The KNUST Diaries - The AlutaYears 1 - Kumasi Here I Come

      I had not been impressed by Kumasi. I still remembered Kumasi, somewhere in the little crevices of my mind from my transit through the city as a five year old. Then it had been a garden city. The Kumasi I saw when I went to the University was nothing but a dust bowl. It was a town where all buildings had developed a brownish hue from the dust in the atmosphere. You dared not wear white clothes to town. You just might not be able to wear them ever again. And even when you wore dark clothes, your hair would just about give you away as having been into the dust bowl. The dust irritated your eyes, your nose and everywhere else. They irritated your food. When one bought kenkey and fish from the roadside, one could just about taste dust in the background. I am serious. You knew you were eating Kenkey ala dust, Kumasi style.

      People held handkerchiefs to their nose in the centre of town. Others made knots in the four corners of their handkerchiefs, turning them into berets to protect their hair from the dust. In Kumasi, just like everywhere else in Ghana, one travelled by hired taxi when one could afford it. If you were a poor student, you travelled by tro tro. The tro tro in Kumasi was different though. These were huge wooden trucks with tree rows of benches at the back for passengers. It took special skill to get unto these trucks, even for young people, never mind the old ladies. Still, life got on somehow.

      And the reason for all the dust was the roads, once beautifully tarred, but now deteriorated to the point, where they were nothing more than laterite passages, lined by “red” people and “red” everything else. I was still in Kumasi when JJ Rawlings government had suddenly seen sense and commenced the process to restore Kumasi to its renowned status as the second city of Ghana and the garden city of Africa. There had been a sudden transformation when every single main road in Kumasi had been asphalted. The dust had disappeared almost overnight, paving the way for the new Kumasi with double lane roads and flyovers. I was in Kumasi when those hideous articulated trucks were banned from conveying humans in the town centre.

      I still cannot remember clearly why I decided to go to the University one week before it re-opened officially. Perhaps, I had been too eager to get back into school after all the years wasted at home.  But that was what I did. My mum had happily helped me park my things. Every now and again she would remember something else that I might need. This was actually the very first time I was going completely away from home, for, while I had spent some time in boarding at St Augustine’s, my home had been up the hill from the school. We had heard stories of occasional water problems in the University so my mum had bought me an embarrassingly large plastic jelly can to fetch water if there was a crisis. Thankfully, I didn’t have to use it much all the time I was in the University, but it found other uses. People used to borrow it to buy pito.

      I arrived in Kumasi at about four o’clock in the evening. I got down from the Government Transport by the main road at the UST junction. I parked my bags into a taxi that drove along a circular road and under the gate designed in the shape of a traditional Asante stool, into the UST. There was a sudden change in atmosphere once one drove under the stool gate. There was not a single speck of dust in the atmosphere. One was met by the international swimming pool on the left and exotic African plants and flowers everywhere. Statues celebrating the lives of illustrious ancestors and alumni were scattered all around inspiring a certain academic zeal just as one entered that environment. You see, when Kwame Nkrumah had built this university, it had been his idea to create an African version of Harvard or the MIT. Years of neglect had ensured that many facilities had deteriorated and yet, one could still see the vestiges of that great plan in the sheer sizes of the buildings, the artificial forests and the beauty of the environment. I fell in love with the UST.

      It had been only a short drive to the Unity Hall, two mighty eight storey buildings, linked by a dinning hall with a basement kitchen at the far end. At the entrance was a small enclosure with benches on either side so one had often to walk between these to arrive at the reception, a rather daunting task for females, who would always have to contend with indecent comments from guys. With time, the girls would start to fight back. On one occasion a girl who was wearing a red dress was entering the hall and one guy on the bench had shouted “Fabulous” because the local football club Fabulous Kumasi Asante Kotoko, played in red. The girl had looked straight in the guy’s eyes and responded “your balls!!” There had been cheers and laughter. We liked that. Guys were just as happy to take as to give.

      They called that small area “Always Around” for, it did not matter what time of day or night it was, there would always be somebody sitting there. It also served as a quick meeting point prior to embarking on demonstrations. It was said, though with a hint of exaggeration, that this was the place where governmental overthrows were engineered. One turned left at the reception for Block A and right to Block B. There was a courtyard enclosed by the two blocks, the dinning area at the back and the reception at the front. This was beautifully adorned with trees and decorative ponds with little red fishes. It is true, that the man, who had built the mighty Akosombo dam for Ghana, never did things in halves.

       Each block consisted of two rows of rooms on each floor with a corridor in the middle. If one got an outer room, their balconies overlooked large trees. But they enjoyed more privacy. If one got an inner room, one could stand on ones own balcony and enjoy the community feel of the place and all the funny little activities that went on almost nonstop in the courtyard and the parking area in front. There was less privacy though. The people in the inner rooms in the two blocks could communicate with each other at the top of their voices. If one was not careful with ones curtains, people at the right level could easily be privy to ones nefarious nocturnal secrets, and call every one else to share in them.

      While the basic infrastructure and the surroundings were still impressive, most other things were a far cry from what they had been in the days of Nkrumah. The dinning hall for instance had been privatized and the food sold there was so expensive, that few students could afford to go there regularly. There was thus a rapid turnover of businesses which often went burst. For long periods, there would be no food sold there at all. Instead, most of the students kept stoves on their balconies and cooked their own meals, exposing themselves to fire hazards. When they could not cook, they would go for lunch at Auntie Georgina’s little hut at the back of Block A.

      Auntie Georgina sold fried plantains and beans half of the year and when yams became cheaper, would sell boiled yams and spinach stew with the rotten smelly boiled tilapia “kobi” that was a delicacy, reserved for those who could afford it as an extra. The smell within the kobi head was especially attractive to houseflies and eating then became a battle between driving away flies and putting food in ones mouth. In the evenings, students could choose from a variety of food in the parking area. The cheapest was “kokonte,” prepared from dried cassava powder, and light groundnut soup. To make it even cheaper, the soup was prepared with pig skin only. Kwame Nkrumah must be turning in his grave. This was hardly the Harvard he had anticipated, with students eating kobi heads and driving off flies. Then, they had three free meals for the day in the plush environment of the dinning hall, with Horlicks and biscuits room services in between meals. But there you go.