Mepa mo kyew, Me din de Ayinde Madzimoyo. I am honored to be teaching the Akan/Twi language to the students of AYA this semester. Twi is the language of the Akan people who reside primarily in Ghana, West Afrika. I began learning Twi a little more than two years ago and am continuing my journey toward becoming conversational and eventually mastering the language.

It has been said that "Whomever prescribes the diameter of a person's thinking, determines the circumference of their actions." In my short time studying the Twi language I have come to the personal realization that the thoughts that I think, the dreams that I dream, indeed the images that I imagine, to a very large extent are determined by the language that I speak. For me, learning Twi has literally been an introduction to a new and powerful world. It has offered me just a glimpse of an entire universe of meanings and possibilites that I had never before imagined. Consequently, I have become passionate about the power that learning Twi in particular, and Afrikan languages in general, holds for the liberation of our people.

Through my teaching I hope to transmit to the students of AYA a passion for learning this language. I hope to awaken in AYA students a thirst to learn more about what it means to be Afrikan. I also hope to inspire in them a desire to continue to claim what I consider to be their birthright as children of Afrikan descent.