Chapter One
Kofi Mensah loved Bibiani. And so did his father and his grandfather before him. They said Bibiani belonged to no one. Bibiani was nobody’s hometown. People had travelled from all over the country to Bibiani when gold had been discovered several years before. And Egya Amisah, Kofi’s grandfather, and at the time a young ambitious carpenter, and his wife Araba, had set off from Elmina along the coast of Ghana and travelled inland across rivers and over tortuous terrains to share in the new economic opportunities that had sprung up suddenly in Bibiani.
Egya Amisah had been born in Elmina to Opanyin Kwasi Nyarko, a renowned fisherman, and was the youngest of six sons and two daughters. They lived in a little house that overlooked the sea, whose angry rumbles, was often enough to keep one awake all night. Across the road from their home was the Elmina Castle, built by the Portuguese, and which still bore relics of the slave trade that was ever so efficiently organised there for centuries, and from where the cries of ancestral slaves still echoed, lending an eerie ambience to the environment.
All of Egya Amisah’s brothers had gone into the family business, fishing. At dawn one day, wailing and crying from her parents’ room had waked the then seven-year-old Egya. Thinking it was one of the occasional incidents of domestic violence he sometimes had the misfortune of witnessing, Egya had stole quietly being the curtains to his parents room to watch his mother being consoled by neighbours while Opanyin Nyarko sat in a corner, his head in his hands.
“Oh my children, oh my God, why do I deserve this? What have I done to deserve this?” Auntie Adomah was crying, tears streaming down her face.
“It’s all in the hands of the gods, Auntie” Paapa Antobam, the family head and also a retired fisherman, was saying. “I went to sea for well over four decades before I retired and never once experienced such storm as was said to have been encountered at sea last night.”
Auntie Adomah continues to sob uncontrollably
“Who are we, mere mortals, to challenge the works of the gods?” Paapa Antobam continued “And as heartbroken as we may be, we need not lose sight of the fact that the gods have been for us, more often than they have been against us.”
Opanyin Nyarko also starts to sob
“This is difficult, Nyarko, but, as our elders say, only a man’s chest is broad enough to bear the impact of a gunshot. So take heart, be brave, and remember, you will never stand alone in these difficult times.” Paapa Antobam concluded.
And that was how Egya Amisah got to know of the death of his two elder brothers who had been swept away when their fishing boat had capsized in a huge storm at sea. Their home was to be thrown into mourning for weeks on end, as people from all walks of life in Elmina came over to express their condolences.
Early the next morning, Paapa Antobam had arrived to fetch the whole family. He came along with a boy who carried a sheep and another who carried two bottles of Schnapps and a white chicken. They had walked through the town, intermittently being stopped by friends and relatives to express their condolences, as they made their way to the shrine of the fetish priest of the god Benya. After such an ordeal, it was important, that the rest of the family was spiritually fortified against the forces of evil that had briefly, but ever so disastrously, triumphed over them.
They trod with trepidation along the narrow path in the little forest that led to the shrine. The birds sang on the trees, a solemn comforting song of love that once again brought tears into the eyes of everybody. Soon, away in the distance, the sound of drumbeat became faintly audible and the little hut that was the shrine became visible. As they approached the shrine, they were met by a lady draped in white and held on either side by two bare-chested men who appeared to be struggling very hard to stop her breaking free and running off. In between her frantic attempts to break free, she appeared to be in a stupor and whispered inaudibly to herself. She made one last desperate and rather frightening attempt to run directly towards the intruders, and having been once again overcome by the now visibly sweating men, she seemed to withdraw quietly, back into the shrine.
“The god Benya welcomes you” One of the men casually invited them in.
As they bowed to enter the hut the chief priest, Attah, came to meet them. Egya Kwasi Attah was a tall bearded man who wore a skirt made of reed and wrist and ankle bands of seashells. There were white chalk rings all over his body. He carried a horse’s tail in one hand that he swung every now and again over his head to command the drummers. He took the items the entourage had brought along and by way of a hearty welcome, tore off the head of the chicken with his bare hands and let the blood drip on the god. The sound of drums filled the room again as the lady in white went into what looked like convulsive fits and whispered into the ear of the Egya Attah, who then interpreted to the rest of them.
“Your son Kojo Antobam…” he started. Kojo Antobam, incidentally named after Opanyin Antobam who had come with them today, was the elder of the two deceased brothers of Egya Amisah.
There was another drumbeat, a convulsive fit and little whispers into the ears of the chief priest, who continued with his interpretation.
“Your son Kojo Antobam wronged the gods.”
There were audible murmurs and looks of consternation all around.
There was an even louder drumbeat, another convulsive fit, and a whisper into the ear of Egya Attah.
“You looked on as your son had an affair with the wife of a priest of the shrine. Your family has been duly punished for the sins of your son”
Auntie Adomah was now sobbing uncontrollably as she held Egya Amisah and his brother Kwaku Ntsie tightly as if to make sure that these two remaining sons would not be taken from her. Egya Amisah shed tears as well, only in sympathy with his mum but really oblivious of what it was all about.
There was once again the whirl of the horse’s tail, the loud drumbeat, the convulsive fits, and the whisper into Egya Attah’s ear.
“This is not the end, your two sons will also be taken…”
Auntie Adomah collapsed in a heap on the earthen floor in front of Egya Attah, a broken woman pleading for the lives of her children.
“…Unless,” Egya Attah continued “you provide the following items for rituals to be performed”
There was another cycle of the rather overdramatic interludes.
“Twelve pairs of tiger nails, twelve fresh crocodile liver, and the blood of a virgin girl! The god has spoken”
Auntie Adomah cried even more loudly while Opanyin Adomah and Opanyin Nyarko walked up to the chief priest and engaged him in a tete a tete that went on for a few good minutes. Finally, Egya Attah announced, that a decision had been made to accept the equivalent of the needed items in gold dust, and the god was happy with that arrangement. He then picked up a sharp knife and quite expertly slashed the throat of the sheep as an assistant collected the blood in a bowl. Egya Attah let go of the carcass of the sheep, collected the bowl of blood, spat into it and mixed it with a black potion. He proceeded to wash the feet of the two boys with the concoction and having thus completed his rituals, assured all and sundry, that the curse had been banished from the family.
It had been a strange funeral. For the brothers had been swept away at sea and their bodies, never found. But the family did its best to honour the brothers as best they could. There was the usual array of “professional” criers who shouted at the top of their voice and uttered invocations and curses against the enemies of the family but never shared a tear. There were lots to eat and drink, and once drunk, lots of drumming and singing to dance to. But it was relief when it was all over and the family could finally be rid of the “sympathisers” whose true motives nobody was quite sure about. After all, it was now common knowledge, that the family had been punished for the misdeeds of a son.
“Good riddance” Opanyin Nyarko was saying to his wife “They are all gossips. They just come in to see what kind of meat you have in the soup so they can go and ridicule us. They are all witches and wizards.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“I wish people would simply mind their own business” Opanyin Nyarko continued. “Who really loves us and wishes us well? None of them”
“Well, what can they do?” Auntie Adomah said, “Damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. They are not responsible for our son’s misdemeanours.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“Come to think of it,” Auntie Adomah continued, “things could have been different”
Auntie Adomah continued to cry
“Things could have been different. You could have done much more about this issue...
“What do you mean by that?” Opanyin Nyarko blurted out, a tad impatiently.
“I did warn you…”
“There she goes again. Please don’t start!” Opanyin Nyarko barked. “Don’t start. I’m not in the mood for that. You warned me based on what? Rumours! What you heard at the market. I spoke to my boy and he denied it. What could I do? Follow him all around everyday? Please! This is hardly time for a blame game. I am a bit too old for that.”
Having said that, he walked away to his room and slept off his bitterness. But the frustration, anger and disappointment never left him. He had been at the point of retiring and his sons had taken over and were so brilliantly managing the business. Now he felt empty. He spent the rest of his days drowned in alcohol. Not long after the death of his sons, Opanyin Nyarko died peacefully in his sleep. The family was inconsolable but worse was to follow.
Cousin Joe Boy, Egya Amisah’s cousin and Opanyin Nyarko’s nephew, was by custom, entitled to all his uncle’s inheritance. He would then be responsible for looking after his uncle’s family. A day after the death of his uncle, Cousin Joe Boy had arrived in the house, not to express his condolence or to mourn with the family, but to boot them out of the house so he could come and live there with his family as, well, custom demanded. He had arrived very early in the morning with some hoodlums who helped pack all the belongings of the woman and her children while ensuring, that not as single item belonging to Opanyin Nyarko or purchased with his money was taken. Egya Amisah never forgot the fierce, bloodshot, angry and threatening eyes of his usually very jovial cousin.
And for the rest of his childhood, Egya Attah had to live in a single room lent to them in the big family house with his mother and three siblings. Auntie Adomah had used pieces of cloth as a partition to separate her bed from the rest of the room to give her some privacy, while the four children slept on mats spread around the rest of the room. And yet, they would walk daily past the house built through the sweat of their parents, inhabited by people who had simply won the lottery of death.
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