“Come to dinner tonight, and after we’ve eaten, I’ll call in the cook and you can ask him anything you want,” he said.
I went to dinner and, after we had eaten, Mr. Shirer called in his cook. He was a tall man of about forty, jet black, slightly bald and skinny. Mr. Shirer told him that I was an American of African descent, that I’d come back to see the land of my ancestors, that I wished to ask him about his life. He had been a little nervous, but now he smiled, sat on a little stool, and nodded.
“Black man’s country mighty sweet, sar,” he told me; Mr. Shirer was translating.
“Where are you from?” I asked him.
“The North, sar.”
“Why are you in Accra now?”
“I’m cooking for Mr. Shirer, sar.”
“You are away from your tribe. Do you miss your sisters and brothers?”
“Oh, yes, sar! It’s hard to be away from my tribe. But I go back as often as I can. This is not my home, sar! My home is with my tribe.”
“What do you do to keep up your spirit while you are away from your tribe?”
“I observe all the customs, sar. I sacrifice a sheep or a goat at times of feasts or celebrations and I implore my ancestors to watch over me. If I die, I want to be taken back to my tribe and buried with my ancestors.”
I questioned him about his dying so far from the land of his ancestors and his expression darkened. It was obvious that it was something that distressed him acutely. He told me:
“A stranger died far from home, sar. We buried him, but not like we bury our own. We dug a grave in a pathway pointing toward his home. Then we sacrificed a sheep and let the blood drip on the grave and we said a prayer to the spirits. We said:
“‘Spirits and gods, this man had every intention of going home to die. You can see that, for his grave points in the direction of his home.’ So you see, sar, his ancestors must forgive him. He wanted to do right, but he didn’t have a chance.”
“And do you think that that prayer fixed everything?”
“Oh, yes, sar.”
“Now, tell me…Do you ever think of going far away, to America, for example?”
“Oh, no, sar! Never!” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I couldn’t leave the land of my ancestors. There is land here for me to cultivate and watch over.”
(As he spoke I wondered what terror must have been in the hearts of the slaves who had been, through the centuries, shipped to the New World? It is highly possible that the psychological suffering far outweighed the physical!)
“Now, suppose a great calamity overcame a man? What would that signify?”
His eyes widened and he shook his head, staring at me as though he thought that I was mad.
“Why, sar, it means that a witch has got ’im,” he told me with conviction. “And he’d have to go to a witch doctor and get something to counteract the evil eye.”
“So when someone dies, it is caused by someone else?”
“Of course, sar. If he is old and has had many children, then he dies a natural death. But if he is young, it is certain that someone has killed him, done something to him. For a young man or a young woman, there is no natural death. It is only when you are old and have had many children that your ancestors call you to join them.”
“What do you think happened to the millions of your black brothers who were sold into slavery and shipped to America?”
He was thoughtful for a long time, then he answered, speaking slowly:
“They were being punished, sar. Their dead fathers had no thought for them. Their ancestors did not afford protection for them, abandoned them, did not defend them as they should have—”
“Why?”
“It’s hard to tell, sar.”
“Is there anything that those slaves could have done to avoid being sold into slavery?” I asked him.
“Oh, yes, sar!” he said, brightening. “Listen, sar, if you are bound in chains, helpless, and if you swear an oath, your ancestors will turn into lions or tigers or leopards and come to your aid. Why, you could ride one of those lions or tigers or leopards six hundred miles in one night. Now, sar, these lions or tigers or leopards that your ancestors turn into are not the kind of animals that a hunter shoots at in the forest. No, sar…. They are magical animals…. You can’t see them. But you can hear them crying at night. And if you hear one of those magical animals crying at night, it means something bad will happen. It might even mean that the fetish priest will die.”
I next asked him:
“Now, look at me. You can see from the color of my skin that I’m of African descent. Now, after all of these years, why do you think I’ve come back to the land of my ancestors? Do you think that they called me back for some reason?”
Again the tall, serious cook was deeply thoughtful; he scratched his head and said soberly:
“It’s hard to tell, sar. Such a long time has passed.” He looked at me and shook his head pityingly. “I’m afraid, sar, that your ancestors do not know you now. If your ancestors knew you, why, they’d help you. And, of course, it may be that your ancestors know you and you don’t know them, so much time has passed, you see, sar. Now if, by accident, you happened to go back into the section where your ancestors are buried, they’d perhaps know you but you wouldn’t know them. Now, if, while you are in Africa, your ancestors should recognize you, then something strange will happen to you and then, by that token, you’d know that you were in touch with your ancestors.”
“What sort of strange thing would happen to me?”
“It’s hard to tell, sar,” he said.
I gave him a few shillings for “drink” and told him goodbye. I sat brooding. Mr. Shirer watched me and then broke into a soft laugh.
“Does that interview satisfy you?”
“Yes,” I told him. “Is he typical?”
“Quite typical,” he said. “You see, in my work in the Department of Welfare, I have a lot of trouble with beliefs of this sort. This concern with ancestors makes it difficult for the government to launch schemes of resettlement. For example, if, in a certain region, the land is poor and if it’s thought that it’s better for a tribe to move into a new area, the people will resist, because they do not want to leave the ground on which their ancestors lived and died. To the grave of his ancestors a man will go each year and kill a chicken and drop the blood on the earth, hoping that this will appease his ancestors, hoping that his ancestors will rest in peace and not come into this world and take him to keep them company in the world of spirits. The ground in which his ancestors are buried is charged with spirits whose influence is both good and bad. Therefore, to leave a spot in which ancestors are buried creates terror in some African tribes…. They feel that they are leaving their very souls behind them. It is only after making many sacrifices to the earth, to the dead ancestors, that they are able to leave at all.”
The illiterate cook had given me, by implication, answers to many questions. It was now obvious why Africans had sold so many millions of their black brothers into slavery. To be a slave was proof that one had done something bad, that one was being punished, that one was guilty; if one was guilty, one was a slave; if one was not guilty, one would not be in the position of a slave…. To be sold into slavery meant that your ancestors had consigned you to perdition! To treat a slave harshly was a way of obeying the spiritual laws of the universe! Hence, he who has misfortune merits it. Failure is a sign of badness; winning is a sign of goodness and indicates that the man who wins has a good cause. If you take something from a man who has lost, whom luck has deserted, you are doing right and adding to your own power and goodness….
“I wonder,” I said to Mr. Shirer as I sipped my coffee, “what would happen to that cook if he died here in Accra?”
“Let’s see what he has to say about that,” Mr. Shirer said. “I’ll ask him; I’ll call him back—”
“Oh, don’t bother—”
“Hell be glad to tell you,” Mr. Shirer said, rising and going to
the door and calling the cook.
He entered again, wiping his hands on his apron. The question was put to him by Mr. Shirer and the cook answered:
“Oh, that’s easy, sar. My son would take me back and bury me in the land of my ancestors.”
“But what if your son were not here?” I suggested relentlessly.
That one bothered him. He studied the floor for some minutes, and then he said:
“Then my friends would bury me and then they’d watch my grave for those black ants who are called God’s slaves. Now, you take one of those ants when he is crawling over my grave, wrap that ant in a bundle of three stones, and then take that bundle to the land where my ancestors are buried and bury it and my soul will be there. I’ll be with my ancestors then.”
These, of course, are but dreams, daylight dreams, dreams dreamed with the eyes wide open! Was it that the jungle, so rich, so fertile, was it that life, so warm, so filled with ready food, so effortless, prompted men to dream dreams like this? Or was it the opposite? These dreams belong to the African; they existed before the coming of the white man…. One thing was certain: their sense of reality was but a dream. It may be, of course, that dreams are the staunchest kind of reality…. It may be that such beliefs fit the soul of man better than railroads, mass production, wars…. And the African is not alone in holding that these dreams are true. All men, in some form or other, love these dreams. Maybe men are happier when they are wrapped in warm dreams of being with their fathers when they die…?
Twenty-Five
Upon my return to my hotel, I found an invitation to visit Dr. Ampofo of Mampong. After being in Africa for a month, this was the first invitation I’d received from the black bourgeoisie. I was anxious to meet Dr. Ampofo, for his personality was of a kind that evoked extreme reactions; there were those who liked him and those who felt that he embodied something evil.
Half an hour’s drive up the escarpment through dense forest brought me to a neat village where, for the first time, I saw flowers blooming…. Dr. Ampofo’s home could be seen a hundred yards away: a design of stone and serried windows, long lines, terraced landscape, trees, color….
Dr. Ampofo was forty-five years of age, black, short, nervous, thin, alert of body and agile of mind. He smiled quickly, too quickly, as he shook my hand. And he laughed…. I was beginning to wonder about that African laugh; it did not stem from mirth, as many people have erroneously thought. It was to bid for time, to hide one’s reactions, to reflect, to observe, to judge, to make up one’s mind! He was most gracious and showed me his beautiful new home which, he said, had been designed and built by his wife. He next showed me a collection of his wood carving which he himself had carved. He had a medical degree; he was the head of a huge African family; he had acted in the movies; and he conducted a thriving business in timber….
With drinks at our elbows, the doctor and I got to work at last.
“Do you mind talking about yourself?”
“Not at all,” he said.
He’d come to Mampong in 1919 after four years of schooling in his father’s village; he had lived in Mampong until 1922, then he’d attended boarding school at the Annum Presbyterian Senior School until 1926. He related how he and his friends had had to walk for three days and nights to reach this school, for there was no transportation in those days. His schooling continued at Cape Coast in the Mfantsipim’s Boys’ Secondary School. In 1930 he got a scholarship to study art for his B.A., but, halfway through, he gave it up for science. He won a competitive scholarship for study in England, and in 1932 he went to Edinburgh and completed his studies, obtaining his medical degree in 1939.
Touring Europe, he was caught in Sweden by the outbreak of war; he was forced to remain in Stockholm until February, 1940, at which time he returned to Africa….
“Doctor,” I began, “I want to ask you about life in the Gold Coast. I came here because of the reputation of the Convention People’s Party. It’s the one thing here that seems somewhat familiar to me; it’s a modern political movement and operates in terms of concepts that Westerners can understand. Now, this movement is not Communist, for the Communists are opposed to it; they have branded it as ‘corrupt, bourgeois nationalism.’ Yet, when I try to account for this national liberation movement, I’m baffled. Some aspects of this movement seem to partake of Leftism; other aspects are almost religious in their emotional expression. Sometimes one must use Marxist ideas to aid one in trying to grasp what one is looking at, but Marxism cannot satisfactorily account for this…. You don’t have in this country a great deal of industrialization which would have created a rootless mass of men ready for such a movement. Neither do you possess a great deal of class consciousness out of which such a movement could be created. The race consciousness here is not as sharp as that of the American Negro. Yet you have a rip-roaring political movement. How did it happen?”
He hesitated, then laughed.
“It has a background. It’s not only Nkrumah, I tell you. These things do not just burst out of the blue. There’s a creative energy in these people, the Akan people. The Akan is a stubborn and proud man. There is in him a consciousness of national humiliation and there is a deep race consciousness, deeper than you think….”
“How does this race consciousness manifest itself?” I asked. “Both Britishers and Americans have assured me that no such thing exists here—”
“It does exist.” He was adamant. “The men who organized our people into nationalistic organizations were educated abroad. It was in foreign lands that they learned the meaning of what was happening to our people. The men who went to America and to England came back and injected, and rightly so, the concept of our subjection and the concept of race consciousness into our lives. It came from without.
“The prime event that spurred us to action was the fall of the price of cocoa in 1940–43. Cocoa was so plentiful, the market was so rigged, that the farmers were burning it; there was no good price for it. Cocoa was withheld to lift the prices, and during the war the world market was bad….
“Then the Europeans made a move that brought violence…. A group formed a monopoly which was known as the Association of West African Merchants. They aimed to buy cocoa as cheaply as possible from us and sell it as high as possible on the markets of the world. These same merchants sold us imported goods at terribly high prices. We were trapped….
“This led to the events of 1948 when the national boycott was launched and white business firms were looted and burned….”
“So far, it’s clear,” I said. “But that does not explain the Convention People’s Party. Why did it arise in the Gold Coast? I’ve attended political meetings and I’ve seen some strange things. I’ve seen chiefs pouring libations; I’ve heard prayers, both Christian and pagan; I’ve heard oaths of personal loyalty taken by vast throngs of people to obey and serve the Leader—”
“You saw oaths administered?” he asked me quietly, seriously.
“I’d not lie to you. Why should I? I saw it on two occasions.”
“Yes. It happens,” he said, sighing.
“What does it mean?” I asked him.
He looked at me and laughed.
“You’re touching on something—”
“An oath in Africa is a terrible thing, I’m told,” I said, trying to urge him on.
He laughed again, rose, walked the floor, then scratched his head and whirled to me. He shook his finger at me, saying:
“When you talk of oaths, you’re touching on juju—”
“Oh, come now,” I said.
“You don’t believe in juju?” he asked.
“Hell, no! You’re a doctor. You can’t believe in such; not literally,” I said.
He studied me and wagged his head.
“There’s something to it,” he said solemnly.
“It’s purely psychological,” I said.
“I’ve seen it work,” he told me.
“It works only for those who believe in it,” I said. “I
t’s a psychological problem.”
He was silent again, looking at me and then looking off.
“You’re strong-minded,” he said.
“Oh, no. It’s just common sense. If the African had any damned juju, he’d have used it a long time ago to free his country,” I said.
“I’ve seen men who had been sentenced to death by juju,” the doctor said. “And they died.”
“They believed that they would die,” I said. “It’s suggestion, self-hypnosis, that’s all.”
“Yes; if you keep in mind that it’s psychological, you can escape it,” he conceded. “But it gets a lot of people….”
“I’ve found evidence of that,” I agreed. “Now, this business of the compound family and the head of that family to whom the members owe loyalty…. Does that have anything to do with the foundations of the Convention People’s Party? Juju’s out of the way; let’s talk sense. Tell me what you think.”
He still walked restlessly about the room, glancing at me now and then. Then he gave another laugh. I did not know him and he did not know me; and I was breaking in on him rather unceremoniously.
“Look, don’t be afraid of me,” I tried to reassure him. “I want to get at the bottom of this reality. But each time I’ve tried to talk a little, when I begin pressing questions, the Africans—”
“They close up like clams,” he said.
“Exactly. But they ought to know that I know that something is being hidden here….”
“What do you want to know?” he asked me, sitting suddenly.
“The official line is that this is just pure and simple nationalism,” I resumed. “It is, but it’s more than that. Yet it’s not Communism. I’d know it if it was…. Now, explain this to me in terms that I, a Westerner, can understand, can grasp.”
His wife entered the room at that moment. She was a tall, handsome woman, poised, Western in her manner. I congratulated her in her taste in the building and furnishing of her home and she was modest and polite. She and her husband spoke briefly in their native tongue and she invited me to lunch. I accepted, but warned her that African pepper was too much for my stomach. She promised that the lunch would be mild and simple…. When she had gone, I turned again to politics.
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