Growing up… (Part 2)

As happens in many societies, some of my classmates from Anyako fell on hard times. The day after I arrived for my uncle’s funeral, I met one of them. She had only a loin cloth covering her lower parts. She carried an aluminium bowl in her armpit, her elbow in the bowl with her hand holding it at the rim. We recognised each other instantly, calling out our names. Her upper torso looked rather masculine which made my heart sink.

She was far older than me in school and is now a fishmonger of sort. I thought of how someone in their mid-seventies can be rehabilitated. After parting with a grateful smile for a few cedis in her palm, I knew she was not alone; a part of me was in that situation. I knew my mates would feel the same way too.

Many of my mates became accountants, bankers, professors, educationists and more. Those we have lost track of might be in many other fields, I reckon.

Our teachers were a major part of our growing up. They were revered by the townsfolk. If you met a teacher in town you removed your footwear before greeting them. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do that because I put on my first flip-flop after I turned 14. We went everywhere barefoot, though Anyako was full of oyster shells in the ground. We had cuts of all shapes but the salt in the soil might have served as antibiotics to prevent tetanus.

Some teachers were quite friendly while others took discipline to dizzying heights. They had the cane in hand at the ready for any act of indiscipline on our part. Under all these we enjoyed growing up. We were hardly ever hungry, thanks to aunties and elder cousins who had something at the ready always.

Some of us became choristers in Church. We loved the singing because it gave us joy, pride and leverage. Someone donated brass musical instruments to our school, so I graduated from the flute to these instruments as a bandboy. I tried the trumpet, cornet, the horn and the tuba, but settled on the tuba because of its bass sound. There was one saxophone in the mix but methinks our music teacher did not know how to handle it so it lay unused till I left for secondary school.

When I was to be confirmed in the Church in 1966 and tried my new shoes on for the first time, I did not know how to walk in them. Was I to step forward with the heels or toes? This alone took more practise to get the feel than anything I have tried.

Until Ghana changed its currency from Pounds to Cedis, I never saw a pound note. I only knew the look in textbooks. I saw a 10-shilling note once when I accompanied a cousin to the market one day. My grandmother, like others,  went to the market with coins and came back home with basketfuls of goodies to last till the next market day four days later.

But something happened, which has lived in my mind till date. It was in 1963 when a woman who prepared and sold yakayake, a local food derived from cassava granules, beat gong-gong in the town for three consecutive days that someone had stolen her one pound and called on the thief to humbly return her money. Apparently, she bought the cassava dough on credit and paid back after selling her yakayake. One pound was an awful lot of money and so it was unfathomable to owe one’s suppliers that amount.

Though a suspect was spotted in the woman’s place at the time of the theft, he vehemently denied taking the money. This poor woman threatened to invoke the god of thunder to seek justice if by a certain deadline she did not get her money back. Incidentally, this was in August when it was raining heavily, which eventually caused flooding of the Lagoon.

During one heavy rainstorm, I heard the loudest three claps of thunder, each 90 seconds from the other. I heard my grandmother say, “This thunder is unusual; it surely might have caused havoc somewhere.” Apparently, the suspect in the one pound theft case had gone fishing with some colleagues. At the first lightning, he had a schock and asked his colleagues to hold him, which they did.

The second yanked him from the grips of his friends in the canoe and dropped him over 50 metres away into the water. The third split his chest open, killing him instantly. Some rituals were performed before his body was put on a wooden plank and dragged away for burial.

This was the talk of the town for many months. If you were at Anyako at this time and would want to have sticky fingers, that was entirely up to you. Another happened at Konu, the eastern tip of Amyako, when lightning struck a woman. This had nothing to do with theft; she was carrying an aluminium bowl during a thunderstorm. Aluminium, I am told, is a good conductor of electricity.

My personal fear of lightning lingered on until 1986 when I was forced by circumstance to confront that fear. I was driving from Accra to Anyako after work. Then somewhere between Tsokpoli and Dawa the rain clouds opened up and the accompanying lightning was incessant. A niece was in the passenger seat and I did not have to show fear. Could it be adrenaline that gave me a bravado I never knew existed? Or just facing my fear head-on? Maybe both.  To stop the car would have been suicidal, given the fact that the area could flood and drag the car away.

With the windshield wipers at full blast and hazard lights on, we braved the weather and got home to Anyako safely.

Konu lies to the east of Anyako township. Growing up in Anyako for the six-year period did not see me in that part more than half a dozen times, though my grand uncle, Tormadogo Segbefia, married Konu women and moved to settle there. The residents of Konu had a peculiar twang to the way they spoke the language so we could determine who they were once they spoke. I don’t know if it was deliberate because I don’t hear that any longer. Today, my Holy village is referred to as Anyako-Konu.

My people were mainly fishers, kente weavers and boatmen. I had a few neighbours who taught me the art of weaving but I could not match the dexterity with which they wove the kente patterns. The boatmen ferried passengers across the eight miles to Keta, which was a trading post until tidal waves caused its decline. It is now quicker driving the circuitous routes to Keta than trying by boat or canoe.

Weaving is virtually absent and the lagoon does not yield as much fish as it used to even up till about 20 years ago. To revive the fishing business and get it back to its glory means the Keta Lagoon has to be dredged and measures put in place to forestall silting. The depth of the water could enhance fishing all-year round. The last time I checked, it would cost $98 million to do. It’s quite expensive but when it is done, economic activities will boom in the area for a long time to come. All it takes is the political will and the will of the chiefs of the area to support it.

I might have been born in Koforidua, lived mostly there and in Accra, but as an Anyako boy, my village is of a sentimental value to me. There is no place like home.

Writer’s email address: akofa45@yahoo.com

By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia