and Nana Yaw Appiah, are based in Accra, Ghana.
14 comments:
Welcome to ST Nana!
Truth Floats starts out with a dream that lingers and haunts the story until it becomes the story. A feeling of dream helplessness slowly pervades, as the plot unfolds and empathy for Adoma and Akoto grows, and the devious trickery of Kweku becomes apparent. But all is not lost and love triumphs over time, distance and evil machinations that would divide a lesser love.
In all I thought it was a tight and nicely crafted tale, and a great way to start at here at ST.
I am excited to join ST and thanks to all for the warm welcome (special thx to Ivor for holding my hands and showing the way - it is said by our elders that it is by climbing around the tree that the twine can get to the top!). I look fwd to interesting and engaging discourse and learning on this site!
That's actually something I forgot to comment on in my first comment. I really, liked your use of the adages. A couple had me almost on the floor laughing (in a good way, at their aptness). Not sure if that was intentional, but for me they provided a nice continuity in the story, as well as a bit of relief from the angst of Adoma and Akoto's situation.
My intentions in this story were two-fold: to create a contemporary story around Kweku Ananse who is the main character in Akan folklore, and with that to bring back our beautiful proverbs/adages. Indeed, Chinua Achebe quoted that proverbs are palm oil with which words are eaten, and it is so in our traditional settings, where any submission in a public gathering without a proverb is like presenting a plate of rice to a visitor without stew or meat!
What also sprang to mind for me when reading it, was a kind of literary Ali Farka Touré song, if that makes sense.
Hey Nana, love the story! Especially the traditional proverbs and adages. My written twi is a little terrible but let me try this: wo nim ab3 bu oh!
I enjoyed it, very descriptive, very literary!
adoma and akoto are captured like two mounds of fufu set in a bowl of love soup, and ananse like an evasive lump sought to mar the fun. ananse is ploted to lose expectedly to drive home Nana's judeo-christian principle of triumphant truth. ....that all men may know and learn that Truth floats. may all who employ resources to cover the truth learn from this well woven piece of a simple story well-told. kudos nana
'ayitey dubai' - accra
@Boakyewaa, thanks a lot oooo! We are in this passion together :-)
@Ayitey Dubai, ur description is so apt! I couldnt have put it better. Thx.
Ladies forgive me, but I think that stealing a friend's partner is the sort of thing women are more likely to do than us chaps. Kweku deserved worse!!! Good story
Nana, I loved this story. It's touching, but it also manages to be an oral history of the proverbs of a certain culture. Sort of like a super-Aesop's fable.
Are you going to be writing more of these? I hope so. :)
@Masimba: Hey man, you wanna stir a hornet's nest? lol. Thx for the comment.
@Colin: Thanks a lot. Yes, I am working on a few in the same vein...want to modernise some of our favorite folklores! :-)
Hey Nana, love the story! Especially the traditional proverbs and adages. My written twi is a little terrible but let me try this: wo nim ab3 bu oh!
I enjoyed it, very descriptive, very literary!
adoma and akoto are captured like two mounds of fufu set in a bowl of love soup, and ananse like an evasive lump sought to mar the fun. ananse is ploted to lose expectedly to drive home Nana's judeo-christian principle of triumphant truth. ....that all men may know and learn that Truth floats. may all who employ resources to cover the truth learn from this well woven piece of a simple story well-told. kudos nana
'ayitey dubai' - accra
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