To the chief Musician, even to Jeduthun
PSALM 39
A Psalm of David
I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me. I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue, Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am. Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah. Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee. Deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach of the foolish. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it. Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.PSALM 39
Yaa Asantewa: Queen Mother of the Ashanti Empire
"Now I have seen that some of you fear to go forward to fight for our king.
If it were in the brave days of, Osei Tutu, Okomfo Anokye, and Opolu Ware,
chiefs would not sit down to see their king taken away without firing a shot.
No white man could have dared to speak
to chief of the Ashanti in the way the Governor
spoke to you chiefs this morning."
"Is it true that the bravery of the Ashanti is no more?
I cannot believe it.
It cannot be!
I must say this, if you the men of Ashanti will not go forward,
then we will.
We the women will.
I shall call upon my fellow women.
We will fight the white men.
We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields."
Yaa Asantewaa.
Beginning in March 1900,the beautiful and brave Asantewaa
went to war against the british colonials, laying siege to the fort at Kumasi
where the British had sought refuge. The fort still stands today as the Kumasi
Fort and Military Museum. After several months, the Gold Coast governor
eventually sent a force of 1,400 to quell the rebellion. During the course of
this, Queen Yaa Asantewaa and 15 of her closest advisers were captured, and they
too were sent into exile to the Seychelles. The rebellion represented the final
war in the Anglo-Asante series of wars that lasted throughout the 19th Century.
On January 1, 1902, the British were finally able to accomplish what the Asante
army had denied them for almost a century, and the Asante empire was made a
protectorate of the British crown. Yaa Asantewaa died in exile on October 17,
1921. Three years after her death, on December 27, 1924, Prempeh I and the other
remaining members of the exiled Asante court were allowed to return to Asante.
Prempeh I made sure that the remains of Yaa Asantewaa and the other exiled
Asantes were returned for a proper royal burial. Yaa Asantewaa's dream for an
Asante free of British rule was realized on March 6, 1957, when the Asante
protectorate gained independence as part of Ghana, the first African nation to
achieve this feat.
Noble she and her heritage kin the enslaved Africans
every where.
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! We wept when we remembered
Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they
who wasted us
required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing
the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right
hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the
roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.Remember, O Lord,
the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even
to the foundation thereof. daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy
shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that
taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. 
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