Obroni and the Chocolate Factory

by Steven Wallace

  An obroni—me—sat impassively, waiting without an appointment. An obroni of singular stubbornness, so it seemed to the Deputy Minister’s secretary. An obroni tone deaf to certain unmistakable cultural cues. “Ei! Why does he not leave? What is wrong with him? Can’t he see that he is making me—making all of us here—so uncomfortable? Tsk, tsk, everyone needs an appointment-o.”

  Next to me sat a watery-eyed man wearing adinkra cloth and stiff maroon-leather sandals, his head bowed as if in meditation, conserving his energy in the torpor. I bet he was a shirttail relative from the Minister’s village, waiting for some handout to solve an intractable village problem.

  I could wait longer than he can.

  I could also wait longer than the young, smartly dressed woman with the Coach handbag sitting across from me, her firm thighs on full display. Bet she gets past the secretary before anyone else—mistress’s privilege, I surmised.

  The Deputy Minister’s secretary, a young woman, busied herself with a newspaper bearing the headline, FETISH PRIEST SEZ: “I DID NOT BONK MY SISTER!” She told me twice already, in the hope I would deferentially depart, that I didn’t have an appointment-o and the Minister was quite busy today.

  “Thank you, I intend to wait.”

  I would be leaving Ghana in a couple of days, I explained, and I couldn’t seem to get the honorable Minister’s office to confirm any sort of meeting. Of course, I did my best to make an appointment, but the landline telephones work sporadically, if at all, and when they do the combination of static and the dueling accents made conversation nearly impossible. We would shout hurried salutations into the receivers, and then our apologies, never entirely sure we understood the person at the other end of the line.

  My letters and faxes went unanswered, though no doubt carefully filed away in sheaves of correspondence lining the walls—each sheaf bound in the ubiquitous pale-blue, government-issued construction paper, the pages secured with hand-knotted twine. Every ministerial anteroom, every provincial administration office, was lined with such paper binders. Daniel Gyimah told me that each incoming correspondence was given a code number, and every outgoing letter references the incoming code. Paper binder upon paper binder collected slowly falling motes of dust in the rising afternoon heat. All this correspondence, all this record-keeping, and yet I couldn’t secure an appointment. I mentally graded this ministry:

  Filing of records in blue binders: A+

  Substantive progress in service to the nation: Incomplete

  So I had come to sit, on this, my first trip back to Ghana since my Sunyani days. I sat, relearning a discipline as severe as the zazen practiced by a Buddhist acolyte.

  Just a few days ago, I was buoyant at the prospect of establishing the first origin-based, bean-to-bar chocolate company focused exclusively on export markets. Introductions were made. Meetings taken. Now I was chopfallen as the full, dead weight of the endeavor settled about my shoulders.

  Ghana was still under military rule. Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings retained power but committed to multiparty elections in November of 1992, just a few weeks away. Would Ghanaians finally realize their postcolonial dream of democratic government? Would Ghana break the succession of military dictators and coups that had turned the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s into the “lost decades”? Would Rawlings truly transition peacefully from coup-leader to a presidential candidate? Would his opposition cause trouble?

  Would I ever get to see this minister?

  No telling.

  I knew this much: Sunyani taught me patience. So I could outlast my two companions and anyone else who wanted to join us here in the anteroom. Back in Sunyani, the tranquility of those who wait used to confound me. I once waited for a lumbering green State Transport Corporation bus to take me from Sunyani to Kumasi; it was four hours late. There was no bus depot or any way for those of us in line to know if the bus would ever show up at-TALL. It might have broken down. It might have crashed. But the people waiting for the bus displayed equanimity, complacency, and good humor, readjusting their robes every so often and shifting their weight from sandal to sandal as the hours passed. Even though I was just a kid, I began composing a letter in my head, mentally addressing the head of the State Transport Corporation—indicting the Corporation’s lack of customer service and poor communications, a response so typically American in its sanctimony that I cringe to recall it even now.

  A functionary in short sleeves and a narrow tie popped in the anteroom door, regarded the scene in a glance, committed an involuntary double take upon seeing an obroni, and nodded respectfully. “Hi, boss!” he said brightly, raising his hand in mock salute. I saluted back. He ignored the two others.

  The phone rang, and the secretary answered it with uncharacteristic speed—grateful, perhaps, for something to do other than shoot me angry looks. Cradling the receiver on her shoulder, she looked at me now without a hint of embarrassment and nodded, speaking in Twi.

  “Yes, sir. Ah, ha … ah, ha …” More rapid-fire Twi. “No, he won’t go. Mmmm. Not at-TALL. He is just sitting-o. Mmmmmm.” Click.

  I knew the Deputy Minister was inside. He had arrived, I saw, just a few moments before I did, his large black Mercedes-Benz rolling up to the front of the Ministry to drop off this surprisingly diminutive gent with a likeable mien. Such a big, serious car for so slight a man—a man whose resume included past chairmanship of the Committee in Defense of the Revolution, the much-feared goon squad that specialized in suppressing opponents of Jerry Rawlings’s first coup. Indeed, the Deputy Minister is an uncle of Jerry Rawlings. Years later, it would be alleged that the CDR handcuffed people and pushed them out of helicopters over the ocean, that the CDR publically flogged makola (market) women. This morning I watched the Deputy Minister share a laugh with his driver and smile at the junior clerks as he walked into the building. He looked anything but the strong-man type.

  At some point, I told myself, the Deputy Minister would have to leave his office, and I would corner him in his anteroom if I had to. I could follow him down the terrazzo corridor back to his car. I could … block his way. I could be a tough guy, too.

  Four miserable hours I had waited. My practiced calm gave way to impatience, and my impatience to anger, which in turn gave way to humiliation as I realized the Minister knew damn well I was waiting to see him. I checked my watch. I had an appointment later this afternoon—the only actual appointment with a government official that I could confirm ahead of time. It was with a special advisor to the Head of State.

  I agreed to meet with her in the Castle, not so very far away, but the traffic in Accra was formidable and I like to be early, a point of personal pride. I weighed the likelihood of getting to see the Deputy Minister against keeping my appointment with the Special Advisor, while at the same time trying to compute how the political hierarchy here worked. Who wielded more power? Which was the more important meeting? I considered why the Deputy Minister, the Head of State’s political fixer, was only given the job of deputy minister instead of the top spot of full minister. It did not yet occur to me that being minister means being too much in the public spotlight, while a deputy minister can go about business just outside the unrelenting gaze of the media and civil society NGOs. A deputy minister can work his private side deals in peace and relative quiet.

  Four hours of waiting. My humiliation rose. If I left now, I failed. And it would be a public failure. The self-satisfied secretary would win. The Deputy Minister would win. Adinkra-man would smile knowingly and probably chuckle as I headed out the door. The mistress? Well, she cared not a piffle for me. I wasn’t her type; I wasn’t rich and I wasn’t powerful. But hardest to swallow, I would know I had failed—to hell with whoever else knew.

  I was no closer to launch than I was before I arrived in Ghana. For all the excitement, no one had expressed any willingness to do anything concrete to help. No one wanted to support yet another project from abroad, brimming with naive enthusiasm and doomed to failure. One more precious, precociou
s young American with a breathtakingly ambitious business plan and copious, incontrovertible quantitative analyses. Charity with charts.

  When that self-pity starts, it accelerates fast, baby.

  So fast, that it gave me whiplash. I snapped out of my funk almost as quickly as I succumbed to it. What was wrong with me, anyway? I can bear this humiliation. I’ve borne worse. What if the Ghanaians didn’t act in what I perceived to be their national self-interest? I simply would have failed to convince them otherwise. And I didn’t need help from the US government; I would rather do this at arm’s length. Do it myself. I probably knew more about how Ghana works than many of the development consultants. I lived in Sunyani. I lived through a coup. I was up-country in 1978, when things were damn tough. My host father had three wives. Twenty-one children. I had amoebic dysentery. Ha!

  Chess time. I needed to decide. Stay or go? Head vs. heart? Chicken or fish?

  I gathered up my briefcase and rose deliberately, as if I were in no hurry at all.

  “Are you leaving, sir?” asked the secretary with feigned surprise and the galling suggestion of regret.

  “Tell His Excellency that I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

  “Yes, sir.” A look of relief spread across her face.

  “I may try again later. Right now, though, I have an appointment at the Castle.”

  “Oh! The Castle? Yes, sir. Have a very good afternoon, sir.” She picked up her phone and began to chatter in Twi to the Deputy Minister, concern in her voice. I heard her say something about “The Castle” as I politely closed the anteroom door.

  Kojo Bamford had lent me the use of his Nissan Patrol and the services of his driver, Joshua, who played religious sermons full volume on the car radio. The Ghanaian preacher was screaming through the speakers, imploring sinners to repent and to follow Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, as I climbed back in. If piety equaled volume, all Ghana would be saved. Imprecations in Twi were followed by dramatically enunciated bits of English: “Wo se, wo, homowo akyema kropong, SUB-MISS-ION-TO-HIS-HO-LY-SPI-RIT, fofo aboah se tsk, tsk. Ah haaaaaaaa …”

  “The Castle, please, Joshua,” I said, the delicious majesty of this request hitting home.

  * * *

  Men love the trappings of office. Women seem embarrassed by them. By now I’ve seen so many governmental offices, I feel as if I’ve done field research for a dissertation. The décor varies from office to office, naturally, but what really distinguishes one from another isn’t wealth or power. It’s chromosomes. It’s almost as if the size and furnishings of an office in Ghana bear an inverse relationship to the power wielded by the inhabitant. Most of the powerful women I’ve met in Ghana are happy with a modest work space. Few mementos, bare walls. A simple, almost Scandinavian aesthetic.

  The men, on the other hand, have pictures of themselves shaking hands with various dignitaries, cheaply framed photos often strewn about without much thought or organization. Here, a credenza crenellated with a row of transaction mementoes encased in acrylic. Perhaps a signed soccer ball. There, a bookcase with a plastic model of a British Airways 747, shoved behind framed photos of children, the outside starboard engine broken off. The walls groan with the jumbled certificates of every short-term management course they have ever attended, as well as the obligatory portrait of the Head of State, a promotional calendar from Fan Milk or Accra Breweries Ltd., and quite often a portrait of a curiously white-skinned, smiling Jesus, as if from a 1950s schoolbook, framed garishly in silver plastic.

  The Special Advisor, Akosua Nduom, rose to greet me. On her desk sat a jelly jar, wrapped in colored yarn (a kindergarten art project?) holding a wooden ruler and a half-dozen sharpened pencils. Everything else was government issue, unadorned. As I looked around the room, I understood: Akosua Nduom wasn’t here to impress anybody. She didn’t need to. She was here to work. In Ghana, proximity equals power, and her office was located right in the Castle, the official residence of the Head of State. I’d made the right choice by coming here, instead of continuing my lonely vigil in the Deputy Minister’s anteroom.

  This was the first time I’d been inside the Castle, a former slave fort built in the 1600s by the Danes, the most improbable slavers of them all, who called it Christiansborg Castle. Akosua’s office faced the sea and had one small open window, no more than a slit really, just big enough for the barrel of an arquebus. The Castle was constructed to withstand assault from both land and sea. I would soon determine if it could withstand assault from within.

  But there was little need for me to second-guess. First, Akosua had confirmed our appointment by phone, a nicety so rare in Ghana at that time that I was ready to hug her at first meeting. She’d done her homework when we spoke, and she knew a good bit about my work to date, confiding straightaway over the phone that “Ghana should be making chocolate for the whole world. Let us see what we can do.”

  Akosua cut an imposing figure. Formidable in her locally printed batik dress, her face could go from serious to smiling in a heartbeat. She was the sort who could tote up a column of numbers in her head faster than you, and then offer gentle correction when you came up with the wrong sum. Intimidated, I addressed her as “your excellency” when she invited me to take a seat.

  “Oh, I’m not an excellency!” she said with a grin. “I have a special advisory role. Please, there is no need. I hope I can be of help to you, Mr. Steven Wallace.”

  Instinctively I could tell she was a product of one of the elite boarding schools in Ghana. If I had to guess, it would be Wesley Girls High School, from which so many political and business leaders have graduated. Our conversation flowed easily, businesslike yet warm. No need for false airs or pretense. Wesley Girls, almost certainly, I thought. Akosua promised to assist me. This woman clearly did not traffic in frivolity for the sake of easing conversation, but her economy of speech invested what she did say with great value—her word was her bond. As I rose to leave, I decided to test my cultural acuity, given that we had accomplished much and … well, I liked her. She had been so straightforward, with none of the artifice that seems to choke most conversation with male politicians. But I was careful, respectful, always respectful. I knew my place after all; I was still the small boy, and she the strict, if kindly, headmistress. Truth told, I wanted to show off a bit, so certain was I that I would be correct.

  “Wesley Girls?” I asked.

  “How did you know?” She seemed pleasantly surprised. She might even have thought, Damned clever, this obroni. I hoped so.

  I placed my hands palms up in front of me and canted my head: As if there were any other option. “Wesley Girls run Ghana. Full stop.”

  She beamed.

  Graduates of Wesley Girls wield power effectively and undertake the burdens of leadership with competence and sincerity of purpose. They excel at running sprawling, complex organizations like ministries and international NGOs. They know how to get things done. Underlings thrive working for them. They are closers. Graduates of Holy Child High School are equally accomplished but excel in the arts and in writing and education, more than in business or government. Achimota girls, by virtue of that school’s coeducational student body, lack the particularly distaff comportment so unique to Wesley Girls; “Mo-town” girls, as female students of Achimota are known, can’t help but copy the affectations of the boys—and vice-versa. Wesley Girls don’t need to.

  “Steven, it is a pleasure,” Akosua said kindly, rising and extending her hand.

  I took her hand. This had gone well; much differently from my dispiriting wait in the office of the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry. I couldn’t thank her enough. Without realizing it, she already gave me something invaluable, restorative, even. She gave me back my confidence.

  “One more thing, Steven,” she added as I made my way to the door. “I suggest you go see the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry. This is part of his bailiwick. I can call on your behalf.”

  Out in the parking lot, I tapped on the window of the Nissan Pat
rol, waking up Joshua. “Praise Jesus!” he exclaimed, startled from his late afternoon nap.

  Da a wo ho nyε no, na wo hyia wase.

  The day on which you are penniless, you meet your mother-in-law.

  “We find ourselves in our most troublesome situations unprepared.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Anyone Else Want to Take a Shot at Us?

  Cocoa House was the charming, colonial-era name for the dilapidated seven-story headquarters of the Ghana Cocoa Board, a khaki-tiled building that towered over the most traffic-choked thoroughfare in all of Accra. In the early 1990s, an obroni making his way into Cocoa House still counted as a novelty and caused a dozing guard, recumbent on a bench, to rouse himself. He required me to sign a foolscap logbook, while dozens of Ghanaians filed in and out without so much as a pause. My meeting was on the top floor, and the elevator was broken. I wouldn’t have taken it in any case. The fear of being trapped in a hot metal box in a country where repairs take hours if not days demanded that I make my way up the crowded staircase, one careful step at a time. I no longer bounded up stairwells in Ghana. Stairways in government buildings of this era are not built to any sort of building code (at least not any code that is enforced), and the steps can be slightly misaligned, each tread a few millimeters higher or lower than the one before. It is treacherous to climb tile stairs absentmindedly, especially in slick-bottomed wing tips.

  The Acting Chief Executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board was Flight Lieutenant Joseph Bonsu-Mensah (Rtd.). Though retired from the military, he held the same rank, flight lieutenant, as the Head of State. I wondered why people holding high office here hold relatively modest military rank? Uganda’s Idi Amin famously called himself “His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.” Ghana’s military office holders were, and remain today, far more modest. Either that or Ghana’s military is more of a meritocracy than Uganda’s. I’m not sure which.