On Sunday 4 December 2022, I settled down to watch the excellent football matches that I knew the World Cup tournament of 2022 was about to serve up.
But an item of news I read stole my interest away from the live matches about to be played, to those that had been played already. To one match in particular: the match between Ghana and Uruguay, played two days earlier.
Te news item read:
QUOTE:
Uruguay is going home, this is karma for me - Asamoah Gyan
The former Ghanaian Striker and Captain of the ... Black Stars, Asamoah Gyan, says Uruguay's exit from the ongoing 2022 FIFA world cup is 'Karma' for him. This was after Uruguay beat Ghana 2:0 in their last game on Friday, Decem-ber 2, 2022. Although he was not happy that Team Ghana had been ousted from the game, Asamoah Gyan felt Uruguay was being pun-ished for what it did to Ghana 12 years ago, at the 2010 World Cup.
He said even though Uruguay scored in 2010 and left laughing, today, the team, especially Luiz Su-arez, is leaving crying. [He attribut-ed] this to Karma.
"They're going home, and this is Karma for me," Asamoah Gyan said on Super Sports TV, [where he was working] as a panellist. Ear-lier in the game against Uruguay, Ghana had a penalty, but the Black Stars' captain, Andre Dede Ayew, missed the penalty. UNJQUOTE
I was rather intrigued by Asa-moah Gyan's choice of words. I am aware that Ghanaian players, like many others in Africa, resort to practices humorously labelled "African electronics" by certain acquaintances of mine, before they engage in serious tournaments.
These comprise visits to cem-eteries in the dark of night to "invoke" spirits; trips to Mali and Guinea to consult "marabouts"; and the wearing of "invincibility amulets" and leather belts used to cover Islamic passages chosen by trusted Mallams. Others consort with indigenous deities, such as Antoa Nyamaa.
Many of these occult practices fail to produce the desired re-sults, but our players nevertheless rationalise their failure as the result of them (the players) breaking the numerous and mysterious taboos associated with their talismans, and not the uselessness of the magical objects themselves.
But Karma is a completely dif-ferent kettle of fish. It is defined as "the force generated by a person's
own actions" and the "ethical consequences" brought about by those actions. Which means that Uruguay's filthy trick perpetrated against Ghana in 2010 was directly responsible for Uruguay's inability to progress to the quarter-finals of the 2022 competition, although it did beat Ghana again.
I would have liked to find out from Asamoah Guan, what he thought about Ghana's own exit from the competition.
Why didn't "reverse Karma" work for Ghana , so that having been the victim of cheating in 2010, she could benefit by a compen-satory act in 2022 and step over Uruguay into the next group?
In saying that, I am not unaware that Karma and concepts of that ilk have their own operative laws that seem to have been crafted to baffle and confuse humans who try to use ordinary logic and common sense to disentangle the convolutions inherent in such mysteries.
For instance: from my own observations, I realise that some dreams come true in our lives, while others do not. Even more mysterious is the fact that one can physically hurt oneself, as a result of dreaming. (Recently, I had a "daytime-nightmare", in which I was trying to run away from an object that was about to hit me. The result was that I kicked a table near the sofa on which I was taking a nap, and have been nursing a pain-ful contusion on one of my ankles ever since!)
The other puzzling thing is the phenomenon, rather prevalent in one's youth and afterwards, of "the wet dream"?
My question from such experiences is this: if dreaming can result in physical conse-quences, then why can't the reverse also occur, so that when one dreams, one can will cer-tain events to materialise within the context of the dream? And - I repeat -- why do some dreams come true in real life, while others do not?
Of course, I have no answers to such questions. But I do acknowledge, from personal ex-perience, that there are serious mysteries in the life into which we have been born.
For instance: what is the universe? Is there only one or are there many? Why are both matter and anti-matter? What is the difference between those particles and "dark matter"? And what is the relationship between "dark matter" and "dark energy?" If (as is largely agreed) over 90% of the universe consists of "dark energy", then why cannot parts of our lives also be ruled by "dark energy" of a sort we cannot yet identify or understand?
In discussing the Ghana-Uruguay debacle, Asamoah Gyan said he thought Uruguay had been struck by Karma. I wonder whether he would like to venture an opin-ion about what also happened to Ghana.
Ghana had nothing against any-one. Yet she was kicked out of the tournament. Is it possible that Ghana too was afflicted with Karma but that the Karma that affected her was the consequence of her own actions against herself?
For (let us assume) the" dark matter" that exists in Ghana is concentrated in our rivers and wa-ter-bodies. For instance, Tanoh, in Asante, has always been regarded by the Asantes as a "holy" river [Asu-bↄnten Kronkron]. So "holy", in fact, that they do not allow women who are in their menstrual period, to cross the river, even in a canoe!
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Entering the river physically when one is in such a state is totally in-conceivable, and for a good reason, namely, that the sanctity of the river is inviolable. Many other Asante's rivers share the same attributes of sanctity. And that is one of the reasons why Asante has remained a strong and healthy nation up till now.
But what is happening today? Tanoh, along with Pra, Offin, An-kobra, Oti, Birem Densu and other rivers that have sustained the people of Ghana for hundreds of years, are no longer respected. So much so that officials of the Ghana Water Company and their Water Authority colleagues are warning that within six months, they may have to shut down their plants because of the extreme turbidity of the water which they use their machines to purify before they pump them into our people's homes.
Already, the budgets laid down for them to pump water for us is overspent, because instead of buying X quantities of chemicals to purify the water, they are forced to buy Y quantities. And all because of galamsey.
[Please Google "galamsey + roundtable+CitiTV ] to hear the full story from the lips of the officials themselves.]
I am sure that "dark energy" and "dark matter" combined with Karma to determine that Ghana was not worthy of staying in World Cup 2022, and should be kicked out"! And if you don't believe that, maybe you'd better take a crash course in metaphysical physics!
