A man in a bright orange cloth stood up. “And Nana is a good woman with a clean heart. She has convinced many Americans to come here, and we are excited about meeting Americans. If Nana had a bad spirit, not a single American would follow her here!” The room erupted into more applause.
Peggy was delighted by her people’s response to her efforts. So they had known all these years why Otuam never made any progress, and they realized that she was bringing about the changes they had always hoped for. She looked out over a roomful of bright eyes and eager faces.
“There’s another matter I want the town to know about,” Peggy said. “The children of the late king haven’t helped with the palace, haven’t put a penny toward the funeral. They lied about paying the morgue fees, which are over one hundred and forty million cedis, and they even refuse to pay for a coffin for their father to rest in.” This last was met with clucks and murmurs of disgust.
“I am prepared to honor the late king all by myself and pay everything necessary, but I don’t think it would be appropriate for his children to attend the funeral and sit there accepting condolences and monetary gifts. How do my people feel about this? ”
The room erupted into applause.
“That’s right!” cried one woman, standing and frantically waving a handkerchief. “We will ask the Asafo to beat them up and throw them out of town! ”
“Ungrateful bastards!” brayed another one, shaking her fist.
“Exercise patience!” cried a man in a blue shirt, alarmed at the sudden militancy of Otuam’s women.
Nana Kwesi asked the people to follow him down the hall from the throne room and into the council chamber, where the brass bed had been set up, with the coffin beside it that he had picked up from an Accra casket maker the day before. The townsfolk walked around the bed and coffin murmuring in delight and nudging one another. As they reassembled in the throne room, Tsiami stood up and asked, “What do you think of the things Nana has brought us for the funeral? ”
They cried out their approval.
“Does anyone have anything else they would like to say?” Peggy asked, then paused. “If there’s nothing else, I want to close this town meeting with these words. I’m a woman but I am also a strong king. All of you must know that I have come to help this town, not destroy it. You can see for yourselves all that I have done in two years without even being here most of the time. Just imagine what I will do for you in the future. I want all of you to know that you may talk to me about anything, but please do not hold secret meetings and try to stab me in the back.”
The town meeting was adjourned and all but twenty of Peggy’s elders and close relatives reluctantly left, many casting longing backward glances at Peggy on the stool. They want to stay longer, Peggy marveled. They are energized by the changes I have made, by the plans for the funeral. My people are solidly behind me.
It was an astonishing realization. She had been so focused on what she needed to do for her people, writing up a long list and ticking off the first boxes, that she hadn’t really thought about changing the relationship between the people of Otuam and herself. Last year almost everyone had ignored her town meeting. What had she sensed this time? Loyalty, support, pride, excitement. Love, even? Yes, the people of Otuam were growing to love their king, a fact that made her feel both humble and ecstatic. Until now, she had focused on her duty. She hadn’t put love in the equation.
But something new was undeniably there. She could feel it all around her, not a self-imposed concrete wall of fear, but a warm circle of admiration, respect, and support. Somehow, when she hadn’t been paying attention, the one had quietly transmuted into the other.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the scraping of chairs against the concrete floor as those who remained pulled their chairs in a circle around the dais to discuss funeral plans. The first topic was how they could make sure that the funeral chairs didn’t walk away. They were comfortable chairs, and many people would probably like to put some in their living room, or even sell them on the Accra—Cape Coast Highway. It was finally decided that a tool and die kit would be used to chisel NAAVI (which stood for Nana Amuah Afenyi VI) into each chair so that anyone who took one would be embarrassed when a visitor noticed the inscription and realized that the chair had been stolen from the king.
They discussed how many drinks would be needed and what kind, always a subject of great debate. They discussed the cow and the distribution of meat; on Sunday evening, the elders would wait near the shrines while the cow was being butchered, and once the butcher called them, they would come in an orderly fashion with trash bags to haul the meat home. They discussed the performers for the funeral: the Asafo, a group of child acrobats, and various drumming and dancing groups. And they discussed the retrieval and preparation of the late king’s body. The body would be picked up Thursday night, and on Friday it would be washed, perfumed, dressed, and seated on the golden royal chair by the late king’s sister and nephews, to be viewed on Saturday.
It hadn’t been easy, but Peggy had found the money to pay the morgue, though she dearly hoped she could get the price reduced when she met with officials there later in the week. She would have liked to go personally to pick up her uncle’s body. She, his niece and successor, should be there to take Uncle Joseph home to his new palace. But kings were forbidden to approach a corpse until it had been ritually purified, so she would not be able to see him until the height of the funeral on Saturday.
In African families, everyone has a particular role to play. Some identify relatives’ bodies at the morgue, while others counsel unhappy married couples, and yet others help with wills and inheritances. In the Ebiradze clan, the two people designated to bring bodies back from the morgue were Isaiah the Treasurer, because he could read and write and take care of any paperwork, and Baba Kobena, as one of the main elders, even though he was illiterate. Peggy looked at the two men who would retrieve her uncle. Isaiah the Treasurer was sharp as a razor but also the biggest crook in Otuam, now that Uncle Moses was in poor health. She was glad that he would be accompanied by Baba Kobena, who, though he couldn’t spell his own name, would let her know if Isaiah the Treasurer started with any shenanigans.
But perhaps she was worrying too much. What kind of shenanigans could a person get up to at a morgue? She would certainly be well advised to worry about sending Isaiah to a bank or a jewelry store, but to a morgue? Yet when it came to her elders, she worried about pretty much everything.
23
The following day, Peggy met with various executives at the morgue in Accra, politely pointing out the impossibly high cost of the fees, a staggering sum to which the king’s own children had not contributed a dime. With her sharp secretarial and accounting skills, she showed them how incomprehensible their paperwork was, poorly handwritten, with dates and sums crossed out and written over and figures that didn’t add up. After several hours of meetings, it was decided that the price would be reduced to $8,100, which included $400 for the ambulance to take the body from Accra to Otuam.
Peggy had hoped the fee might be reduced further, but she was grateful for any reduction and paid the money personally to the director of the morgue. Frederick Aduako was a trim little man of about fifty with black close-cropped hair and thick glasses who had the calm, consoling manner of the consummate mortician.
After handing over the money, Peggy sighed with relief. “You don’t know how happy I will be to get him out of that fridge,” she said.
“Your uncle, Nana, is no longer in the fridge,” Mr. Aduako explained. “After a year there, the bodies are moved to tanks of a special solution including formaldehyde, which is a better long-term preservative.”
Odd, Peggy thought. For so long everyone had been calling him “the late king in the fridge,” when they really should have called him “the late king in the tank.”
“Who will be coming to pick up the body?” Mr. Aduako asked.
Peggy gave him the names of Baba Kobena and Isaiah the Treasurer.<
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The borehole ceremony, which would be held on Thursday, October 7, would be a joyous but rather simple affair. Peggy, her elders, the Shiloh visitors, and her townsfolk would gather in the throne room for speeches of gratitude, then go to the boreholes for the ribbon-cutting ceremonies, where there would be more speeches and prayers, and Tsiami would pour schnapps. Peggy instructed Nana Kwesi to buy two large colorful ribbons to tie to the faucets, which Pastor Colleton would cut ceremonially with a large pair of scissors to officially open the new water supply.
But it was the funeral plans that required the greatest energy and, as the big day crept closer, they accelerated in pace. Peggy and Nana Kwesi met with the caterers, the drink vendors, and the funeral program designers. Papa Warrior looked after renting the canopies, the portable toilets, the sound system, and the extra chairs, which was a great help to Peggy. Business owners often raised prices when a woman did the negotiating, and Papa Warrior knew how to get the best price possible, though it was a lengthy process. During the haggling, dickering, and arguing, you had to walk away at least three times as the business owner cried out for you to come back, he was prepared to lower his price.
He had less success in hiring a bulldozer to grade the palace courtyard, which was dotted with holes and mounds of earth after all the construction and the removal of the center tree. One firm had given him a reasonable price and then, when the owner went to Otuam and looked at the ground to be leveled, tripled the price, probably because he saw the first poles of the funeral tents going up, heard that it was a royal funeral, and knew he held Papa Warrior over a barrel.
But Papa Warrior wasn’t about to let anybody hold him over a barrel. He sent the man on his way with a volley of epithets. Later that day, he returned to the courtyard to see how bad it really was, and if some visiting king might break his leg by tripping over a mound or falling into a hole. To his surprise, he found about a dozen men with shovels hard at work, using dirt from the mounds to fill in the holes.
He thought perhaps Nana Kwesi had organized the work, but in talking to the men he discovered that they were volunteers. “We heard that the bulldozer man wanted to overcharge you,” one man said, leaning on his shovel and wiping the sweat from his face. “And the king needs a nice flat courtyard for the funeral. We want to help her. She does so much for us that we want to do things for her.”
The air-conditioned bus containing members of Shiloh Baptist Church arrived at the Lagoon Lodge late Wednesday evening. The group consisted of a dozen middle-aged to elderly African Americans, including the two missionaries who had visited Otuam back in February and planned to move to Otuam.
The Shiloh group was excited to see the land of their ancestors, the funeral of an African king, and the town that would benefit directly from the church’s ministry. They had spent a couple of days visiting Togo, a French-speaking splinter of a country on Ghana’s eastern border.
Peggy was overjoyed to see them and welcomed each one cordially. These kind people had come so very far and at great cost to see her town and to spread the word back home to help Otuam. Being a gracious host was one of the major components that made a Ghanaian a Ghanaian, but these weren’t just any guests. They were very, very special guests.
Pastor Colleton had never been to Africa before. But he had been to New Orleans after Katrina, and Haiti after the earthquake, and his eyes seemed particularly attuned to people in need. When Peggy asked him what he had seen in Togo, he sighed and said, “Poverty, mostly, Nana. Poverty.”
Yes, poverty. There was an endless abyss of poverty in Africa. Here she was devoting her life to helping one little bitty place, and even that was a struggle. She could never help the rest of her beloved Ghana, or the deserving people in all the other African countries. But even as she had the thought, she wondered, why couldn’t she? If she ever got Otuam up and running the way she wanted, surely she wouldn’t just sit on her palace balcony enjoying the breeze? Not when there was so much else to do for others.
Her experience in bringing prosperity to Otuam might be useful in helping other places, in reforming corrupt systems, bringing in good governance, and attracting donors to their communities. She shuddered at the thought of what she really hoped to do because it was big, very, very big. And she was just getting started.
The following morning, the Shiloh bus followed Nana Kwesi’s van to Otuam for the borehole celebration. Peggy found the throne room more crowded than ever because her people wanted to see real Americans. They were fascinated to find that these Americans looked much like they did, which made sense, since they were all, in a way, cousins.
Before the meeting started, Baba Kobena took Peggy aside and whispered that Uncle Moses had arrived in a dress, and this time the other elders convinced him to go home and don a cloth so as not to embarrass them all in front of the Americans, and he had obediently returned in a crisp printed cloth. Peggy nodded and proudly took her seat on her shiny, golden new stool.
After Tsiami had poured libations, Peggy introduced her American guests who, among them, had paid for a borehole, were sponsoring kids’ school fees, and would build the school. One by one the church members stood and spoke about their hopes for the town as a townsman translated into Fante. Those from Otuam clapped loudly to acknowledge the generosity of every American visitor.
Suddenly Peggy saw something disturbing: Nana Tufu was walking in with his tsiami, Papa Adama. Given his ongoing legal dispute with his cousin, she had instructed him to stay away from her, as she couldn’t be seen to have a favorite. What was he doing here? True, he wasn’t dressed like the Nana Tufu. He wore no beads or regalia, not even a traditional cloth. He had on a lemon yellow linen shirt and trousers as if he were an ordinary citizen. And he seemed to be walking well enough.
Suddenly a gaggle of large, sobbing women rushed in from outside and pushed between the chairs toward the stool crying, “We have offended Nana! Nana, forgive us! ”
Peggy recognized them immediately—Perpetual with her huge round glasses and her sisters Mary Magdalene and Dorcas, the selfish children of the late king who had refused to pay a penny for their father’s coffin. Now they had the effrontery to push their way in, begging for mercy in front of all the visiting Americans.
“Not now!” Peggy cried in alarm. “It is too late for this!” Wearing red and black mourning clothes for the father they despised, they tumbled toward her feet, chewing her leg, as Ghanaians called it, flailing around and blubbering and crying out. Their tears, which seemed genuine enough but couldn’t really be, were running fast and hot down their cheeks.
Peggy tried to be cold, defiant, regal, but the sight of crying women always disturbed her, reminded her of the many reasons she had to be sad. She sat motionless, looking out impassively over the room, seeming to ignore the women thrashing around at her feet as if in the throes of death, but a large shimmering tear started to form in each eye.
It is not permissible to see a king cry. It is not permissible to see a king cry.
Finally, Tsiami and the other elders hustled the women out of the throne room. As they went clucking and sobbing, Peggy thought, This was planned. They had all week to meet with me, yet they waited until my American donors were here so I wouldn’t want to appear vindictive.
Peggy noticed that her Shiloh guests seemed shocked and concerned by the performance, uncertain of what was going on, whispering to one another. “Those were the children of the late king,” she explained. “They want me to forgive them for not paying any of the costs I have borne for their father. They wouldn’t even give a penny toward their own father’s coffin. That crying is all theater, well-timed theater. They could have talked to me any day before this to ask forgiveness. Now they do it at the last minute in front of you all.”
Pastor Colleton rose and said, “We understand, Nana. Do as you see fit.”
Peggy sighed. “I will allow my council to advise me.”
On her right side, Tsiami, Baba Kobena, Mama Amma, and Isaiah the Treasurer h
uddled in a circle, speaking in urgent whispers. Finally, Tsiami stood and spoke. “If the children of the late king come with the money Nana paid for the morgue fees,” he said, “then we advise Nana to allow them to attend the funeral. Otherwise, they will not be allowed.”
Suddenly Papa Adama approached the dais holding three bottles of ancestral schnapps. “Let it be known that the children of the late king do not dare to come empty-handed,” he cried. “They most humbly beg Nana to accept these bottles of schnapps as tokens of their sorrow for having offended her.” Now Peggy understood why Nana Tufu was there. He had come, still playing the role of Otuam mediator, on behalf of the children of the late king, and it irritated her.
She was further irritated by the cheapness of the gift. A bottle of schnapps cost about $5. So in return for $15 the women expected to get out of the thousands of dollars she was paying for the funeral, the $8,100 for the morgue, and the $30,000 she had paid to renovate the palace. They would have the honor of attending the funeral and set up a table to receive the nsawa, the funeral donations, which usually amounted to several hundred dollars or more. They would actually make a good profit on their $15 investment.
She barked at Papa Adama, “Keep the schnapps. I don’t want the schnapps. But I do want the morgue money. Tell the daughters that they may fully participate in the funeral if they bring me that.”
Papa Adama went outside to speak with the women who had been keening, sobbing, howling as if the world were coming to an end, black shawls pulled over their heads. When he returned, he reported that the daughters would contact relatives in various towns to determine how much money they could raise. They would return to tell Nana what they could pay. But Peggy figured she wouldn’t hear from them again about the morgue fees. And she was right.
King Peggy Page 32