It happened in the southern part of Gold Coast, while the Ga natives looked on from a distance, in hideouts, because nobody dared to be near such a catastrophe, no matter how promising the drama. It happened on a quiet sunny morning, like all the mornings in Osu. When things took an unusual turn on the 28th day of February, 1948, it was the last day of the last week of the boycott instigated by the Osu Alata Mantse, Nii Kwabena Bonnie III—an action intended to press the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM) to reduce the inflated prices of goods. It happened at the near-foot of the castle, the geographical centre of British Accra, where European colonies took turns inhabiting. It happened amongst the dozen haunts and taunts of a rather prevailing ghost of colonialism, with its eternally unbalanced appeasement; the erection of Western infrastructure, and the establishment of industries.
Korkoi had gone in earlier to gear up the seaside, the usual spot where her mother sold kenkey. She gathered litter, adjusted the stone platform, set up the makeshift stand, and unfurled the red, tattered umbrella. Altogether, this seems too herculean a task for an eight-year old, but precocious Korkoi had observed and helped enough times to be trusted alone with it. After that, she proceeded to dispose of the gathered waste and made her way to the shore. Her pace took on a gleeful quality as she headed to the landing stage, the usual spot where she sat with her father, Martey, when he offloaded and bargained his share of fish from the night’s catch. She stopped and surveyed the spot. The canoe was empty save for a huge pile of old fishing nets. She decided to stay back a while. Perhaps her father had joined another canoe which she would soon find approaching shore but a sudden and unfamiliar chant erupted, making her turn here and there and finally deciding to go home.
The chants came from the nearby streets. One would think noise as such was subject to a team of feisty youth making way to a sports game, shouting, serenading themselves to spite their opponents, perhaps to effect rivalry tension or confusion, but no, these were a group of native middle-aged men. They were veterans, survivors of the Second World War. In their gathered handful, they filed past the houses on the streets, towards the Osu Castle. They clad their heads and wrists with fury-red cloth, donning their military attire with empty armoury packs; the only remnants and evidence of their involvement in the war. A war fought on a freezing foreign continent; made to believe it was strictly voluntary, but no one talked about the significant pressure of a poor economy, which led them to succumb to the incentives—jobs, money, a secured pension—promised in exchange for their service. Incentives they had failed to provide three years after. They marched and marched and marched, stomping through the coal-tarred streets, chanting war songs, brandishing placards which mirrored their desperation and despondence, woes and purposes.
Pay us now!
dat you do not see our tears does not mean we do not weep.
What happens to the families of the dead?
Among them was Patrick Martey Wilkinson. A tall and dark man in his early forties, deep-set veins twining around his ever-eager hands, who wore his hair in an afro with a casual line at the side. He was co-convenor of the march.
Martey had taken to fishing after the war. A livelihood he was ready to live and die by. Whenever he was asked about this peculiar choice, he would say, in a carefree indulgence: ‘What was the boiling sea to a man who had witnessed the full glory of Sten guns, incendiary bombs and Avro Lancasters?’
He had barely basked in the joys and complexities of fatherhood before the war came knocking. Korkoi was still being breastfed and Naa Okaile, his wife, did a solid job grooming her into the beautiful girl who won hearts at a glance. The gratitude of reunion was one thing, but the failure of making up for lost time had been his burden. His first attempt at offloading this burden was to enrol her into elementary school. For indeed, the sight of blood and gore, flesh and bones assailing, parapets splitting, trenches dismantling brought him to believe that life had to be lived in many ways.
Hopefully, better than fishing, this match will reel in my pension, and I can put Korkoi through commercial school. He thought to himself as he marched.
****
The day before, Korkoi was with her mother, busily making servings of kenkey to be sold at the seashore. It would be a market day for fisher folks. Their house was well known for the making of kenkey. The compound house, like many in the neighborhood although colonially influenced, still had its indigenous quality. A clay oven, three triangular-positioned red soil mounds, a firewood stove with wooden erected pillars and corroded aluminium sheets for a kitchen and a carefully arranged red clay block bathroom. It housed a total of fifteen relatives overlooking the Gulf of Guinea, fifteen minutes apart, and roughly ten if you meandered expertly through the ever-frenzied corners to Fort Christiansburg. It never tired Korkoi to help after school. Her mother usually kept her in conversations of her childhood, relishing stories passed down from old; fascinating ones of wars between ethnic groups and enstoolment of chiefs, endearing stories of love and intermarriage that united kingdoms, dreadful stories of famine and slavery.
But today, and somehow in the interwoven scheme of uncertainty, they worked in awkward silence. Her mother, though, hummed a ballad under her breath, ‘Mawu si me miele, eya koe nya mia agbemenyawo… Blewu’e mia d’afe lo…Blewu’e mia d’afe lo…Blewu.’ Ruminating over the conversation she had had earlier with her husband when he announced his intention of co-convening the match.
‘Those people are brutal,’ she said, getting up so suddenly and forcefully that she almost lost her balance. ‘You have no idea how much I wept and prayed for your safety when you went to war.’
‘Oh, Naa, and did I not come back intact? Why don't you trust your prayers to work again this time? Besides, this is just a peaceful match, not a war.’
‘Your years of meetings and incessant begging yielded nothing positive; what makes you think marching unannounced into the den of armed men would do?’ She broke down in hysteria. Her husband held her hand and drew her closer.
‘It is all to get our due, I need it, you and Korkoi deserve it. I promise to come back in one piece.’
Presently, the concerned mother observed with gloom as her oblivious daughter rolled a mixture of milled and partly boiled corn into a fine ball with her dainty palms. She proceeded to wrap it in layers of dried corn husks so that it covered it all around. Finally, she tucked the extended husk into the cornball so that it made a complete wrap around and placed it in a pile. Like a tide that peaks at the full moon, she always looked forward to the end, where she rolled the last ball larger, rounder and fuller for Martey; a love expression to be made ready for his return from mending nets and readying canoes so that overnight he would go to sea with other fishermen. The pepper had been partly ground and sealed, shito stewed, onions and tomatoes to be later diced, and the firewood stacked in the open spaces by the red clay mound, fish to be fried the next day.
***
The men marched ahead with purpose, their voices raised in unison. They had decided to strike unaware, so although the streets were adjusting to the morning sun, the tentacles of its hues still spreading, the fishermen, barely easing in from the sea, sleep-deprived, perhaps a convenient mood to fuel their anger for what they rightfully deserved, they made their way toward the Castle. The natives watched with a newfound admiration that seeped into long-cowed hearts. The rumours they had heard were in fruition and full display. Barefooted, amongst the onlooking crowd, stood a plump woman in her early sixties. She had a thin piece of cloth wrapped around her, knotted at her bosom with kaolin tracing from her armpits. An emotional longing rose in her chest and her left eye now milky and almost as blind as the other welled with tears as she remembered going from one end of the town to the other very early in the mornings, along with other mothers all dressed in white, chanting songs of victory as it was believed would safeguard and secure their soldier- sons home from the war. Before shrinking into the corner, Martey caught her in view. Her son’s severed arm replayed in his mind. Still flailing in that final moment, blood gushing out like a jammed tap.
From the curtain wall and towers, the British soldiers watched, aghast. A heightened revolution. An attack! Were they claiming that which was due them? So sudden? Their dignity? The land? Governor Gerald Creasy was alerted. He walked out of his office just when Major Colin Imray, the Police superintendent was entering, the two almost colliding. Major Imray saluted.
‘Deal with it,’ Governor Creasy said.
He paused and turned, strapping his belt loose as though he would yank it off to whip the veterans as they approached the castle. Then, pulling it tightly together, he headed for the west rampart and disappeared out of sight. In no time, the Superintendent Major Colin appeared, flustered. Descending the white steps that cascaded between two lamp posts in strides so gentle that the discomfort in his gait remained unsuspected and headed for the police roadblock. His fingers, a disconcerted attempt at orderliness, tugged at his holster. It appeared bright red like his face and ears. Accompanying him were two dozen of his troop. The veterans stood still by the roadblock, intercepted by the British soldiers, who had filed up in three lanes, raising a salute. The veterans responded to the military courtesy, which annoyed Martey as he stepped forward with his fellow co-convenor, Attipoe. He handed the petition to the Major. Manually typed with uneven ink on a few folded sheets of modest foolscap. Pale yellow and damp with creases, having passed through many eager palms for signature appends and thumbprints. The Major gave it a cursory gaze, nodding in forced approval. ‘On behalf of the governor, I accept your petition, disperse!’ He made the statement thrice in a seemingly timed manner, taking time to repeat it, more loudly and more carefully each time. Yet the veterans stood their ground, refusing to be dissuaded. ‘
‘If we were to recount the number of times we’ve heard that, one man’s fingers and toes would be exhausted. Let him come for this petition himself,’ Attipoe said.
‘Anɔkwale! Nɔ pɛ’, his colleagues cheered in backing.
***
Aggrieved, the veterans stood baulking, inching beyond the police and the roadblock, attempting to move towards the castle. Major Colin turned to his troop and flickered his forefinger towards the veterans, ‘release fire,’ he said.
Of course, his troop was hesitant, turning so slightly at each other and back at themselves. They are unarmed, emphatic, but unarmed but who disobeys a major’s order? Who dares refute a superintendent’s request? Her Royal Majesty’s representative? The armed men hesitated; the aggrieved men inched closer. In an inappropriate boldness, Major Imray snatched and cocked a rifle, firing six shots aimlessly in quick succession into the veteran troop. The gun echoed in the distance, as far back as the Accra High and the Oxford streets. Its non-hesitant bullets sprinted at the veterans, wounding several, plunging the innocent men into a scattering. On the warm floor, Martey lay supine, looking around as far as his eyes could reach, the sight seeming so familiar. Armoury packets flying, men racing, some wounded, all in a frantic haste, taking cover in whatever or wherever safe. Three of the veterans, unlucky like him, lay flat, static and almost died.
He was writhing in pain. Reflecting. Thoughts of his wife’s objections, thoughts of his daughter, darted painfully through his mind. Korkoi, a fondness that could not be explained, pricked his chest only to be enveloped with shame of failure. Blood oozed from his nose into his mouth, soaking his tongue, its metallic taste tingling the edges before taking it whole. His sight grew weaker, blurring. ‘Oh Korkoi, Oh Korkoi, Oh Korkoi,’ he kept repeating to himself.
‘Blewu’e mia d’afe lo….‘Blewu’e mia d’afe lo…Blewu.’
***
Josiah Ryan Ofosuhene is a Ghanaian writer who uses literature to mirror the raw and unfettered nature of society. He explores the rudiments of human nature, culture, history, and the social impact of systems over time.
Besides writing and cooking up ridiculous food recipes, He works as a software engineer focused on ethical design. This technical work informs his writing and fuels a growing attempt to awaken readers, especially children.
Through the gift of writing, he seeks to connect deeply with God, people and to contribute to honest conversations that stir towards becoming and achieving.
IG: nanaekowjr
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