Comment: on 21st December when the NDC was having its conference to elect a flagbearer, I was with Josiah Aryeh in his University of Ghana law faculty office. I found out that he had written three or so books within the two or so years he had been out of office as General Secretary of the NDC. I commented about the celebrated English writer Charles Lamb. Charles was given custody of his sister Mary Lamb to alert health authorities when she lapsed into her periodic episodes of mental breakdown. I emphasized to Josiah that stress and anguish bring out the most profound intellectual attributes of man, and that Charles Lamb demonstrated that in his best literary output during the period his sister was in his custody. I have managed to read through Josiah's yet to be widely published book, and incidentally my biologist's instinct proved correct. An aspect of the book that widens its appeal is the picturesque construction of the sociology of Accra before the current physical and psychological reconfiguration. It is nostalgia at best to those in whose lifetime that era of Accra has disappeared, and to those who need reminding of the past of their current engagement. I publish below Chapter one of Josiah's yet to be published book capturing that nostalgia.
Nii Armah Kweifio-Okai
The waters of the Atlantic seemed to pound incessantly at the foundations of the fort, and at night the roar of the ocean filled its spacious chambers. The squat undistinguished fort overlooked the bay of Accra, transformed as it was into a mini harbour. It was into this harbour that Nkrumah sailed from Liverpool, having spent years as a student in American colleges and at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He had been invited to return to the Gold Coast to steer the affairs of the then dominant political group, the United Gold Coast Convention (U.G.C.C.). The U.G.C.C. was top heavy with patrician lawyers in no particular hurry to cut off British rule. Nkrumah’s more radical agenda led to an inevitable clash. Shortly before I was born Nkrumah found himself incarcerated behind the cold grey walls of James Fort prison. The spark of freedom that Nkrumah’s revolutionary rhetoric had unleashed was unstoppable. Sustained political campaigns, strikes, lootings, boycotts led to independence on 6 March 1957.
Independence was the defining moment for the Gold Coast in very much the same way as the Second World War was the central event of the twentieth century. Under Kwame Nkrumah, African nationalism had made its home in Accra and the city basked in the euphoria of independence. The squares of Accra were in political ferment. Nearby, Bukom and West End Arena saw regular political rallies on a mammoth scale. All manner of counter-nationalists were also at work. The grounds of the Jamestown Methodist School doubled as a rally ground of the Ga Shifimo Kpee or the Ga Standfast Party championed by disaffected youths and a number of professionals. In that much-trampled square were many passionate speeches delivered by youthful leaders who barely squeezed an income out of the harbour or plied the streets as taxi drivers. They built their fame upon aggressive anti-CPP rhetoric and drew support largely from social categories at the margins of the State.
The yard in which I grew up was surrounded by ancient housing of my matrilineage. It was typical traditional housing named after the founder, a smith. It was called Ofori Solo We. As a smith, Ofori was reputed in household folklore to have been the first settler at Adadentam or Adentam, the etymology of which was derived from the fact that the smith’s irons (dade) were kept in the surrounding fields. He was joined by a group of fishermen from Asere, the core Ga settlement in pre-colonial Accra. To date the Adentams, with names like Ayi, Armah, Dedei, Korkoi, Adaku, bear the purest Ga names among the inhabitants of Jamestown. The Jamestown Chief Fisherman is always from Adentam although few of the inhabitants actually undertake fishing. For some strange reason the paternal section of my matrilineage claim allegiance to the Sempe quarter of Jamestown. This may well be true as the Sempes had preceded the Alatas in their present settlement. It is fairly plausible that pockets of Sempes might have preceded the Alatas in settling on lands to the west of Jamestown proper. Indeed, near the famous Russell Alley pockets of Sempes are found in close proximity with Aseres. Members of Ofori Solo We were also among the earliest settlers at Bortianor and Kokrobite where they constitute one of the main royal houses. I was one of a large family. Although I had no accurate knowledge of all my kinsfolk stories of the activities of my forebears and collaterals kept weaving in and out of family incidents.
A relative owned a huge cocoa shed. She lived a little way beyond the main family house. Thousands of sacks of cocoa beans were carried in and out of the shed daily and young men found work as day labourers. The fishing and the harbour aside, the Jamestown abattoir was a major focus of economic activity. It attracted waves of unskilled Muslims into Accra. Circling vultures constantly reminded us of the presence of the abattoir. Their naked necks and wide wing spans were distinguishable from other birds; and their habit of feeding on carrion led to some loathing among the children. Large trucks brought cattle to the slaughter house. They were restrained by rope and whip and herded through the narrow entrance of the abattoir. From time to time a bull would break loose and rampage through town. Some said it smelt the blood of the slaughtered animals. The wild mooing and the drumming of hooves on the streets made our bloods curdle. The distinctive buffalo-like gallop and low swinging horns signalled danger. Butchers and apprentices would give chase and the town would be in a state of agitation and rumour mongering until it was captured with a lasso and safely restrained again.
At night the beams from the lighthouse swept over our bare ceiling. By day radio boxes were filled with news of political struggles across Africa. Even to African ears some of the names sounded foreign and melodic: Tanganyika, Nyasaland, Katanga, Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Malawi, Lilongwe, Jomo Kenyatta, Odinga Oginga, Patrice Lumumba, Joseph Kasavubu, Moise Tshombe, Julius Nyerere, Tafawa Balewa, Mobido Keita, Sekou Toure, Obafemi Awolowo, Abdul Gamel Nasser, Ben Bella. To us kids the names of football stars were even more alluring: Addo Odametey, Abeka Ankrah, Baba Yara, Aggrey Fynn, Ofei Dodoo, Chris Briandt, Dogo Moro, Wilberforce Mfum. We dreamt of basking in their glory. Hearts of Oak and Standfast were the leading teams. My paternal uncles were staunch Standfast supporters, and when that team declined they joined in founding a successor club, Accra Great Olympics. The rest of us supported Hearts with all our souls. Jamestown was a community spawned by the Gulf of Guinea and colonialism. Its earliest settlers flocked to the fort for pre-colonial trade and prospered. In the brilliant sunshine of its streets, my earliest vision of life unfolded.
Accra Central is famous for boxing. A couple of generations ago practically every argument among the youth was settled with a fist fight and every neighbourhood had a clear pecking order. Boxing canalised those energies and calmed the youth. My half-brother, Charles Kweinortey Aryeh, was the founder of the world-famous Bukom boxing club. He was almost a generation older than the rest of us and his mother was a Sackeyfio in whose ancestral household the Bukom Boxing Club is based. My brother had developed love of the sport during his school days at Accra Academy when the Americans had considerable military presence n the Gold Coast. Accra produced a long list of Commonwealth boxing greats, including Roy Ankrah and Attuquaye Clottey but it was the Azuma Nelsons, D.K. Poisons, Alfred Koteys and Ike Quarteys who went on to become world champions. The great featherwieght Azuma Nelson shared many things in common with me. Our mothers were friends and paternally we both have black Brazilian blood. His father, a cheerful tailor, lived at Mamprobi where Azuma learnt his trade and flourished. When Azuma’s mother discovered who my parents were she humorously asked if I was the child who constantly sobbed after his mother.
The beach was a magnet. I enjoyed the scenes of seine fishing with sedate fishermen mending nets under coconut palms, and of diving seagulls, eels; and catches of turtles, snappers, sea breams and sardines filled my childhood memory. Tragedy was part of that early life; we took tremendous fright at occasional stories about children drowned in seawater. Still, the waters edge was heavenly. We watched the hull and smoke of the old steamships gradually vanish beyond the horizon. A bath in the surf was a Sunday’s delight. Proficient swimmers headed beyond the breakers in rhythmic movements. The less proficient stuck to the surf, petrified of eddies and swift currents. I loved the sea by night when the light from the harbour was reflected in several prismatic hues in the water. Under moonlight the waters were always calm and placid, and a moaning sound reached beyond the shores as though it caressed the town to sleep.
The gold moon touched the scene with extraordinary beauty, mixing with the shadows to inspire awe.
On stormy nights the waters raged and tossed, hissed and roared, quaked and shook the very foundations of the earth; in successive waves it charged at the land but stayed where it was as though transfixed to the shoreline. Gusts shook our roof and the coconut palms tossed their fronds like mighty dreadlocks to the raucous sound. On such nights children either slept a sedated kind of sleep; or half asleep, imagined the most monstrous ogres walking by the beach. People who had died of unnatural causes, particularly those who died by drowning were believed to stalk the living, envious of their delights, and eager to drag them to the after world. It was time for children to stay close to their mothers and be respectful. A classmate who had arrived from the village told me that it was usual to tell stories at night with the fires flamed up and birds hooted in the trees, stories so beautiful and haunting that they cannot be caught and contained in a book. I imagined the storyteller’s imagination teeming with monsters, evil spirits and inscrutable plots. The elders had the best stories, set in times far before the birth of the children, stories of wickeness, triumphs against adversity and of happiness, reunions and merriment.The audience bit into roast corn and, between tales, the storyteller’s mouth stayed claspsed around his smoking pipe.
The morning always broke to lark song and the twitter of sparrows. A cold bath got the day going. Dressing up was followed by a quick breakfast, usually of corn milled porridge and a loaf of bread. On luckier days we got tea in a steaming pot with margarine or jam; when our uncle visited we had continental breakfast together; but it was not as rich as what we ate on celebratory occasions when mother prepared a real English breakfast with half-done eggs, toast and bacon. She expertly spread the marmalade with a knife with a faded bone handle. We kept the special treat to ourselves, betrayed only by our glistening lips. The rest of the day we spent in school, doing various academic drills. Singing was an important of the school day. Wesleyan and Presbyterian hymns were mastered by every school kid. The teacher’s steady soprano would mingle with tiny voices in every pitch and key. Of the remains of the day, we flew kites when it was windy but played football on practically every other day. With stones for posts, the small rubbery orb flew in different directions as budding stars danced and dribbled weaving and zigzagging on the bare ground.
Collisions, cuts and bruises did not deter us, and there was no shrill referee’s whistle to break our joy. We played the game with our whole hearts, kicking and running until exhausted, we went to our different homes in the gathering dusk, some to a waiting cane, some to a meagre supper and some to the routine homework.
In the evenings the streets were filled with hawkers shouting for custom. Bananas, oranges, fried pork, loaves and assortments of European merchandise turned up on street corners to await the custom of returning workers looking for a fast evening meal. During the day the bulk of the city’s trade was transacted around its massive and heaving commercial heart, the Makola market. The market attracted traders from across the country and its formidable women traders held the key to major parts of the Ghanaian economy. Their money-centred activities were far removed from the reflective routines of the reverred indigenous spiritual leaders, wulomei. Particular weeks of the year were declared times of retreat during which the wulomei remained permanently wrapped in a thinking trance. The latter mediated between the humanity and the realm of nature. I was puzzled by their power and influence.
One of the most influential figures during my childhood was Aunt Mary. For much of her adult life she remained a bedridden woman, dependent on herbal medicine as well as the medical advice of a respected doctor. An assistant in a traditional court once explained to me their skill in medicinal plants. Honey was key to her recovery. Generally used as food, medicine, energiser, aphrodisiac, bottles of the syrupy stuff were purchased and kept in a cabinet; she was even prescribed rare honeys with hallucinogenic properties. Childless, her condition provided my earliest impression of the fragility of life. Here she was beautiful as a flower and wealthy as a Makola woman could be, but now at the mercy of ill-health. In good health and at the height of her trading powers, she controlled members of her immediate community and supported their children. Infirmity had laid her low. She had been bedridden for so long the bed’s castors had made a deep grove in the carpet. She had had two husbands and despatched them both. Her response to every childhood illness was enema.
Wedging the child between her knees, she would just hose them out, helped by a generous quantity of shea butter. When her condition improved somewhat, she was moved to another room upstairs where she lay on white bed-clothes surrounded by pictures of her ancestors to celebrate her sixtieth birthday. Nephews and nieces poured in to wish her a happy birthday. The turquoise of my Hawaiian shirt and a small red ball lying nearby were the only spots of colour in the monochrome landscape.
I loved to be by her side. She would tip her head back and swallow her medication. Her iron bedstead stood on castors and was covered in immaculate bedclothes. Her head lay on the swell of the pillows and she would tell me about my grandmother whom I never knew. Lacking any education, she talked about starting a project where every porter, fisherman and market trader would tell their life story from their own peculiar perspectives and in as photographic a manner as possible. She described how she would want me to record them for posterity in books to be read by all children. She wanted to found a school to inculcate her own values in the children so that each would go out a tower of strength, an intellectual and enlightened lighthouse with moral force to influence homes, neighbourhoods, societies and even countries around them. Each year she would give the graduating students little bibles in which were inscribed words encapsulating the above charge.
These she would say under a little shaded lamp hung from the raftered roof which threw a circle of light around her pillow. Her monologues were often broken by the hum of a Singer sewing machine on the far side of the yard. In those days Aunt Mary’s head was always propped gently on the pillows; the rest of her figure silhouetted against the darker light in the surrounds. Her name, Mary Lawson was embroidered on each in red threading. During breakfast and supper the light from the lamp would be off and her face could barely be seen in the rising or sinking sun. Every morning, as a lark, I would sit in my favourite corner of the settee and read the Bible out to her. Aunt Mary never lost her amiability of character. She hid toffees in a bronze tin which she shared to us in her happier moments. In her last days her fading voice vibrated still with excitement and her exquisitely cut features shone.
She would talk unconcernedly about every subject under the sun. But gone were the days when her high feminine voice filled the house with song; she no longer had the spirit to sing. A wasting disease had attacked her nerves. As her strength waned, a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hour with mechanical regularity. Sometimes a quiet hymn was heard issuing from her window. Even after she was gone I felt happiest when little birds played and chirped on that window sill because I knew she loved them. When friends visited in the last few days we would occasionally hear a muffled gasp as though, the person was torn by uncontrollable sorrow. My mother would then go up the balustraded stairs and console them; she assured them how much progress Aunt Mary had made.
Among the older men was the aging figure of Old Ben with hair growing out of his scraggy head like tough little twigs drilled into through the fleshy parts of his dome into a stubborn skull. His face was stamped with a gentle character, lacking the severe cast of features of many of the older men. A finely moulded nose led to fattish lips below a spiky paintbrush moustache. In his youth he had seen dark days of debt and difficulty, and he looked out of a pair of languid, disappointed eyes at a world he regarded with deep suspicion. Those eyes tell the tale of his life. Sunken and conspiratorial, they look out calmly into a trouble stricken world; the eyes sparkled with delight when the children were around. When he took off his glasses and peered myopically around his face lost every gleam of intelligence. His drooping shoulders appeared to bear the burden of a lifetime; he loved to wear a shirt with an alligator emblem stitched to the chest. Smoke from Lucky Strike cigarettes never ceased to billow from the fat lips.
Although Old Ben had lots of money in his account, he lived in self-imposed penury and was always doing sums relating to rents and other incomes. He delighted in intellectual history with a palpable sense of conservatism and spoke endlessly about Attoh Ahuma, Sarbah, Rattray and Reindorf. Quotes from Attoh Ahuma’s Gold Coast Nation were never far from his lips but Carl Christian Reindorf’s work of 1895, History of the Gold Coast and Asante was his chief delight. He narrated the origin of the tribes, the reigns of princes, intrigues, wars and peace.
His moral beliefs were derived from the ethics of Christ. It was from Old Ben’s lips that I first heard of Plato, the ancient Greek poet, mathematician, logician, politician and philosopher; I also heard from my father of the waddling gait of Socrates who questioned everything around him and was finally poisoned.
There were old women with wrinkled faces, silver hair, gold earring and beaded bracelets of every tone of red, blue and yellow. They attended every festive occasion and mixed with old men with colonial hats, heavy European jackets, moustaches, pipes and walking sticks. They were the patriarchs of the house. Both groups spoke an older ponderous accent of idiomatic Ga, and claimed to worship a god called morality. Our little lives were burdened with their periodic acts of discipline. One memorable morning a cousin fell foul of the patriarchs. The morning was mute and the sun was low. Late for school, he failed to do his chores and bid farewell to the women. As far as could be recalled no child of the house had ever been so rude. Word had spread the previous night that his father would visit the next day. The father walked in with a proprietary air, and asked for explanation. There long pondering silences. Then the crack of the cane was heard; it was loud and clear. A crying voice of a child followed, sending a chilling message to the other children. The rigorous discipline told on the character of the young males. More telling still were the values of integrity, self-help, hard work and frowned on extravagance inculcated by the upright patriarchs. They had social position and society’s respect. They did not seek the company of politicians; and were reproachful of the drug of power and the public ethos that elevated the State to a cult. During his active years, most of Europe had been under the occupation of the Axis Powers; their atrocities and propaganda informed many of his views about politics. Much as I learned from these men, I inherited my driving determination and hard work from my parents. Both were early risers and worked late into the night.
Many of the male elders had been administrative managers in the colonial machinery, used to extending the colonial writ and the details of economic planning. They believed in sanitized bureaucracy. Several had worked at the Secretariat and the Treasury.
The Treasury was razed to the ground by the earthquake of 1939. Old Ben was particularly appalled by the notion that national identity proffered solutions to every social and economic problem. His was a moderate version of the prevailing elitist view, and reflected the emerging power systems and values of the political nucleus. The elite were present in the apparatus of the post-colonial state; but they compromised and traded off positions in return for party patronage. The typical post-colonial bureaucrat was possessed of house and car and set aside from kinsmen. His salary and pensions were paid into a Post Office Savings Account and his children were the beneficiaries of scholarships to England. Infused with Christian doctrine, they insisted on building a home upon the fear of God. The fear of God was indeed everywhere drilled into us with a little cane or a moderate knock on the head. As new babies arrived the elderly woman, ever vivacious, examined their features closely to see which ancestor they resembled; they believed in the endless cyclicality of family membership children bear the face-prints and even character-prints of their forebears. In fact, children were always named after members of the oldest generation.
With Independence came the cult of the State. It was a cult of power built around independence heroes and their collaborators. The undertones were Messianic. Independence was a victory many found too intoxicating. Party functionaries, still boozed on a brew of independence and new-found financial means, soon started to terrorise sympathisers of the Opposition. Old Ben once threatened to light a match on the jaw of a thug who attacked him.
Uncle Pappoe was the elder of the patriarchs, the grand seigneur. On Sundays he wore a grey flannel suit with a medal he had won in the Boer War. White hair grew out of his nostrils and he read his newspaper with a convex lens. When Uncle Pappoe approached the house, his walking stick would be heard from a distance, striking the ground at intervals. A figure with a slightly waddling gait he would walk through the gates, and a palpable sense of order descended on the house. He lived in a secluded quarter of the house. Each morning buckets of water were brought in from an outside tap, and a silver pitcher of coffee, accompanied by milk and marmalade of a tray, was sent from the kitchen.
Uncle seeped his tea unsweetened, shifting repeatedly in a large leather-backed chair as he tried to find a position of maximum comfort. When he knew that I had done well at school he permitted me to share his Darjeeling tea. I was happy to rinse and wipe the cups with a tea-cloth showing London Bridge. The room was hygienic and dust-free. Tea over, the grand seigneur gave us defaced and battered coins from a jar on a half-moon table, walked over to his gramophone and selected a shiny black disc from a large collection. When he carefully placed the pick-up head of the gramophone to brim of the disc, a brief irritating sound was soon followed by the rich sounds of his favourite artistes.
In the wee hours of the morning the morning deep-throated European voices issued from his wireless transistor mixed with jangling buckets of water. The deep-throated BBC announcers broke news from all over the world. Uncle took pride in being the first to announce a major event somewhere in the world: African coups, arrests of Martin Luther King, the shooting of Malcolm X, the victories of Muhammad Ali, communist crackdowns in Eastern Europe, the rise of juntas in South America, Brazilian football, proceedings in the British Parliament, the Vietnam War and American presidential campaigns. He spoke with a rapid accent and each event was constructed with a neat brickwork of detail that made you think he had personally observed it. The more troubling events often gave him cause for pause; and pause gave him thoughts he shared with us. His grandson, Emmanuel Pappoe, was later to be a member of the Black Stars, the national football team that played against Brazil in the 2006 World Cup. Our mental horizons widened ever more. Uncle Pappoe frequently called children to give account of their school work, and queried mothers about dirt in the kitchen. Once a son-in-law was unfortunate enough to be caught fondling another woman in the dark. The son-in-law explained incongruously that he had mistaken the woman’s gait for Uncle Pappoe’s daughter’s wifely carriage. The elderly patriarch bore all this with the indulgent smile of a benevolent uncle.
He was now in retirement but his working life lay principally in Accra although he had travelled around the small towns of the Gold Coast. He trekked around a good deal and collected a few women from various towns.
He kept an account with a bank on the high street; and was executor of several estates. By the early 1960s Uncle Pappoe was completely devoured by his preoccupations, and diseases preyed on his body even as worries destroyed his mind. The ending was poignant: his physical powers were waning and in appearance he looked like a sagging leather bag with its weight sunk to the bottom. Occasionally he would summon sufficient energy to convoke a family meeting. Uncle Pappoe’s rheumatic bones and failing health meant he had to spend many of his last days in hospital. When he eventually went to meet his Maker his decease marked the passing of an era.
Middle School standard seven was the pinnacle of the academic achievement of most of the early colonial and post-colonial gentlemen. Luckier ones went to Achimota and Mfantsipim schools and obtained Cambridge School Certificates, and an even luckier few sailed to England to become professionals. They would first work at the Treasury or the Secretariat and save some money while awaiting a scholarship or the kind help of a relative. They tended to regard the hypereducated youth of the post-Independence years with disdain. In Uncle Pappoe’s library books were arranged bulk upon bulk. A vast variety of files held endless information on family and personal affairs. Uncle Pappoe’s quarter was ruled with a stern hand characteristic of the elderly males. Their stern maleness contrasted sharply with gentleness of the women. The older women brewed corn wine for ceremonial occasions. Large pots were placed on a roaring fire fed by crooked logs. When the brew was complete children would sip the blackish hot stuff from little cups.
Homowo was the indigenous celebration of Creation and the major cultural event in the traditional calender. The festival tended to occur between the months of August and September; for the Ga calendar, much like the calendar governing major Muslim festivals, was based on counts of appearances of the moon and particular stars. In ancient times the Ga counted time by reference to migratory journeys. This was replaced by references to the tragic events surrounding the warrior-king, Okaikoi. Idiomatic expressions still make allusion to the era of Nikoi Olai, one of Okaikoi’s lieutenants. Some still refer to the Okaikoi or Nikoi Olai calendar, as it more popularly known, as the older calendar.
It dates from the last quarter of the eighteenth century when the Ga relocated to the coast from their inland base at Ayawaso. In contemporary times, the great Katamanso War in August 1826 forms the basis of all time counts. Thus, the homowo festival in the year of Ghana’s independence, 1957, occurred in year 131 of the traditional calendar. Also, year 2006, being 180 years after the Battle of Katamanso, is year 180. It was the duty of the time-keeping wulomo, Dantu, to inform his colleagues and chiefs of the precise date for the great festival.
The gentle rains of June and July refreshed the Earth and brightened life. Slanted, silvery rain rattled our windows. Growth and fruition touched every farmstead. Coconut palms slanted in the rain. Through April and May flowers blossomed in colours of white, red, rose, blue and gold and dark twigs looked luminous in the twilight. The matured sun quickened growth in gourds and fruits. Grains, seeds, nuts and fruits glistened in ripe fields; and animals grew fat on excess grain. Granaries and mossy farm houses were filled with the harvest. By roads and homes mangoes and cashews wafted a mild aroma; birds piped in the trees and the laughter of children filled the air. The cold Atlantic current of July and August brought the sardines and sea breams that filled the festive pot. The mornings were fresh with dew and haze. In August and September the granaries were full and the atmosphere was translucent. After September the life blood ebbed away from the Earth. Dryness and parchness returned.
Accra was constructed on a smaller scale then and was, beyond the outer outskirts, surrounded by sprawling fields, deep green grass and isolated masses of trees; much of it was a barren tract of country. The greening of the grass at the commencement of the rainy season was the joy of Fulani herdsmen whose long-horned animals grazed with bovine lanquor. The herdsmen were retained by influential chiefs and elders, and bulls were regularly brought into major households for slaughter on ritual occasions. Viewed in good weather from the summit of MaCarthy Hill, the Accra plains constituted a vast landscape stretched in every direction; on the far margins to the south were the azure sea, placid lagoons and dense settlements.
From the hill top, the lighthouse and the Jamestown harbour lay in close proximity. Jamestown Harbour was the hub of the foreign trade. Many of its ships were floating coffins with wooden gangways and uninviting decks.
Ships arrived from European, Asian and South American cities and ports. We particularly loved the names Antwerp, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Marseilles, Liverpool, Southampton, Rio de Janeiro and Santiago; and imagined Britain to be a cold, befogged island of coal surrounded by fish. The sailors were dressed in brisk uniforms. They rarely emerged from their vessels which remained docked in the distance. The town was frequently alive with rumours about the nocturnal activities of the sailors. They would go through the push doors of the smaller bars into dinghy rooms to join shadowy local drinkers in drinking binges within a haze of smoke. Drunk, they sometimes shouted all the Anglo-Saxon profanities they knew. The goods were offloaded into smaller vessels manned by the Krumen. It was a popular belief that the crew were occasionally bribed to capsize the small vessels whereupon every hoodlum in Accra who could swim a yard in the water had a field day helping themselves to the damaged cargo. It was possible that some of these mishaps were mere accidents given the strength of the currents in the bay between Jamestown harbour and the Christiansborg Castle.
From time to time Ship captains and crew opted to stay at the Sea View Hotel. They wandered through the blackjack and dice pits of the gambling casino, lit by huge chandeliers from deliberately low ceilings. The degenerate gamblers plied their skills with ravenous intent. Dotted yellow dice rolled in a haze of gold from the calloused palms of seasoned punters, their winnings carefully concealed in zippered pockets. The horseshoe blackjack tables were always crowded, and wheels hissed from the roulette tables nearby. They sailors would spend a considerable amount of time seeing the sights in the city. With the closure of the harbour, the hotel’s fortunes declined. Overnight the great potentialities of the quarter vanished. Young men played less sophisticated gambling games with red-backed cards and small change. The cards were dealt with admirable dexterity. Whoever got the queen of hearts was considered lucky; but a good player still considered himself fortunate if he got an eight of diamonds, the king of clubs & the ace of clover.
My father had a reputation as a formidable swimmer. He had a formidable presence with military shoulders and real gravitas. He held very fixed views and no one messed around in his presence. I grew tired of virtual strangers constantly reminding me that my father swam the span of the harbour thirty times without break. Perhaps I inherited my love of the sea from him. It was an inseparable kind of love. Moonlight bestowed a mark of beauty upon the sea. The gold moon would hung upon the waves and spread its light far and wide. In the slack tide the waters were a velvet shimmer, supple and calm. Uncle Pappoe explained that the moon’s calming effect on the sea derived from the natural laws of magnetism.
The older children read their books aloud at home, and I had heard of Long John Silver, Captain Morgan and their band of sea thieves, some with cutlasses between the teeth. We were particularly enthralled by tales about the buccaneers of the West Indies, a body of freebooters who robbed and pillaged treasure-laden ships. For long periods in its history, the Caribbean was a sea robber’s nest. The brigands followed their illegal calling across the swift currents, preying upon commerce and driving fear and terror into the hearts of merchants and colonial adventurers. The predatory vessel would make good its escape, free as a sea bird; and the crew would sing wild songs of women and rum. I loved to read how the outlaws eluded the law men. Several attempts by colonial enforcers to put down and break up the organisation of the pirates failed.
On moonless nights we dreamt of pirates upon the swell of the waves, way beyond the coast where the beams of the lighthouse hardly shone. The ships barely entered the harbour. Moored beyond the breakwater their cargo was lowered into smaller boats for shore where they became subject to the bureaucracies of the customs long room. The occasional mariner would check into a hotel and the faint chording of a guitar and bursts of song were often heard from the hotel long into the night. The young men talked about the man behind the bar at the Sea View with its throng of whores. The Sea View was the city’s own capital for indiscreet liaisons. Rich old men cruised around the streets seeking carnal pleasure. There was considerable evidence of poverty.
Young men who had nothing in the world save the clothes on their backs hung around street corners looking for opportunities. Some took to washing drinking glass at the Sea View with dead flies stuck to the glutinous bottom.
As I got older, writing took the place of playing in the parks and feeling the lush grass underfoot, of truanting among the coconut groves, of eavesdropping on the conversation of adults, of stealing glances at girls with uptilted cupped breasts, and of fighting to establish a pecking order. The civic environment in which I grew up gradually got more complicated and newspapers and magazines widened my knowledge of the workings of politics and government.
Attainment of independence was Nkrumah’s crowning eminence. He was a founder of a state in the true sense. Ever the visionary, he went on to found many of the most critical institutions of nationhood; but his enemies were implacable. Jamestown started to lose its cosmopolitan outlook. In 1866 Lagos had been united with the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and the Gambia under one government known as the Government of the West African Settlements. By Royal Charter of 24 July 1874 the Gold Coast and Lagos were separated from the other colonies and constituted into an independent colony with its own legislature known as the Gold Coast Colony.
This probably accounts for the large Yoruba presence in Accra in the immediate post-Independence period. The Yoruba community was always vibrant. Always culturally assertive, their distinctive robes and headgear gave them an unmistakable presence. The Yorubas were consummate traders and bought and sold things which locals had never thought of as merchantable. They dealt in scrap metal and recyclables of all sorts. Others ran bicycle hiring businesses. With loud festivals and great conviviality, they added colour to Accra Central. Various other peoples also arrived in Accra to work, to cook and to launder clothes. Many were adaptive and went on from laying rail tracks and other construction work to becoming entrepreneurs and important social players; significant numbers eventually intermarried and became part of the city’s fabric.
Aside from talk about the outbreak of influenza and Bubonic plague, the older men seemed fixated with the War. The years before the War were regarded as the halcyon days when everything flowed from the Horn of Plenty and shops were awash with goods. The prevailing fashion with turned up trousers, brogues, flat caps, pipes and shirt sleeves were straight out of the docks of Liverpool. Educated men clubbed together, their minds were decidedly colonial. They mimicked the habits of the Inns of Courts of England; played billiards and smoked Tusker, Gold Star, and Lucky Strike. Their thoughts were dominated by social advancement. Influences from abroad were evident. Their views on current affairs derived principally from avid reading of the daily newspapers with a few lop-sided ideas from elementary school books thrown in.
Cross-currents of controversy prevailed. The men were roughly divided into pro and anti-Nkrumahists. The debates were keen. We sneaked to the bars to hear them reducing complex phenomena to their elements. On one occasion a bartender was called upon to settle the most urgent questions at the bottom of the debates by vote. On one odd occasion we heard some of the most educated discussing Europe and the shattering of Newtonian principles by the theories of Einstein. It was led by a man described as a leading literary lion once. The younger men preferred to mimic the Americans. Their clothes were relaxed, their hair cut to Tokyo Joe and bow hairstyles. They argued endlessly about sports and took the young women to parties and concerts in Accra’s raucous public halls where they danced to music by bands led by King Bruce, E.T. Mensah, Spike Anyankor and Guy Warren. The musicians bashed loud music out of gleaming instruments and demonstrated the latest dance styles. Yet another group, the retired soldiers only talked about Burma and their own exaggerated exploits in the Far East.
Freedom was still in the air, particularly as Nkrumah continued to support liberation movements across Africa. Accra was in slow ferment. It was suddenly severed from the tranquil, laidback life of yesteryear. Youths tramped the city for scarce jobs. Buccaneering businessmen fished for opportunities.
The shipping and forwarding companies raked in huge profits from the post-War boom resulting partly from strides in mechanical inventions around the turn of the twentieth century. Some transformed their money into landed wealth as government developments in social infrastructure enhanced land values. The lawyers moved in to lock land away behind a system of tenures and estates that confused layfolk. Chiefs and leading family members sold land and craved new pomps and lusts. For the first time land acquired scarcity value, and land booms occurred in the most desirable areas with prices leaping higher and higher at Adabraka and Kokomlemle. It was in sharp contrast to the terrible visitations on the Gold Coast economy during the period of the Great Depression.
My days at Jamestown were among the happiest in my life. But really I belong more to Ussher Town or Kinka where the roots of every true Ga Mashie man lies. My mother’s mother, Karley Mensah, was born of a Jamestown woman; but my maternal grandmother’s father, Numo Ogbarmey I, had been a Sakumo Wulomo at Kinka or Usshertown. He was the spiritual leader in charge of the war god, Sakumo. Sakumo was also the highest Ga political diety. The Sakumo Wulomo has final spiritual authority in the installation of the Ga Mantse, the political head of the indigenes of Accra. Sakumo’s reputation was encapsulated in its nickname, Ofite-Osaa (he who destroys and makes whole). On the battlefield, the spirit and fury of Sakumo filled the warriors, but after victory he sanctioned reconciliation and re-harmonisation. Its priest had charge of Faa-Naa villages along the western coast; in the days of yore he also collected tolls from the ferry over the Sakumo lagoon to the west of Accra. Revenue from travellers from the west filled the treasury and fed ritual activity. My great-grandfather was converted by a Christian missionary, Thomas Birch Freeman, and changed his name to Paul Mensah, Ogbarmey, the third male name in the Sakumo family’s nomenclature was altered to Mensah, also denoting a third male child.
The return of my grandmother’s body to the Sakumo ancestral household denoted her inseparable connexion to that great house. It was part of Ga belief in the world of the dead, gbohii-adzen. Mortuary rites had to be performed by patrikin who had the privilege of calling the funeral.
Just before the body is put in the coffin, the closest adult relatives are called into the mourning room for a short, solemn ceremony comprising mainly of reconciliation and messages from the living to the dead. The dead are believed to cross a river into the nether world; the living therefore put cash and gold ornaments in the coffin to help the departed pay his way at the ferry crossing into the land of the dead. The kindred Dangme people, believe that all the dead converge at a place called Azizanya on the Volta estuary where their noses are broken and they acquire the alleged nasalized accent of the dead.
Religion and morality seeped through every crevice of society. The Christians were on the ascendancy. To our young minds the religiosity of the Church profited from the mythological view of the world shared by traditionalists. Biblical stories featured large in the schoolroom and in ordinary conversation; the Bible was the preferred book of wisdom and morality. It was more than that: it was God’s word written in fiery little alphabets in a bound black volume on which were engraved the words Holy Bible. The Bible was the constant companion of the sick, the afflicted and the troubled. It was proudly carried by every parishioner. Society guided itself by its stories and lessons. The protagonists, the blessed children of God, were all white. We took their names and were instructed to behave like them.
The result was a black society modelled after the life of Christ and the morality and ethics of ancient Jews. Yesu Christo was the perfect man. Quietly-spoken priests, mimicking his life and attitude, led funeral corteges. Still Christ towered far above them; for no one could reach his purity and degree of suffering. In the end his enemies had him crucified at Golgotha upon trumped up charges. Each Easter the Golgotha event was remembered in solemnity by every Christian. ‘Crucify Him’ became a byword for betrayal, false accusation and treachery. It also denoted glee, inaction or cowardice on the part of one’s colleagues and followers and their reluctance to come to one’s aid in his moment of direst need. Little did I know that those words were to feature large in my latter years. By careful stress on biblical texts on redemption, atonement and apocalypse, a few of the churches became strongly apocalyptic in the interpretation of scripture. The churches provided a place of spiritual release and self-expression.
There were baptism by immersion, fervent hymn-singing, drumming, spirit possession, speaking in tongues and call-and-response sessions. In church the priests were energised into thundering preachers. The flock grew, places of worship multiplied, crucifixes atop their gables, and the power of the traditional priests waned. There were Muslims too and the Qur’an, but they only made a quiet impact.
People were divided into sinners and the righteous, not just members of the great lineages. English ideas about life and death crept into public thought. Heaven and Hell were places of afterlife, places of blissful rest and torture the reality of which was assured by the Bible. The story of Lazarus was told and retold. Good folk went to Heaven to be with their Maker. The wicked were punished with everlasting torments in the fires of Hell. The vile place was depicted in religious tracts, and the images of the roaring flames terrorised our young minds. We imagined Hades to be a place of cruel punishment, filled with moans and wails of wretched souls subject to ceaseless torture. Sin was the cause of their fate. The idea of sin was surrounded in taboos, moral sanctions and biblical injunctions.
At James Fort prison we saw the lot of the sinful on this side of the grave. Prisoners often represented a parade of pathetic souls. Shaven and dressed in regulation grey baft, the prisoners carried their own excreta and were reduced to a state worst than the dust on our feet. The elders told us that whenever in the gray light of the morning a black flag fluttered in the fort in previous years, it was a sign that a prisoner had been executed. Morbidly curious citizens gathered to hear whispers about the sins of the condemned man. The unfortunate soul was marched to the scaffold and a noose placed around his neck. When the control was cut the body dangled lifeless in the air; they were hung in the evenings and the dying light added an eerie supernatural touch to the scene. The regime of revenge psychology and of murder for murder and cruelty for cruelty never appeared to save any mortals. We could not abide by the thought of dead men. I felt happy when a man on death row was reprieved. Once a prisoner escaped; there was a bugle call and the warders came searching anxiously through the alleys of Jamestown.
We tried to understand the place of the Jews in the Christian concept of history. The sacred history set out in scripture started with Creation and ended with Last Judgement when God’s will is finally fully established and the scum of the Earth wiped out. Central to this scheme of things is a Messiah to pull man away from sin. It was much later that I discovered that aside from Jewish concepts of history and morals, Christian beliefs were influenced by philosophical views derived from Plato and the Stoics. The Jews, a remarkable people, retained throughout a chain of adversities, a belief in their pre-eminence and refused to acquiesce in the beliefs of various conquerors. Through captivity in Egypt and Babylon and Roman conquest they retained their religious and cultural identity, attributing all setbacks to God’s anger.
Christianity, the great cultural arm of colonialism, had profound effect on Accra. It was first brought to Accra by the Portuguese. The black-haired Europeans embarked on exploratory journeys along the Gold Coast in the fifteenth century. They touched ashore in Accra and the resulting trade occasioned extensive relocation to the coast from the inland base of Ayawaso. Fishhooks, glass beads, velvets, rum and the like were traded for gold and slaves. The territory surrounding Accra was not productive of gold; however, constant blockage of the route between the Fantis and the Ashantis resulted in the trading in Accra of much of the gold obtained elsewhere. For decades Accra was the easternmost and most lucrative point where gold could be obtained along the Gold Coast. The local name for gold, shi-oka (that which has to be extracted), derived from the parent Dangme sika, became the commonly accepted name for money and gold throughout the Gold Coast.
The Portuguese also brought the Bible and Christian ideas. The religion was, however, largely restricted to their trading posts. The Catholicism of the Portuguese hardly left any imprint on GaDangme culture, partly on account of the arrogant actions of the Portuguese whose trading posts were razed to the ground, after a series of haughty actions by the Commander, Alphonso Gonzales Botafogo.
The Portuguese trade left a considerable legacy of Portuguese words which now form an integral part of the Ga language: akontaa (count), cupoo (cup), plegoo (nail), akponoo (biscuit/bread), kamisaa (lady’s under-garment), caasiw (cheese), flonoo (oven), aboloo (cake), kplotoo/porcoo (pig), agbuyaa (fisherman’s needle), sabolai (onion), asepatre (shoe), aligidon (cotton), etc. To these were added the Dutch words kakalika (cockroach) and klakun (turkey). The Dutch also gave to Ghanaian culture the ceremonial drink, schnapps, and the ubiquitous wax print.
The work of the great Swiss-German missionary, Johannes Zimmermann finally gave impetus to Christianity among the Ga. Zimmermann translated the Bible directly from the Hebrew into the Ga language in 1865 and with it introduced Judaeo/Christian concepts into the GaDangme view of the world. Zimmermann and Christaller gave us the Ga and Twi alphabets with the Germanic letters and sounds. As a result all biblical characters bear Germanic versions of Europeanised names such as Yohanne, Yesu and Paulo. Zimmermann’s translation of the Bible was the first among any Ghanaian people, and one of the first on the African continent. Working for the Basel mission from a remote outpost at Abokobi, Zimmermann also wrote a dictionary and a large number of hymns. These were preceded by translations of a number of the Gospels. To support the small Christian community around him, the great translator raised melons and corn on cultivated soil. With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 the work of the great Swiss-German missionaries came to an end. Many were tagged as ‘enemy aliens’, subjected to restrictions and the Basel Society was handed over to a largely Scot Presbyterian Mission.
Zimmermann’s pupils and assistants were among the most eager propagators of the religion. My ancestor Numo Ogbarmey, the Sakumo Wulomo, was converted to Christianity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by the Methodist missionary, Thomas Birch Freeman and christened Paul Mensah. Accounts of his conversion, principally in Bartels’ Roots of Ghana Methodism, are the first about a major figure in the Ga Mashie polity and of the creeping of Christianity into centre of traditional society. Not an insignificant portion of the early missionaries’ work was devoted to the eradication of slavery which had permeated the crevices of society.
Many of the remotest villages near the foothills of the Akwapim hills actually started as slave sanctuaries, Achimota, Agbogba and Grunshie Agbogba being the most notable. Again, the Ga Mantse kept a prison known as kpabun for debtors and slave owners and the Sakumo shrine was a sanctuary for escaped slaves.
The educated modelled themselves after English gentlemen and ladies, imitating their accents and costumes. The professionals were the guiltiest. They talked about science and of philosophy and speculated. If they didn’t take themselves so seriously this incongruous tropical parody of English life would have been laughable. Yet there was no real room at the top of the colonial hierarchy for these black Englishmen. The establishment of the Korlebu mortuary removed the final veil from death. Up until then the dead were quickly despatched to their graves, followed by a sustained period of mourning. Then in the interests of public health, the burial of important personages at home was banned and the development of public cemeteries encouraged. With possibilities of putting a dead relation in deep freeze, funerals could be planned at greater leisure. It all part of the colonial bureaucrats obsession with processing. Even the dead had to be processed and given body identification numbers, there could be no burial without authorisation; babies were registered; and statistics on school enrolment and employment were scrupulously maintained. Funeral costs escalated and undertakers’ businesses flourished. The dead bodies of important traditional figures gradually became the subject of litigation as successors struggled for their offices. Few noted that much of society’s capital was ending up in the pockets of the undertakers. They were both feared and reviled; but sad-eyed and calculating, they sold coffin after coffin to mourning families, shrewdly putting their money in brick and mortar.
Accra central was divided into several quarters, in turn, subdivided into maximal family units and smaller lineages. Every GaDangme name is encoded with the personal data of the individual, including place of origin, rank by seniority within the immediate family; these can be observed at a glance from an individual’s name. A similar system of nomenclature is followed by their kinsmen in Aneho.
Following the death of Okaikoi, the core Ga retired to Aneho, Glidzi and Zowla, well beyond the Volta, creating links between Ga and Ewe people. Among the Dangme links with the Ewe are even closer. Kudzragbe and several of the Ada clans are directly descended from Ewes. Other Dangme settled at Agotime-Kpetoe in the Volta region where they pioneered the famous Kente cloth. My paternal great grandfather was partly descended from Aneho people. My mother’s name is Lartekai Lawson. The Lawsons are among the most educated families in that part of West Africa. In fact, the first person to visit Europe from that part of the world was a Lawson; they also established the Methodist Church.
My father was partly descended from Brazilian immigrant settlers in Accra and had smooth, wavy hair. A photograph of him remained in my sister’s possession until lately. He died when I was in Primary Four. On his mother’s side he was descended from Mantse Ankrah, one of the major warlords who fought at the Battle of Katamanso in 1826. Mantse Ankrah later led a celebrated military campaign through the Volta gorge well documented in Reindorf’s History of the Gold Coast and Asante (1895). Litigation over Mantse Ankrah’s extensive estate consumed my father and his kin. Together with men like F.W. Amarteifio, D.S. Quarcoopome, Amos Lamptey they prosecuted their case right up to the Judcial Committee of the Privy Council of the House of Lords, the highest point of appeal in the Gold Coast. We took our names and those of our children, including Okailey and Okaikor, from my father’s maternal connexions with the Gbese quarter of Accra. My father took Aryeh as his surname in honour of his mother who had a double claim to the name. My maternal grandmother was the daughter of an elder twin brother of the famous Ga Mantse, King Tackie Tawiah I. A noted warlord and overlord of Accra, King Tackie was a forceful chief who remained a thorn in the side of the colonialist and ultimately had to be exiled from the city. He was the son of Teiko Doku. A relatively rare name in Accra, Aryeh belongs the Teiko Tsuru ruling dynasty. My sisters, Ameley, Amorkor, etc. were also given Teiko Tsuru family names. The claim to the name was reinforced by our Great Ningo antecedents; for Mantse Ankrah had married a Ningo woman from Osabunya, Kweinorki, from whom my father’s matrilineage descended.
My father spent his last days at Charles Lane, seat of the Ankrahs. The then chief of the quarter, fair-skinned, grey beard and all, regularly sat under a mango tree in the cobbled yard. He was Nii Amoo Nakwa, chief of Otublohum but even to my child’s eye there appeared to some kind of tension between him and my father. My father never talked about him and to this date the quiet tension has never been explained to me. I do know that Nii Amoo Nakwa was from the Atifi quarter of Otublohum while my father was descended from the Ankrah’s of Dadebanaa. The two quarters were originally made up of Akan settlers in Accra; the former being Akwamu in origin and the latter principally Denkyira. The Ankrahs originate from a common matriarch, Amanuah, reputedly a Denkriya woman and niece of Ntim Gyakari who was, in turn, reputed to have sired Osei Tutu who raised war against him and went on to found the Ashanti kingdom. Amanuah was the mother of Mantse Ankrah, Ayi and Okanta from whom all the Ankrahs of Accra are descended. My father descended directly from Mantse Ankrah through the acknowledged female line of that lineage.
The rise of the Ankrahs was rooted in the military activities of Mantse Ankrah (originally Kofi Twumasi), but nicknamed Ankrah after his habit of never bidding farewell when embarking on military campaigns. His famous campaigns to Bame are well recorded by Reindorf. According to Reindorf (p. 246) “King Tackie called a meeting of all his great chiefs, including Akwete Krobo Saki, Akotia Owosika, Dodu Nyang, Ahuma, Dowuona, and they unanimously appointed chief Ankrah of Dutch Town as commander-in-chief and ordered him to organise an army.” Mantse Ankrah left Accra in the first week of July in 1859 with an army of 15,000 men. After his campaigns Mantse Ankrah founded the villages of Awudome and Avenor, renaming them after major points of the campaign. My father spent much of his adult life litigating the family’s title to those lands right up to the Privy Council of the House of Lords. He put a team of lawyers on the case, including E.C. Quist, Nii Amaa Ollennu and Edward Akufo-Addo and was twice in London for appeals. My father was the leading plaintiff in the cases of Aryeh v. Ankrah (1957) 3 W.A.L.R. 104 P.C., Aryeh v. Dawuda (1944) 10 W.A.C.A. 188 and in the consolidated case of Captan v. Ankrah (1951) 13 W.A.C.A. 151, litigating with spirit and eagerness the family’s title to lands at Awudome in Accra.
I must have inherited my indomitable will from my father, a man given to fighting causes. He remained aloof from the political controversies of the time, giving all his energies of the family estate. He prosecuted many causes with steely determination and his belief in courage, integrity and unremitting hard work informed my every endeavour and often reminded me of Byron’s words: “freedom’s battle, once begun, bequeathed from bleeding dsire to son.”
Shortly after the death of my father, General J.A. Ankrah, a member of the family became head of state and attempted finally to resolve all problems within the family. The much-loved Nii Ayi Ankrah became the head of the family until he was challenged, several decades afterwards, by Nii Kwaku Ankrah. The mother of the latter was from Ofori Solo we, and was thus related to me on both maternal and paternal sides; but in 2002, Nii Kwaku Ankrah refused my brother burial in the family mausoleum near the Azuma Nelson Sports Complex at North Kaneshie on grounds that my father had not been buried in the same mausoleum due to family problems.
John Parker’s 1995 University of London PhD thesis, Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra, 1860-1920 documents the activities of leading members of the Ankrah famly at length. For instance, during the Sagrenti War in the last quarter of the nineteenth century Adjabeng Ankrah lent £1,000.00 to the British. In reward he was given a trophy to tumultuous street celebration. To this day Adjabeng’s name is the Ga byword for street celebration. The magnitude of Adjabeng’s generosity is placed in perspective when one recalls that barely two decades earlier the Royal Geographical Society had thought the sum of £5000.00 too high a sum to invest in the expeditions of John Hanning Speke which led to the discovery of the source of the Nile. Polly Hill’s celebrated work, The Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana, records in an extensive appendix that Joseph Adjabeng Quansah Solomon, then head of the family, was one of the leading creditor-farmers who drove the Gold Coast cocoa boom following the introduction of the cocoa bean to the country by Tetteh Quarshie.
My father had two paternal brothers. One was Amos Josiah, who helped to found Accra Great Olympics. His final days, as he lay on his sick bed, were full of moral exhortations. Another paternal uncle, Robert Kwamla Amaa-Kwantreng, originally Robert Josiah, was for long an eminent figure in Accra. Like my father, he was involved in a number of high profile civil cases. In Kwantreng v. Amassah (1962) G.L.R. 241 at 243 he was described by the Supreme Court as “a prominent citizen and well-known surveyor of Accra.” Amarh Kwantreng’s vast estate was embroiled in problems which slowly dragged through the courts in the form of the cases of Quist v. Kwantreng (1961) G.L.R. 605 and Re Amarh-Kwantreng (1968) G.L.R. 311. In Quist v. Kwantreng, the famous judge Ollennu declined to sit on the case as the families of both parties were well known to him. At stake in the majority of the cases was a substantial property at Okaishie.
My mother had only one surviving brother, George Lartey Lawson, a veteran of Second World War campaigns in Burma. He was buried at the military cemetery at Christiansborg. While alive he regaled us with war tales while polishing an old and defective Bren gun. He was recruited into the Royal West African Frontier Force and transported in a cattle truck to various locations for training prior to seeing action in Burma. He would particularly recall action in front line trenches just below the brow of a hill where they had met a devastating fire. Unknown to them preparations were in hand in the enemy camp for a massive offensive. Shells fell all around. Many of his comrades fell; uniforms were soaked in blood. The unit sustained terrible casualties. For the next few days stretcher bearers were busy taking bodies to the field ambulance. The unit was later to retreat to a defence line where his wounds started to heal. These he would narrate after slinging his hammock to a tree to enjoy a lazy afternoon.
End of Chapter 1 of Josiah-Aryeh's forthcoming book
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