But if I had my brother Kwakye to thank for my early exposure to education, his own personal experience of education often landed him with problems he would much rather have not endured. For being the Number One educated person in our family, he became the focus of the resentment that the grown-up men in my family, who had not gone to school, harboured against those who were being educated.
The latter suspected that going to school meant no more than the schoolboys going to “play about” in the school-yard, whilst they, the unlucky ”illiterate” folks, were obliged to go and carry out hard work on our family's farms, growing the food that we all ate, as well as earning the cocoa money which paid for our school fees.
This is why, as I noted at the beginning, there was always tension between the educated ones and these guys. The latter never tired of seeking opportunities to put us down by demonstrating to us that although they had not been to school, they were in fact cleverer than those of us who did.
One day, they put my brother Kwasi Kwakye to the test by asking him, without any prologue whatsoever: “Suppose when you came back from school, there were only two dishes available – and one was fufuo while the other was soup – and you were allowed to choose only one, which dish would you choose?”
My brother thought it was a stupid question, and without thinking twice, he said, “I'd choose the fufuo of course!” Everyone broke into laughed. For Kwakye had fallen into a trap that had been well laid for him.
All he had been thinking about, when answering the question, (as they expected he would!) was that fufuo filled you up, whereas soup, although tasty, could not quite satisfy one's hunger. What he had forgotten was that one cannot eat fufuo by itself (without soup it would stick in the throat!) whereas one can eat soup without fufuo, even if it left one with a very string desire (like Oliver Twist in Great Expectations) to “have some more”!
As was usual in such households, the occasion was marked by Kwakye being awarded a nickname that would for ever signal his shallowness of mind – Fufuo ne nkwan, wope dier ewo he?
(Fufuo-Or-Soup-Which-Would-You-Prefer? ) from that day on. They did this just to rub salt into his wounds.. He , of course, beat up quite a few of the smaller children if they were foolish enough to join the elders in mocking him with his new name.
But he could do nothing about the taunts of those "illiterates" who had proved how much more witty they were than him, despite his being so far advanced in school. To me, the ingenuity of the question they asked Kwakye helped to clarify the notion that those of us who were lucky enough to go to school needed to be aware of the subtle fact that not everything could be learnt in a classroom. It made us aware also that we should not be too haughty towards the members of our community on whom we presumed to look with contempt, merely because we thought they were “illiterate”, were not fools. Okay, a narrow reading of illiteracy meant not being able to read and write. But what about wit? Deftness of thought? Cognitive relevance or relevant cognition?
These people knew as much about the lives they led as possible, from personal experience; they had mastered the knowledge that really mattered to them in their day-to-day lives. Yet they were relegated to the background in our society because “modernity” was being imposed on it by foreigners who thought that doing things their way was the best thing in every respect.
We children proudly went to school to learn to read and write what other people had written, which our teachers had absorbed to pass on to us. There was something very useful in that, to be sure. But we needed to recognize that each aspect of knowledge had its place in our lives, as practically conducted in our particular environment (I learnt). The [modern] mode of life should not be worshipped as being necessarily above the other [i.e. the traditional], which was being jettisoned with lightning speed as inferior knowledge, although it was that which fed us all – school-teachers included!
One funny contradiction I discovered that amused me was that on Sundays, we school-children were expected to attend church services in the school and take with us, plantain, yams or coco-yams, as an ”offering” to God. We knew, though, that these foodstuffs, after being “blessed”, were then taken to the head-teacher's house, where they were secretly shared among the staff!
So the teachers were in fact destroying our traditional way of life but eating food produced with traditional methods. I was too young to grasp fully, what havoc this self-imposed contradiction would wreak in the future lives of everyone in my country, as people who did not produce any of the wealth in the country, were handed absolute control over how state revenue and the resources generated in the society as a whole, should be shared and used! That knowledge was far in the future.
But come to me it would.
I also discerned, shortly after entering school, that the knowledge we got from book did not always make sense, if I knew what was being talked about. For instance, one day, our teacher asked us this question: "If there are ten birds nestling on a tree and a hunter goes to shoot his gun at them, how many will he be able to kill? I guessed that he might bring down three, and wrote three. But the teacher marked my answer as wrong and put one there. I realised, then, that the teacher -- or whoever had set the question -- didn't know anything abut the shotguns people like my father used. These shotguns did not use single bullets, as were used by rifles, but a number of pellets which scattered all over the body of the target animal. So (I reasoned) depending on how close the birds were to one another -- something I knew a lot about -- the hunter would bring down as many as were hit by the scattering pellets.
Ten birds? Maybe -- depending on his luck -- he'd bring down four or five; but okay, to be safe, maybe three. Yet the teacher had marked my answer as wrong! I never wholly trusted books ever again!
For I was sure that if a real hunter was brought and the question out to him, he'd agree with me that to plumb for a single bird would be rather unambitious. on his part and that he would shoot at the spot closest to where many of the birds were and take his chances on how many would be hit by his pellets.
One other thing I learnt from the episode was that at school, once the teacher -- or the book from which he picked his questions -- had spoken, that was the end of the matter. No argument as to possibilities; two plus two equals four; therefore everything was certain. But in our real lives, there was no such certainty, as anyone could tell you. When you came back home from school, for instance, you could never be quite sure what you would be given to eat. It all depended on what your mother had been able to clobber together -- behind your back! How could you be absolutely certain about something that happened in your absence?
What I have perceived, since my school days, is that the “illiterate” people in our society have evolved a unique and painless way of passing on to their their children, lessons about real life: they do most of it not through direct instruction and admonition (as our teachers did in our schools) but through aphorisms or proverbs that could, as it were, be peeled from extremely imaginative stories or folk tales that were both entertaining and instructive at the same time.
These stories pleased us immensely, but they did carry a message relevant to real life. These consisted mainly of the folk tales generically called Anansesem (literally, “Words Relating to The Spider”) but not all of which actually featured Ananse [The Spider] in their cast of characters. It was all done informally: of an evening, the older members of the family would gather around a fire, and chat about this or that. We would listen for a while, and then one of us would plead that someone should tell us a story. The elders would pretend not to wish to do this, but in the end, they would relent. Then one of them would begin by "knocking" at the doors of our intellect, saying:
“Abra braaa?” (Can I come in?) And we would answer: “Yong!” (Yes – let it flow!) Incidentally, the words used in this knock-and-answer peroration have long ceased to be used in ordinary language. They make their appearance only during story-telling time -- which shows the age of the stories they told us.
After the opening resort to an extinct vocabulary, the story-teller would ask, in everyday language “Do you know the origins of.... such-and-such a taboo, or statement, or wise saying, which you often hear”? Or: “Do you know how such and such an event first occurred in the world?”
(For instance: why does the crow wear a white ribbon around its neck while the rest of its body is all black? Or, why does the crab not have a head like other creatures?
Or why does the leopard have spots on its skin? And perhaps -- how came it about that God, after creating the world, came to separate himself from it and went to live in the sky, far above the earth and the creatures who inhabit it? How did wisdom spread throughout the world instead of being monopolised by one person?And many such intriguing questions. When the story-teller had obtained our full attention with the ingenuity of the query or statement he had made, he would go ahead and tell a story to elucidate what new thing it was that we were supposed to enrich our knowledge of the world with, from his story.
Upon analysing their methodology as a grown-up, I have come to realise that although these story-tellers did not know the principles of "mathematics", they proceeded in their teaching by first formulating a "theorem"(as it were) to begin with, and then going ahead to "prove" it – with the story that followed! I.E. -- right?
Thus it was that one evening we were asked: “Do you know why it isn't a good idea for parents to leave their little children alone at home?” (Producers of Home Alone – where are you when we need you? Do you see that THESE PEOPLE were there before you??!!)
We were all ears, for this story promised to relate to the concerns of us, the children, who often resented (silently, of course!) the way our parents tended to pay little attention to us as individuals, while they went about the "more important” business of organising life for us all as a collective entity.
The elder would then continue with the story: Well it was like this -- There was once a hunter who lived alone in a cottage in the deep forest with his little son. Every time he went hunting, he left the little boy alone in the cottage.
The little boy never ceased to plead with his father to be allowed to accompany him into the forest. But the hunter dismissed the boy's entreaties. The hunter would explain, “Listen, it is extremely dangerous to go hunting with other people.
You can easily mistake your companion for game and shoot him dead! Besides, the companion can unintentionally make noise – sneeze for instance – at the worst possible moment; I mean, the very instant you are about to pull the trigger! When that happens, the animal is inevitably alerted and scurries away fast into the deep bush, never to be seen again!
That can be so frustrating – even if one knows that the noise was not made intentionally by one's companion. You see, stalking game successfully is an art in itself. It demands concentration, sometimes for hours on end. And it requires absolute, total, stillness. You don't learn it in a day!”
"Aha!" the boy seized on his father's words: "'you don't learn it in a day! How can I ever learn it if I don't ever start? Besides, I know how to tread very carefully! I know how to walk softly, so as not to rustle dead leaves, or step on dead wood from broken branches and make noise with such things! You see, to relieve my boredom when I am left here alone, I have been practising hunting with my wooden gun! I know how to stalk!
As for you shooting me by mistake, I know how to stay behind you, so that you would never have the occasion to mistake me for game and shoot me! Also – also – I would dearly love to be the one who fetches the animals you shoot, from the thickets! I'd love to hold an animal in my hands whose body is still warm because it has not yet died. I'd love to feel the twitches its body makes just before it dies.
“Furthermore” (the boy waxed increasingly eloquent), I could carry some of the animals home, so that you wouldn't have to do it all by yourself and get so fatigued. I watch you when you get home -- you are always fagged out!! I mean – sometimes the load is so heavy for you that you leave some of it behind and make a second journey into the bush to retrieve it and bring it back home.... I could make all than unnecessary for -- you to do!”
But the hunter cut the boy off from expressing the longings that consumed him on a daily basis, as these possibilities occupied his imagination in the empty hours of every single day that his father went hunting and left him all by himself.
The hunter said: “Since your mother passed away, you are all that I've got. I can't take the risk of endangering your life by involving you in as dangerous an enterprise as hunting – especially, night hunting. I want you to grow up to be a man first.”
When the boy realised that the case was closed, he comforted himself by saying quietly to himself: “He cannot live for ever. He will die one day and leave the gun to me. Then we shall see who can engage in a “dangerous enterprise” like hunting!” So the boy bided his time, Meanwhile, he told himself: “Well, I can at least earn his respect by cooking something really nice for him when he goes into the bush!”
For despite resenting his father's uncompromising attitude towards teaching him hunting, the boy loved him dearly. He was a real hero who was not afraid of any animal in a forest full of very dangerous animals. So he sought his father's approval by studying the hunter's rather rough and impatient methods of cooking, and applying to them, subtle techniques which he had acquired from his mother before she died.
When added to those of the hunter. these techniques made his meals a lot more tasty. In fact the hunter often said that the meals the boy cooked were a "feast fit for a king"! When the hunter said that, the boy had smiled at his father's compliment, and entertained a renewed hope that over time, his cooking would melt that “heart of stone” and lead to a change of mind on the hunter's part.
(To be continued)
