The distinguished gentleman from Ada

Whiles it is highly possible to meet someone called Markus and maybe even a person called Markus Kennedy, you are not so likely to meet someone called Markus Kennedy Katey. It’s like trying your luck with a combination lock system. And even if you did, his Markus will not be spelled with a “K”. But if for some impossible reason I was wrong and you did find a Markus spelled with a K, it will mean that person must be German in which case, they are unlikely to have the name Katey. They will still need to come from the Aklie family and bear the name. Ok just maybe…that might be possible because he could be half German and half Ghanaian which will make it possible to have a name like that but that will mean then that he comes from Ada. But that still doesn't make him me because I am not half German. Besides he will have to be born on the 16^th day of the month of May and it will have to be a Thursday by which virtue Yaw will have to be added to his names. Now how likely is it to get all the combinations right out of the billion possibilities?

The combination that became me is much more complex than that. It is what makes me impossible to replicate unless you resort to cloning. But I am not even sure what the result of that will be. Let us go down the rabbit hole and see why I am so impossible to copy. See… even if you had the same name as me (something I doubt very much) you will still need to come from Kasseh and Akplabanya which is where my mum and dad come from respectively. And you will have to have grown up in Accra with all the gutter-to-gutter, piloloo, stay, guava and mango raid experiences. (Lets just leave out the Julor ke police, alokoto (please do note that the word is not alikoto), and bayler chasing for now).

There is more- you will have to have six siblings from your mum and wonderful nieces (of course). You must come from a highly disorganized extended family. You must have been a Mazda RX 7 fanatic turned a BMW freak and you will have to have done countless number of reckless things in order to find yourself. You must have been crazy about the Amiga 16 and adored the early macs. You will also need to win a gold medal for Ghana in a West Africa Karate Championship after experiencing countless number of bruises that will still be with you fifteen years on. 

You are also going to need friends who sell you a pair of jeans only to come back and borrow them never to return them. You must have lived in a community where your TV doesn’t come back after its been picked for repair and be related to somebody who will borrow your very cherished Sony amplifier and never return it; leaving you with a turn table and a set of vintage reggae and hi-life vinyls that will eventually be abused and tortured when you are away for a few years by individuals who have no appreciation for the delicate contact between needle and plastic and the soothing magic that follows. You are also going to need a countless number of siblings from your dad of which you have met only a few; making it possible for you to hit on your own sister at a family funeral. You will also need to have started countless number of businesses failing woefully at some and simply just abandoning many of them because of youthful exuberance and an unstable mind. Oh I forgot to mention the motor bike accidents especially the one at Kingsby junction that will leave you with a few scares that will itch occasionally and remind you about what it means to be riding at 120km/h in the night without safety gear for the sole purpose of showing off (something you can share with your son some 20 years down the line).

You will need Sensei Ben, you will need Big Dread, Marley, Voltaire, Kant, Plato, Rockstone, Twinkle brothers, Yeshuah Ben Yosef a Mashiak, Garvey, Ghandi, Madeba, Adler, Dennis Brown, Frankl, Apostle Paul, Nkrumah, William James, Chesterton… I can’t give you the full list here. You are going have to do a lot of 360 degrees in order to arrive where you should have been a long time ago. You are going to have to lose the love of your life and she will have to come from Winneba and you will need to spend the rest of your life looking for a replacement hoping to do all the things you didn't do and undo all the things you shouldn't have done. And when she marries a doctor, you will need to find a reason to run away from the wedding before the reception starts. And on the way, still carrying the present that was meant for her in your hand, you will have to wonder why you didn't go to medical school. Eventually you will arrive at a “happy yourself” conclusion because you think of yourself as one who has mastered the tools of emotional intelligence.

You will have to have broken a few hearts and have your broken a few times in return. You are going to need to be betrayed by best friends of many years and an engaged wife in order to wake you up to some of the harsh realities of being Ghanaian. You are going to need integrity beyond reason and you ought to have built several things I don’t want to mention here and loose them in a self-sabotage manner. You are going to need to be used, refused and abused. You are going to need a gift that will haunt you… giving you sleepless nights for some thirty years until you finally figure out what to do with it. You are going to need to be a peak performance advocate in a country where nobody gives a toss.

Now when you have done all that, come back and I will give you another set of combinations you need to get right and I have a whole library of them. In the end you are going to need to decide if it is all worth it and since it will take you a whole life time to figure it out, you are going to have to decide what you will do with the “you” that is waiting with its own set of combinations that others will have to spend a whole life time trying to replicate. And I should mention; that I have not stopped creating new combinations yet so there is still a lot of work to be done for the library.  

There is nothing else like you. It is just impossible. The look alike is a look alike, not the real thing. That Charlie Chaplin took part in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest and came second is an unpardonable fallacy. To distinguish yourself is therefore a very simple matter. Don’t try to. Just “being” is easy, painless effective, and powerful. The masters say you are at your best when you are you. There are those who set off on a journey to distinguish themselves. In the personal development business this is the mantra of many a motivational speaker. You have to work hard to stand out. You must distinguish yourself by doing this and that.

Those who work hard at distinguishing themselves soon find that they are trying to do something or perhaps trying to be something; moving away from what they really are when they already are something of great value. The more they try the more value they lose. Your real substance is what you already are because it is an incredibly unique product. It is being more and more of what you are that is the key. When you finally go on sale, you will have a target audience and there will be absolutely no competitor whatsoever. That’s because there can be only one you: good bad and ugly. Distinguished beyond distinguish. I am the distinguished Gentleman from Ada. Who are you?