Sankofa(16)

He wrote of his time at school in a manner that seemed geared to highlight the latent greatness in young Francis.


I was a bright but restless student. My teachers would often send me home with top marks and torn clothing. On such days my mother would lament the death of my father. What I needed was a strong hand to give me a firm beating. Sometimes she would send me to her brother for a thrashing, but he, too, also felt pity for the poor fatherless child and often let me off with a stern talking-to.

I led my peers in both sports and academics. They used to call me “Boy Wonder.”



I did not know what my mother was like at school. I never thought to ask. She was probably not a girl wonder.

Francis made his way through school in the Diamond Coast and worked as a railway clerk before he made the great leap to England for further studies in engineering, a move that he said won him great admiration.


I did not expect the cold nor the blandness of English food. I was also not popular with the ladies. Some of them expected an African man to be a sort of tour guide, a whistle-stop cultural exchange. Mr. Aggrey, how is the weather in your country? How is the food? I preferred a woman I did not always have to be explaining myself to. Why do you, Why do you . . .



He wrote briefly of the political scene in London. Menelik was given a lesser role in my father’s life. He was portrayed as a curious figure that Francis had come across rather than the mentor he had seemed in the diary. My father wished it to appear that he had engineered his political awakening on his own.

There was no mention of Thomas Phiri or, for that matter, my mother or Aunt Caryl. Instead, a few chapters later, was a wholesome account of the romance with his wife, Elizabeth, begun when he returned home.


I noticed Sister Elizabeth right away. Even in the plain lines of her nursing uniform, you could see her small waist and shapely ankles. I was sad that I was only admitted for one week. Once I set eyes on her, I would have been happy to lie in that hospital bed for a year.



My father first tried to join more orthodox politics when he returned to the Diamond Coast in 1969. He secured a railway job in the north, the diamond region that Menelik had once challenged him for knowing so little about. The role was mundane and there was a ceiling to his progress, as he had not completed his degree. He joined the Diamond Coast Congress Party, but found its northern leaders snobbish and more interested in socializing with British officials than in seeking independence.

Next, he joined the National Union of Railway Workers and quickly rose to the position of secretary general. It was a more radical organization but still not radical enough for Francis. The British must go, and they must go immediately. And so in 1971 he founded the Diamond Coast Liberation Group.


I am often asked how freedom fighters passed the time while waiting for a window of opportunity to strike. A cell could spend weeks roving in the bush before a plan could be put into action. We thought of freedom and our families, but mostly what we thought of was food.

There is much in the bush that is edible if one would let go of finicky Western prejudices. The first time I was presented with a mopane worm, I considered downing arms and returning home. Me, the only son of my mother, who was only ever fed the choicest cuts of meat, to eat a grub dug out from the ground. Yet I grew to appreciate these worms that we would snack on during the day. They could be eaten raw or slightly roasted. There were also some excellent hunters in our group, skilled at setting traps for bush rodents and other smaller creatures. Once in a glorious while, someone would trap an antelope and we would eat chunks of meat, whose fat and gristle would stoke our memories for weeks.



It was lunchtime and, one by one, the other readers drifted out, and I followed them. The café was an open space of mushroom-top tables with the muted buzz of people who could not forget they were in a library. I was too shy to join anyone. I bought a salad and circled until an empty table appeared. I set my tray down and speared a beetroot with my plastic fork. Opposite me was a wall of books trapped behind glass. I tried to read the gold lettering on the spines while I ate, but the print was too small. They were objects, carefully chosen for their style, like the lamp fittings.

“May I join you?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

The stranger was over fifty, going grey but with unlined skin. Not handsome, but large and at ease in his frame. A thick musk of cologne billowed out from him. My eyes roved to his left hand and caught a gold band. He put his tray down. He was eating a proper meal—rice and curry with peas on the side. I looked into the leaves of my salad. I was suddenly aware of the bovine crunch of vegetables in my mouth. I chewed faster, eager to leave.

“So, what are you researching?” His voice was deep and attractive.

“Me?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Francis Aggrey. Or Kofi Adjei, as he is better known. He was the first prime minister of Bamana.”

“I know him,” he said.

“Personally?”

“I mean I know of him. I was in secondary school when he became prime minister. In Nigeria we sent money for the liberation struggle in what was then the Diamond Coast.”

I dated a few African men at university—the type that had a knee-jerk attraction to my skin tone, dark when placed next to my mother’s, light when placed beside theirs. There was a Nigerian boyfriend whose mother did not like me. I didn’t like her, either.