by Adwoa Badoe
The aroma of stewed tomatoes, shrimp and ginger filled the room. I waited with anticipation for the Jollof rice Mary was cooking. Mary dished out for Mr. Opoku, and then for me. And the three of us shared a most delicious meal. Good food had the power to soothe my uneasiness.
Mr. Opoku left soon after. There would be no more outings for us for a while, and no more visits late into the night. Rawlings’ government had imposed a 6 p.m. curfew across the length and breadth of the country. It was far safer to lie low in one’s home than to be seen here and there, enjoying the good life.
‹•›
At the university we could walk about at any time, so long as we did not go off campus. This was our city, insulated from the rest of the country. So the usual traffic between halls started again.
As someone had said, “All roads lead to Africa!”
Banahene came to visit that evening, and this time there was no competition with externals — the boyfriends who were not university students. I gave him the warmest hug, and he returned my enthusiasm with a kiss on the cheek. His eyes twinkled with mischief as we caught up with each other.
“Have you observed the effects of this coup d’état? So many students have turned socialist.”
“How do you know? We haven’t had an SRC meeting yet,” I said.
“Haven’t you seen them striding about in Black Moses sandals, calling each other comrade?” he asked, referring to the rough-and-ready sandals cut out of old car tires.
I checked out Banahene’s shoes. They were brown-leather lace-up shoes. He also had on a blue shirt with sleeves rolled up to his biceps.
He was no socialist if clothes were the sign.
“If these people have their own way, Black Moses may become standard wear by law — the people’s sandals!”
‹•›
It was Tuesday, and we had gathered in Dr. Ampem’s office for the first of our group meetings for the term. I had gone with Sylvia as usual. We found the group enlarged by three others. Jordan, my lanky course mate who had won the discussion over the Dawn Broadcast, had come for the very first time.
Behind his black-framed spectacles, Dr. Ampem’s eyes danced with passion. His hair had grown thicker over the break. His beard was still small and scruffy, and he had full charge of the agenda.
“There are now possibilities for real change at the grassroots,” he said. “We can finish what was started in 1979, at the awakening of the people.”
I had never heard him associate so closely with Rawlings’ 1979 coup.
“Sir, do you mean that you prefer a military government to a civilian government?” I asked.
“No, Charlotte. It was Marx who said revolutions are the locomotives of history. It usually takes the power of militancy to birth a revolution. Then they must access the power of intellectuals to determine the forward momentum. I believe in government for and of the people, but not when it is hijacked by special interest — particularly selfish capitalist interest. If Dr. Nkrumah had been alive, we might have brought him back at this historic time. But instead here we are.”
There it was again — the royal we. I couldn’t let it go.
“Sir, are you not worried that the military will mistreat the people as they did in 1979? People are scared, wondering if there are more executions waiting to happen,” I said.
“Charlotte, trust me, there will be no bloodshed this time. This is a controlled exercise. It is not reactionary. There is a real agenda to put this nation forward. In fact, the times have become intensely exciting, and some of you should be stepping up as the next SRC leaders when the current council hands over. I hope that this group of ours has prepared you for leadership and provided you with some basis for ideology.”
Commitment burned in his eyes like red hot embers inside a coal pot. Ampem’s ownership of the current government was as strong as if he had held a gun alongside the coup makers.
A chill traveled down my spine.
Bangla Mensah began to suggest names for formalizing our group into a committee. He settled on the Socialist Students’ Think Tank. Mensah had adopted Ampem’s way of using the royal we. He was talking as if he had some clout with the new government.
Dr. Ampem asked if I would like to be secretary or treasurer.
“You might even stand as president. It’s time for new things,” he said with a loud chuckle. But Mensah did not laugh.
“I’ll think about it, sir,” I replied.
“The changes which are coming are monumental, and we shall need courageous leaders to harness the energy of the youth. There has never been such an opportunity for Ghana,” said Bangla Mensah.
Suddenly I realized it was Mensah’s intention to use our group as a base for his own stand on campus.
My own father was not on the left half of the political divide, and neither was my mother. Like them I understood the importance of welfare but I was not attracted to the authoritarian way of life of the Russians or the Chinese. They had no freedom.
Also my parents were strongly opposed to military governments, even if they were too scared to utter a word about it in the daylight. I was worried because Dr. Ampem made it sound as though we were already an arm of the PNDC revolution. I made up my mind to tell Sylvia that I was quitting.
On our way back that evening, Sylvia chose to walk with Mensah, and I kept company with Dr. Ampem and the others.
Back at Africa Hall, Sylvia had news for me.
“Mensah just asked me to go out with him,” she said, unable to contain her joy.
“Mensah?” I said, stunned.
“Yes. He is my boyfriend.”
It was then I realized that I was on my own.
‹•›
Dr. Ampem missed class the next Thursday, and the class disintegrated into groups of noisy conversations. Jordan had a newspaper, and we read about the dismissals and arrests of men in high office. There were no reasons given for the sacking of several career diplomats and civil servants, except to accuse them vaguely of inefficiency.
Clearly, the new government was making room for its own breed of civil servants.
The center pages of the newspaper were dedicated to J. J. Rawlings. In one picture he was bent over a spade unclogging an open drain. In another picture he was on a podium spouting his ideas of revolution. He was always surrounded by cheering crowds and the usual faces of his PNDC comrades. The picture had a caption: Rawlings’ ideology is summed up in one word, Ghana.
Just before the period ended, Jordan asked me, “Are you going to the SRC meeting on Saturday?”
“Why don’t we invite the class?” I stood up and addressed the class. “People, there is going to be an SRC meeting on the weekend. This is one we shouldn’t miss. I appeal to the ladies, especially. We need to make our voices heard.”
“This is the time to speak up,” said Jordan.
“We will be there,” said my course mate Philomena.
For the first time I identified significant interest in student politics among my course mates. I remembered that first debate we’d had about noise as a public nuisance on campus. Only a few of us had spoken then, but the coup d’état had triggered something in the air.
‹•›
For lunch, Sylvia, Juaben and I went over to the food base across the road from the social sciences faculty. It was a hot day and we found a bench beneath the tree. I wanted to eat waakye — purple rice and beans. The others opted for fried plantain and beans. I preferred to have my food wrapped in leaves rather than a poorly washed, oily bowl.
“African germs don’t kill,” said Juaben, who received her food in an orange plastic bowl.
“Nonsense,” I said.
I was delighted to see Banahene as he and some guys crossed the road to the food base. He left the guys and joined us after he had bought a serving of gari and beans with a drizzle of thick zomi
palm oil. He sat astride the narrow bench and tucked into his food. A flock of crows crossed the afternoon sky, cawing as they went by.
“Did you girls know that Dr. Ampem belongs to a powerful socialist fraternity in Accra? He is apparently good buddies with Rawlings. It makes sense that he was starting some kind of cell here. Charlotte, you and Sylvia may be on some list of socialist revolutionaries,” said Banahene dramatically.
“You hype everything through the roof, Banahene,” said Sylvia.
“Dr. Ampem would have told us,” I said.
“Why does he have to hide anything? He has nothing to fear,” said Sylvia.
Still, I remembered the way he used the pronoun we at our last meeting.
A sudden shout at a nearby table interrupted our discussion.
“This can’t be true. No way!” said one of the guys.
“What’s up?” shouted Banahene.
“Daavi, turn up the radio,” said someone to the waakye seller.
We all gathered around the small radio that stood on the serving table. One of the guys fiddled with the tuner. Moments later, we heard the announcement.
“The government has closed down all the universities and tertiary institutions in the country. Students are to proceed to their homes and await instructions from the National Service Secretariat.”
It appeared we were being sent home to engage in exercises to rescue the country. The main agenda was to evacuate cocoa, which apparently was languishing in the interior for failure of transportation.
We were stunned.
Everywhere along the Mecca road, students were talking about it. Back in the hall, the news traveled along the corridors and across the courtyard by bush telephone.
That evening the news was posted on the notice boards in every hall and every department. We could talk until we were hoarse, but the government was forcing us all into the rainforest to transport the cocoa harvest to the various ports of Ghana.
Over the weekend we said our goodbyes. We were all hoping it wouldn’t be long before we returned to school. We packed our belongings. I was so glad when Mary agreed to take most of my boxes to her home. Then, along with Sylvia, Juaben and Banahene, I caught the STC bus for Accra.
The revolution had come home to me.
10
In Accra, we received our first instructions by radio. Students from my part of the city were to meet on the grounds of a local elementary school. We milled around, confused and full of complaints. Eventually Elias Dagadu, a third-year student from the University of Ghana, Legon, and a member of their SRC took charge. Dagadu was a serious-looking fellow with buck teeth. He wrote our names against the university or college we attended, and the year of matriculation. Then he sent us off in teams to pick up litter.
At noon we were sent home. Our new instructions were to bring brooms and machetes for the rest of the week.
The next day they carried us in trucks to an illegal rubbish dump near Nima. If there was a hell on earth, this was it, and our task was to cleanse hell.
There were about fifty students in our work team. We were given shovels to move the rubbish — rotting food, decomposing rodents, even human excreta — onto a truck. The smell alone could have killed me.
We worked without gloves or boots, and at day’s end we could hardly bear to be near each other. I didn’t even entertain the idea of lunch, and I was thankful for the standing-room-only truck ride back home. Sitting would have pressed my clothes against my body, and pressed others against me.
When I got home, Dad fetched the garden hose and hosed me down right there in the front yard. As for my shoes and clothes, my mother threw them away that evening.
In Accra, all tertiary students had been organized into similar neighborhood groups. The rumor was that if we did not check in with our particular groups daily, we would not be able to check back into university. Our groups had been announced on the radio. But it was never quite clear to me if we were being managed by the National Union of Ghana Students or the National Service Secretariat, which administered the obligatory year of service graduates rendered to the country for covering our tertiary education.
On the plus side of things, I reconnected with some students I knew from Tech and also from my former secondary school. I also made new acquaintances. All this while we picked up litter and cleared unkempt bushes.
Meanwhile, I imagined that socialists like Dr. Ampem were hard at work designing plans in tight think tanks to transition Marxist theories into the mainstream.
Many of us were opposed to these exercises, but because we were unwilling to risk our places at the university, we went exactly where we were told.
Nothing irked my parents more than the radio announcements that were posted about student mobilization.
“Nkwaseasɛm — nonsense!” said my dad. “To think your studies have been halted so you can sweep around places for which people have been hired to clean. Imagine a stupid claim that we are unable to move our most important cash crop to the ports. Tweaa! So much foolishness in one country! We might as well bring back the colonizers!”
I agreed with him. With so many unemployed people, why would the government close down the universities and insist on student labor to move cocoa from the forest to the port? Didn’t they realize that they were taking jobs away from seasonal workers?
We had worked for a week when they announced to us that our group was one of those being sent to Kwahu to move cocoa. These were the days of martial law, and there was nothing for it but to comply.
‹•›
No matter which direction one took out of Accra, the countryside was the same — half-cement, half-adobe houses scattered among dilapidated mud hovels. Scruffy children played in the dust, and tired men and women walked with various loads on their heads, sweating in the sun. Our bus wheezed on the climb up the narrow twisting road.
I rested my head against the window, three seats behind the driver. Nothing changed from mile to mile — not even the dusty bushes that grew between villages.
In our bus, the male students were singing songs, and one of them was clicking a thumb-bell to keep the rhythm. The rhythm-keeper was the leader — a smallish man in a red beret who sang profanities in a falsetto. I wished I could zone out completely, but it was impossible on this crowded ride up the Kwahu Mountains towards the town of Obo. Like an aging asthmatic the bus slowed to a crawl when the road became too steep.
“I hope the engine doesn’t die on us,” I muttered.
“Don’t worry,” said the girl who sat next to me. “There are enough stupid songs to urge it on forever.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I turned to her and said, “Hello. I am Charlotte from Tech.”
“Sharon from Cape Coast University,” she replied.
She had been trying to read Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls. But like me she’d had to quit. The power rested with those turning good songs into profanity.
The women who sat in front of me were shouting just to hear each other. Sharon closed her eyes and tried to sleep. I watched the trees, which we left behind at thirty miles an hour.
Finally, after three hours of incessant noise, I’d had enough. I stood up and shouted to the backbenchers, “Shut up!”
I heard Sharon draw in her breath. There was a moment of silence. Then a low growl grew to a crescendo, and I was soon swallowed up in a full-scale secondary-school boo.
“Hoooooooongh, sass!”
Embarrassed, I sat back in my seat. But perhaps something switched in the atmosphere, because after two more songs, the singing died down.
It took us four hours to get to Obo from Accra, and we were the second busload to arrive. I got off and carried my suitcase to the girls’ dormitory close by.
We were in a secondary school, and I hurried to find a bed. Corners had always been the best places in all those years
in boarding school. I tossed the narrow mattress over to its other side and proceeded to dust it down. Then I stretched my old white bedsheet to cover it.
Half an hour later, shouts from outside drew my attention to the fact that another bus had arrived. I went outside and watched as tired students tumbled out of it. Every now and then there were cries of recognition as old friends were reunited.
What were my chances of finding a good friend here? Sylvia lived at Kaneshie. Juaben lived at Labone Estates. And as for Mary, she lived all the way in Kumasi.
I was just about to return to the dormitory when I saw someone who looked familiar among the last of the travelers. It was in the way he walked with a bag slung over his shoulders.
“Banahene!” I screamed.
He turned and waved, and I ran towards him.
And just like that, my mood changed.
‹•›
On that first morning I was awakened by a bell — just like our days in boarding school. It took me some moments to recognize the bed and my surroundings. Next was the challenge of an ice-cold mountain shower in the bathhouse. Then I dressed in a pink T-shirt and old jeans. There was no way I would risk my good clothes to evacuate cocoa, but I fluffed my curls out, outlined my eyes in kohl and brightened my lips with lipgloss.
Unlike the old colonial schools, Obo secondary school had no real character. It was painted white and green and looked like a dozen other recent schools with its low-cost construction. The administration block, dining hall and assembly hall were centrally placed between the girls’ and boys’ dormitories to keep them separate.
What was exciting was seeing Banahene in the dining hall. But there was little time to chat as we wolfed down Tom Brown — roasted corn porridge, along with a bun of sugarbread. Outside, the birds were singing and my canvas shoes were moist from the dew on the grass. And the air felt so fresh because we were high above sea level.
On the driveway were three boneshakers — our transportation to the cocoa-carrying station. These locally built trucks had half-open wooden bodies, and it took some athleticism to mount them by a high foothold on the side. I found a space on the middle bench of the first truck and squeezed between Banahene and my new friend Sharon. The diesel engine came to life — hoarse and throaty, and soon we were on the move.