Last week I received a national honour, the Order of the Volta. I took it with both hands. I'm very proud of it. No qualms.
I wished though the conversations around the awards hadn't been of a partisan political nature.
But, hey, that's democracy. However detestable, I would rather have the political cacophony than silence enforced by a handful of arrogant, hypocritical, megalomaniacal sociopaths. If the noise is unbearable, you can always turn off the radio. And I do.
I must confess, however, that I had questions myself when I first saw the list.
I, too, thought it was rather long and it had too many Ministers. But the explanation that the President was trying to clear a backlog, and that some of the Ministers who were also MPs, along with their opposition counterparts, were being honoured for serving more than three terms in the legislature, tidied up some of the doubt.
As to the justification for honouring all the Ministers who have served since 2001, I suppose we can have a beer over it.
But let's put the politicians aside for a moment. I want to dwell on the awardees who really touched my heart. The Cuban doctors, who along with the young Ghanaian doctor, Sukenibe Suhuwie Seidu, went where others wouldn't go, wiped the pus others wouldn't touch, and stayed in Bawku when others fled.
I was stunned to learn that Mrs. Salome Francois, who decades ago established and runs the New Horizon special school for mentally-challenged children in Accra, had never been honoured by our country.
How could 84-year-old K.B. Asante, teacher, civil servant, diplomat and patriot, who has served every government since independence with all his soul, fall through the cracks in the national honours lists for over 50 years? How ungrateful could we be?
Did you see Louisa Enyonam Ansah, a woman without arms, who has been through school writing with her toes?
Now, as an adult, she works for a living. She's not in the streets begging for crumbs and pity.
She was, deservedly, honoured for being a role model to the physically challenged. She took her scroll with one foot and shook hands with the President with her other foot. It brought a lump to my through.
And who am I to suggest that Agya Koo and his work are too pedestrian to deserve a national honour?
For ordinary folks who don't have access to cable television and whose arts heroes don't originate from Hollywood, theirs is Agya Koo.
Our national honours aren't reserved for the elite of our society. They're for everyone.
Agya Koo is a reflection of us. If you ran into Agya Koo anywhere in the world, you wouldn't need to ask where he came from. His head may not be oh so cute. But that's your head.
Agya Koo is all of us.
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