The following piece originally appeared in the Katharine Susannah Prichard (KSP) Past Tense Anthology in June 2016
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| Dixcove Fort, Ghana 1973 |
Words
of Wisdom
We had been staying in the fishing village of
Dixcove for over a week and had settled into a comfortable routine of ambling down
to the beach each morning, and waiting by the boats to inspect the day's fishing
catch in the afternoon.
On Saturday evening, we heard there was to be a local
funeral and were eager to stay around for the experience. As darkness fell, villagers
gathered in the dusty square, below the imposing stone walls of the Dixcove fort.
Shops around the square were lit by kerosene lamps and some food sellers were hunched
over smoky braziers, roasting cobs of corn.
From a side street, drums started up and a group of dancers
approached the square. The mood was contagious, with locals joining in, and I
felt a child's clammy hand grabbing mine, pulling me into the throng. I did my
best to follow the confident dance moves of the local kids, swirling hips to the rhythm of
the beat, until I spun out to take a break with my friends.
At this point an African gentleman approached us. His
thick-framed spectacles gave him the look of a professor, marking him out from
the other villagers.
'Good
evening my friends, you are most welcome to Ghana. May I invite you to my house,
to share my hospitality.'
We followed him several hundred metres out of town, until we reached
a brightly
lit house. The entrance was up a tiled staircase
and through a porch, leading to a spacious lounge room. His house, with its fluorescent
globes blazing, was in sharp contrast to the darkness outside. We were amazed –
this was 1973 and no one in rural Ghana had electricity. This gentleman must be
a person of some wealth and status, to have his own generator.
His
wife brought us cake and cordial while we made ourselves comfortable on their vinyl
upholstered chairs. After a few moments of polite chat the gentleman went to his
book case and retrieved a small black book.
'Do
you know this book?' He held the book with reverence, opening the front cover.
'It
is called "The Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah". We known it as "the
little black book". It contains words of wisdom from our former leader.'
He
gestured to a framed black and white photo on the wall showing a distinguished Nkrumah
wearing the traditional Ghanaian Kente cloth robe, draped across his shoulder. We
nodded and politely sipped the sweet cordial. After a suitable interval of exchanging
pleasantries, we thanked him and took our leave.
The
following day I left Dixcove and continued travelling along the coast of Ghana to
the capital Accra. I never discovered the identify of our mysterious African gentleman, but he had planted a seed, prompting
me to find out more about his hero Nkrumah. Kwame Nkrumah was Ghana's first
Prime Minister after the country gained independence from Britain. He was a
freedom fighter who had a grand vision for a pan-African future, free from the
bonds of colonialism and tribalism. In 1966, while on a state visit to North
Vietnam, Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup. At that time his government was
aligned with the Eastern Bloc. After Nkrumah's overthrow, Ghana shifted to align
itself with the West. Kwame Nkrumah never returned to Ghana and spent his last
years in exile, where he wrote his little black book. Much later it was claimed
that the American CIA were behind the coup to overthrow him.
What
had started out that night in Dixcove as a quest for an African cultural
experience, lead to something much more, giving me an insight into Ghana's tortured
history and politics. Today Nkrumah is revered in Ghana and in
the year 2000 he was described by the BBC World Service an "International
symbol of freedom as the leader of the first black African country to shake off
the chains of colonial rule". Now, I am left wondering about western
interference in Africa and whether colonialism has really ended.
