Finding something to celebrate
When you don’t have a lot to celebrate, I believe it is perfectly acceptable to find a vicarious way to do so.
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Your child gets 7As in the BECE exams, your old school wins the debating competition, the best-performing child in Mathematics in WASSCE comes from a town next to your village, and the designer who made the clothes for that bride went to school with your sister’s husband.
(It is called beating someone else’s chest).
For as long as you can find some connection, no matter how disingenuous, you can feel and act triumphant.
When you are on a winning streak, there is no need to try to find reasons to celebrate, but at the moment, if someone called Akua should be named the best cook in Ayawaso West Wugon District, I would be out there celebrating simply because the person is called Akua and I am an Akua and live in the same district.
I like watching athletics.
These days, it is only on television that I get to experience this passion of mine.
I am not quite sure where I got the habit of adding a lot of pressure on myself while watching athletic competitions by always finding a competitor to support instead of simply enjoying the performances from.
I suspect that when you are not up to doing something yourself, the only way to celebrate an achievement is by finding a link with whoever actually achieves something.
Athletics
This past week, I have had a difficult time watching the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, with Ghana being completely invisible at the championships.
I know that in the past forty years or so, athletics has not really been a happy hunting ground for Ghana, but we used to, at the very least, tickle some little excitement with a few individual successes.
I am not expecting that Ghana will suddenly become Kenya or Ethiopia in athletics, but I had been hoping that a Maria Mutola or Frankie Fredericks would emerge in one event or the other and push Ghana into the headlines.
Just in case I am sliding into history again and making references that are unknown to young people, let me explain.
Maria Mutola is a Mozambican 800-metre runner who used to compete at the high end of athletics for over two decades.
She single-handedly brought Mozambique into the limelight in athletics.
The same goes for Frankie Fredericks, who brought Namibia into the athletics headlines with his performances in 100 and 200 metres.
Those days, at every athletics competition, Mozambique and Namibia were certain to be mentioned because of Maria Mutola and Frankie Fredericks.
In other words, one person’s performance can make the entire country feel proud.
Budapest
In Budapest this past week, a certain Hugues-Fabrice Zango put Burkina Faso firmly on the map by claiming the world title in the triple jump at the World Athletics Championships.
I rejoiced with him, wished him well and stopped just short of creating that vicarious link as a Burkinabe neighbour, so I could claim to have won a gold at the championships.
The Kenyans and the Ethiopians, of course, have been the dominant forces in athletics, especially in the middle and long-distance track races where they are the undoubted world leaders.
I used to have a succession of favourites among the Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes and each time they won, I would go to bed a satisfied woman.
A regular daydream of mine was that a child from Abutia would, one day, be like David Rudisha, the elegant Kenyan 800-metre world record holder.
I am still trying to get an artificial turf built in Abutia and I might yet get that satisfaction of a child from Abutia being announced in lane number three at the Diamond League meeting in Helsinki stadium.
For the moment, it remains a daydream.
In Budapest, Ghana was completely invisible.
Outside the athletic field, India and Indians probably had the most spectacular reason to celebrate this past week with the successful landing of the Chandrayaan-3 lunar exploration mission.
It was a rover to explore the rocks and craters of the south pole of the moon and gather data and images to send back to Earth.
The Indians apparently broke YouTube’s record for livestreaming, as more than eight million of them watched as the spacecraft made its way to the lunar surface.
The celebrations were not limited to Indians in India but wherever they were around the globe.
The celebrations were justifiable and the excitement understandable.
Justifiable because three days earlier, Russia's unmanned Luna-25 spacecraft had crashed into the Moon after spinning out of control.
The Russians had been racing India to be the first to land a spacecraft on the south pole of the lunar surface to explore a part of the Moon that scientists think could hold frozen water and precious elements.
The Russian state space corporation said their Luna-251 spacecraft had encountered problems as it moved into its pre-landing orbit and preliminary findings showed that the 800kg lander had "ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon".
So, the Indians have won one over the Russians.
Then there was another, probably bigger, reason for the celebrations.
Four years previously, the preceding Chandrayaan lander had crashed into the moon after a software glitch.
At the time, a BBC presenter had posed one of those BBC questions which asked whether India, a country that “lacks a lot of infrastructure” and where “700 million people don’t have access to a toilet”, should be spending money on a space programme.
You don’t need to be Indian for that to rankle.
The usual suspect experts around the world called the Indian space programme a white elephant.
But, in truth, the India space success has been surprisingly cost-effective.
The Chandrayaan-3 mission is said to have cost $75m, about the type of money that is spent on a Bollywood film.
Now that there has been a successful lunar landing, it is sure to generate more resources for space programmes, more international research collaboration and innovation and a boost to the Indian scientific community as a whole.
Indians
The Indian scientific community and, vicariously, all Indians have good cause to feel happy and quite superior.
I suspect all Indians are suddenly feeling a few inches taller and generally happier.
They have not all suddenly become scientists, but the lunar success has boosted the confidence of every Indian.
Not surprisingly, once the spacecraft landed on the moon's surface, there were reports across India last week of people rejoicing in streets, offices and schools.
People stopped work and rushed outside to celebrate.
The chant on the streets was, ‘Vande Mataram’ (I bow to thee, mother) and ‘Bharat mata ki jai’ (victory to the motherland).
It could be a 3000-metre steeplechase gold or a moon landing, you need never have stepped on a running track nor sat in an Astrophysics class, the success spreads joy to all.
I would have settled for a Bronze in whatever event in Budapest.
