“He was resisting arrest,” Cousin Charles explained, straightening his glasses. “He wouldn’t go peacefully.”
“He tore the officer’s shirt,” Aggie added, smoothing her braids.
For the first time they noticed what Ekow had done to his suitcases—he had opened them and strewn their contents all over the porch. There were car magazines, one black shoe, two videos, torn-out magazine pictures of scantily clad girls, a hammer, a silver bowl, a pack of condoms, a tube of lipstick, a filthy pair of tennis shoes, and a riot of worn T-shirts.
Aggie knelt and started pushing the odd collection of items back into the suitcases. Cousin Charles picked up the hammer. “He won’t be getting this back,” he said.
Peggy sagged against the balustrade. It hurt her to know that the policemen she had called had dragged off that skinny, pitiful, mentally ill boy—everyone called Ekow a boy even though he was forty-two—and slapped him silly. Though maybe he deserved to be slapped, she thought, after getting high and drunk, and making such scenes, keeping everyone up way past bedtime, and then attacking the house with a hammer. Being slapped might have done Ekow some good, but the whole thing made Peggy very, very sad. When she thought of how much her dead sister had loved him, her heart broke.
I miss my sister, and Ekow needs his mother to take care of him. We all need our mothers to take care of us. Ekow went completely crazy when he lost his mother and I … How did I change? Unlike Ekow, I had the strength to go to work and pay my bills and do everything I was supposed to do. But I became sad. A part of me is hopelessly, forever sad. I cover it up with humor and efficiency and righteous anger. But nothing will ever be able to take that sadness away from me, until the day when I, too, become an ancestor, and my mother is waiting for me, hand outstretched, to welcome me to her world. When that day comes it will not be a sad day. It will be a happy one. Though, she added, straightening up a bit, I don’t want it to come anytime soon, now that I have so much to do here.
Aggie and Cousin Charles zipped up the suitcases and took them inside. They appeared a minute later, Aggie holding a glass of orange juice out to Peggy, who took it and sighed. “You don’t know how hard that was for me,” she said. “But I had to do it. As king, my authority has to start with my own family or no one will respect my rule. My nephew is in a jail cell tonight, and word will get out as it always does in a small town, and people will know I am a serious king who means business.”
Cousin Charles and Aggie sat down on the bench beside her in sympathetic support. “You had to do it,” Cousin Charles agreed.
“Yes,” Peggy said. “You know, there is an American saying that I never understood. It’s this: I have to do what I have to do. Americans say it a lot, but something got lost in the translation for me. After tonight I understand it completely. It means you have to do things you don’t want to do, sometimes terrible things, because it is right that you do them.”
For the first time that evening, there was silence. Peggy sipped the orange juice and listened to the slow, rhythmic pounding of the waves behind the trees. Then she walked off the porch, looked up, and saw brilliant stars like brightly shining diamonds against a black velvet background, stars so bright it seemed you could reach up with your fist and grab them. A gentle, cool breeze caressed her, and in a thicket nearby a goat bleated.
“It’s no joke being king,” Peggy said to no one in particular.
The following morning Peggy instructed Cousin Charles and Aggie to go to the jail with a large bottle of water and a plate of bread and cheese for Ekow, as well as the tip for the chief inspector. The American side of her thought it was strange to pay for having Ekow in there, as if she were putting him up at a hotel, the Otuam Jail Hotel.
The single jail cell was off a raspberry-colored entrance hall and had a wooden door with a little sliding panel at about the height of a short person’s head. Prisoners could open the door for a sliver of light, or to cry out to the policemen that they needed to be taken to the toilet in the courtyard behind the station. As Cousin Charles and Aggie spoke in the hall with the chief inspector, the little door slid back and they saw Ekow’s mouth saying, “Please tell Nana that I am very sorry and she must let me out of this cell, which is not nice and not fine.”
Jangling his big iron keys, which hung from a metal circle on his belt, the chief inspector opened the cell door with a theatrical flourish to reveal Ekow, sober and contrite, if a bit red eyed. He wasn’t alone in the cell. Cousin Charles and Aggie saw a huge, muscular young man sulking in the far corner. The chief inspector proudly stated that he had two culprits in his custody, a rare and marvelous occurrence, since he usually had none. Fingering his keys and grinning, he boasted that he had solved one of the most important crime cases in Otuam since the thieves had stolen the MTN phone tower wire back in 1999.
“I have just caught Divine, the big-time fish thief,” the chief inspector proclaimed. He slammed the door on Ekow, standing hopefully by the threshold, and Divine, stewing in the corner, and locked it. Then he invited Cousin Charles and Aggie into his comfortable office with its overstuffed sofas and chairs and gestured to a waist-high burlap sack on the floor. When Cousin Charles poked his head inside, he saw hundreds of dead fish with yellow rubbery glazed eyes, and emanating from them was the worst odor he had ever smelled in his life. He hastily pulled his head out of the sack. Cousin Charles had noticed a revolting odor permeating the entire jail and was glad to see that it was coming from the sack of rotten fish, and not from the chief inspector himself.
The chief inspector explained that fish packers knew that sacks of fish had been disappearing from the warehouse of a female fishmonger named Dzadi Yatu and were on the lookout for the thief. Two days earlier, they had seen Divine stealing a sack, tackled him, and brought him and the sack to the police station, which was no small accomplishment, considering he was almost seven feet tall.
“Why are you keeping the fish?” Cousin Charles asked, holding his nose.
“Important evidence!” the chief inspector replied. “This matter will go to the court in Saltpond, and the prosecutor will have to pick up Divine and the fish and keep the fish in his office until the trial.”
Cousin Charles made a face. “To really punish Divine, maybe you should keep the fish in the cell with him,” he suggested.
Peggy laughed when they told her the story. The worst crime in a decade was the theft of a sack of fish. Otuam was truly a safe place to live. She tried to picture Washington, D.C., with a corresponding lack of crime. The Washington Post would run a headline on page one, “Divine, Big-Time Fish Thief, Captured,” illustrated by a photo of the chief inspector standing pompously next to the burlap sack of rotting mackerel.
“The chief inspector is waiting for your instructions about Ekow,” Cousin Charles continued. “And Ekow is begging for your forgiveness. Do you want him to stay in jail a few more days to teach him a lesson? ”
Peggy sighed. “I forgive Ekow. But I can’t have him here making trouble for us all. I certainly don’t want him to attend my gazetting on Friday, where he could upset the sacred rituals. And after my gazetting, I have a lot to do for Otuam. I need my sleep so I can concentrate. Ekow must return to Accra today and not come back.”
She swatted at a rivulet of sweat trickling down her cheek and reached into her bra. “Charles, take Ekow’s suitcases to the jail along with this money, which should be enough for him to take the tro-tro to Accra. Tell him that if I see his face here again I will put him back in jail.”
Peggy had heard from her relatives that Ekow was a human boomerang who would surely come flying back. And no matter how passionately you vowed never to let him visit again, when he showed up with his prune face, big ears, and sticklike body, begging to wash your floor and clean your toilet in return for a meal and a place to sleep on the floor, you let him stay. And lived to regret it, as you always knew you would.
15
There were several council meetings to discuss preparations for Pegg
y’s gazetting the following week. Who should purchase the goat and bottle of whiskey to give to the council of chiefs? Who should rent the van to carry the king and her council to the Hall of Chiefs in Essuehyia, where the ceremony would be held? What food should be served at the party held afterward at the house? How many crates of beer and minerals should be purchased, and how many bottles of expensive Johnnie Walker Red, reserved for the elders and the most distinguished guests?
The question of alcohol supplies occasioned hours of debate because everyone at the council table had his own opinion. Some preferred to err on the side of generosity; a lack of refreshments would dishonor the stool, and what was left over would surely be drunk in the near future. Others pushed for a more restrained purchase; extravagance, too, would upset the stool given the void where the royal treasury was supposed to be. Many of her elders discoursed at length on the amounts drunk at parties past, as Peggy felt the sweat trickling beneath her robes.
A king must be patient, she knew, but even the most boring, longwinded embassy meetings she had attended produced snap decisions compared to these Otuam debates. Her elders, in their quaint Fante laced with old sayings of lions and fish, birds and harvests and crocodiles, went around and around and finally spiraled back to where they had started, with nothing resolved.
“A squirrel hides many nuts to keep him fed during lean times,” Uncle Moses said. “He never knows exactly how many nuts he will need, but he knows it is better to have too many nuts than too few.”
“But a bird does not hide food and always has enough,” Uncle Eshun replied.
“A fish never starves,” added Baba Kobena. And so it went.
In the end, as for the goat and bottle of whiskey for the kings, it was decided that Uncle Moses would buy them with Peggy’s money. Nana Kwesi would rent the van with Peggy’s money. The food would be chicken and rice, purchased with Peggy’s money. Consensus was finally reached on the amount of alcohol to be purchased for the party. No one said that Peggy was expected to pay for the alcohol, and Peggy assumed it would be the contribution of her elders. Their very first. Finally.
It seemed to Peggy that corruption was everywhere. Yes, other African countries pointed to Ghana as the kind of country they were striving to become. Just look at the recent close elections, where nobody killed anyone else and there were no accusations of voter fraud. Even the most scandalmongering journalists agreed that Ghanaian officials probably stole less than those in other countries, having the good taste to slip millions instead of billions into their Swiss bank accounts. But corruption was still deeply woven into the fabric of everyday life, from high government officials to the people of Otuam.
Peggy had read in her morning perusals of African websites that many well-respected Western economists believed corruption was the cause of Africa’s poverty. It certainly wasn’t due to Africa’s lack of natural resources, with all its gold, silver, diamonds, oil, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, lumber, and agricultural riches. Yet somehow this wealth rarely trickled down to the average people in towns and villages. Somehow with all their resources most African governments couldn’t provide the basics of human life: clean water, education, and decent medical care.
The African Union estimated that corruption cost African economies $150 billion annually, which was about 25 percent of the continent’s gross domestic product, and increased the cost of goods by as much as 20 percent. Some $30 billion in foreign aid for Africa ended up not digging wells or opening clinics or schools, but in the foreign bank accounts of public officials, while 50 percent of tax revenue disappeared.
The Centre for Democracy and Development had recently conducted a survey on the effects of corruption in Ghana. It was hard to make an accurate survey because not a single government official admitted to taking bribes or embezzling funds. But average Ghanaian citizens were more willing to respond. Some 75 percent of households surveyed saw corruption as a serious problem, with 66 percent paying 10 percent of their incomes in bribes to public officials. Forty-four percent admitted to making unofficial payments.
If a handsome bribe was paid, the clerk issuing driver’s licenses might simply hand one over to an applicant, allowing him to avoid the driving test altogether. (Judging from the standard of driving and the countless horrific car crashes, this happened all too often.) Doctors might claim there wasn’t a single bed in the hospital for you, until you offered them a wad of cash, and suddenly one opened up. If your power was out, the clerk at the power company might not put your address on the list of repairs until you offered him a bottle of whiskey. If your sick child missed a test, the teacher might insist on an expensive bottle of perfume for letting the student take it.
In societies so rife with corruption, perhaps it was understandable why those at the bottom of the pyramid, when offered the first opportunity to accept bribes, gladly took it. Everyone else was doing it, and the “tips” they received went to helping their families get clean water, education, and decent medical care.
Someone was even collecting tips from the palace courtyard. Peggy had learned from Nana Kwesi that more building supplies had gone missing. The piles of boards and metal bars that the goats had been standing on during her welcome ritual were now only half as high, even though he and his men hadn’t done any work since then.
During the day, the courtyard was abuzz with activity, with old men lounging, women pounding fufu, and children playing; if anyone had tried to slide a board off the pile and drag it away, he would have been tackled to the ground while someone ran to notify Peggy. Therefore, the thief must be coming at night. Peggy was furious at the thief who was taking supplies she had purchased with her tiny salary, to the ruination of her formerly perfect credit.
More important, whoever was stealing the materials was harming all Otuam. The royal palace was the physical representation of the entire town, and no one could have pride in a place with its major government building in such a derelict state. How would Americans feel to see the White House peeling and dingy, the columns tottering, the roof leaking, and birds flying in and out of broken windows? Or the dome of the U.S. Capitol, cracked open by lightning, the melted statue of Freedom stuck to the side and left to remain that way for years? They would be ashamed, would insist that the buildings be repaired because Americans were proud of their great country. In Otuam, a renovated palace would give the people new pride, new energy, and new hope for the future.
The thief must know he was running a very great risk of death or illness. Surely Uncle Joseph was getting very cold, being in the fridge all that time, and wanted to be buried after a glorious funeral so he could finally be at peace. The more building materials that were stolen, the longer it would take Peggy to bury him. Also, the palace was the home of the stools, and the stools wanted to live in a beautiful home, not a rotten one. No matter how quietly he snuck around at night, the thief couldn’t keep his existence secret from Uncle Joseph and the stools, who would most certainly punish him. All she could do was wait.
Meanwhile, Peggy was getting ready for her gazetting, and corruption even followed her on her trip to buy new beads and sandals for the ceremony. At her enstoolment the year before, protocol had required her to wear the beads and sandals of Uncle Joseph, but now she wanted to buy some of her own. She asked Ebenezer to drive Nana Kwesi and herself to Agona Swedru, a market town about an hour and a half from Otuam, where Peggy’s favorite little shop, Nadrass Enterprises, was located. She and her mother had shopped there, years earlier, when life was good because they were together. Out front colorful cloths on hangers flapped in the breeze, and you had to duck and push them aside to enter the shop, where you saw tables heaped with beads and sandals hanging from the walls. Nadrass Enterprises was a tiny place, but with so much merchandise you could spend hours sorting through it.
Peggy was looking forward to getting out of the stiflingly hot dining room, to spend an afternoon without visitors and disputes, with no thought of stolen building supplies or Kwame Lumpopo�
�s scams. She would try on necklaces and bracelets, hold cloths up to her face to see if the colors were flattering, and slip her feet into sandals of silver and gold leather with multicolored pom-poms. She would actually allow herself to indulge in the fun and frivolity of shopping, instead of calling on every ounce of her strength to set things straight in Otuam. Yes, it was going to be a wonderful afternoon.
She leaned back in her seat and relaxed. As the taxi lurched over potholes, she chuckled as she saw quaintly named enterprises that would have provoked roars of laughter in Washington. There was the By the Grace of God Brake and Clutch Center, the Jesus Is Our Savior Beer and Wine Pub, and the Thanks Be to God Toilet Facilities. Ghanaians believed their businesses would have good luck if the owners put something religious in the name. Peggy and Nana Kwesi also passed a restaurant called the Forget Your Wife Chop House, which spoke for itself.
Up ahead there was a police checkpoint, a large wooden blockade painted with red and white stripes that could be loaded onto a truck and moved around. It was impossible in Ghana to drive any distance on the main roads without coming to one. Ostensibly the checkpoint was for officers to make sure that drivers had valid licenses, the car was properly registered, and the safety inspection was current. But in reality checkpoints were earning opportunities for the police, who didn’t make much of a salary. Anyone who was lacking proper documentation could avoid a ticket by tipping the officer. Across Africa, many policemen made more money from the checkpoints than they did from their salaries. This kind of corruption helped balance the national budget by allowing the government to keep its employees’ salaries low.
King Peggy Page 21