BOOK II THE RETURN AT LAST Chapter I: Early Days in Ghana Part III: Upper West Region

Part III: Upper West Region

On alighting at Gwollu in the Sisala West District, from far off Abdul saw people around what appeared like the remnants of a thick brick-colored wall with a protective canvas sheet over it. Thatch-roofed mud huts, nearly all with small windows, surrounded it. A few trees stood behind the huts where Abdul suspected farms were. He hurried over the baked brown soil towards the fortification.

The remaining Gwollu Slave Defence Wall was a mud wall over twelve feet high and some six feet thick with triangular holes in the sides, no doubt for observation of the surroundings.  

“This ancient defence wall served as a local bastion against the Slave Route from Djenne and Ouagadougou which passed here,” the medium-built dignified man, with sprinkles of gray in his dark thick hair serving as guide, said. “The slave raiders would usually surround our villages, set fire to the thatch of the buildings and then wait expectantly.”

Abdul shut his eyes and shook his head slowly. How savagely Africans treated each other.

“Soon the people came running out and the raiders rounded them up.”

Abdul sighed.

“Our ancestors however fought gallantly to protect their people from these ruthless slave raiders, notable among whom was Samori Toure.”

Abdul’s breath quickened, his eyes folded into slits and he bit his dried lips.

“The Gwollu Defence Wall constructed in the 18th century, precisely in 1756, by Gwollu Koro—or Chief—Limann or King Tanja Musa to protect the people against slave raiders is an example of that effort to stem slave raiding.”

“May Jah Rastafari bless that chief,” a middle-aged Rastafarian man with long, thick dreadlocks and a hollow, wizened face said.

“Thank you,” the guide said. “But the raiding continued.”

The dozen visitors sighed.

“The walls were built around the villages while ponds and farms lay outside them. So slave raiders would wait for the people to go to fetch water, gather firewood or to farm and then pounce on them.”

“Cursed vipers and offspring of vipers!” a preacher-looking stocky African American shouted in a stentorian voice which made people peek at him. He nodded, his head bald at the front, leaving a crescent of hair at the back.

“Yes, real vipers,” the guide echoed, an edge of anger mixed with pain on his baritone voice. “The many campaigns carried out by Samori Toure in the north led to the enslavement of numerous people who were sold in the Northern towns of Bole, Buna, Wa, Salaga, and Kintampo; in Atebubu; and Kete in the Volta Region. It therefore became necessary for a second wall to be built to enclose water sources and farmlands to prevent the people from being captured and sold into slavery when they ventured outside the inner wall to satisfy basic needs.”

Some of the visitors clapped, proud smiles on their radiant faces.

“That is why Gwollu is known as a two-walled city. We feel proud about this ingenious initiative of our king because there are only two such walls in the whole of Ghana.”

The villagers applauded and the guide beamed with pride.

“How did people live in those days?” a local woman with round, dazzling, prying eyes cried out.
            “It was difficult, my sister,” the guide answered in a tired voice. “That’s why we cherish this bullet proof wall so much that we have built a fence around it to protect it from totally collapsing.”

“Thank you for saving our people,” Abdul whispered at the wall and then bought a wreath and set out for Wa.

Just as everywhere else in the Northern and Upper Regions, the bus drivers will always shout to passengers that there were seats available, even when there was none. Abdul was amazed how many people and what amount of bulky goods could be loaded on a medium-sized bus. When the bus moved off, with garrulous passengers, bleating goats, and cackling guinea fowls on the rack above, and he thought all was okay now, the bus will soon stop at another village, either to drop people but often to take on more passengers and goods. People ended up sitting on each other’s laps. If a woman had a baby and could manage only a small space to squeeze her buttocks into, the other passengers who had a better seating space would happily ask to carry her baby they cajoled like their very own. Abdul felt bad for these babies, for dreadful was the heat in the bus. Even the wind blowing into the bus felt like heat fanned from a fire and Abdul, feeling suffocated and roasted, dripped with hot sweat.

Curiosity has brought him to Wa, the newest regional capital, home of the Wala, brimming with development projects, to see the memorial of George Ekem Ferguson, popularly known as G. E. Ferguson. Had this Fante man from Anomabu only served as a British colonial agent in Northern Ghana, Abdul wouldn’t so much as give him a thought. But the fact that an African achieved such high academic laurels at that time and because he had resisted the slave raiders, made Abdul come to lay a wreath on Ferguson’s grave.

Abdul found Ferguson’s biography fascinating. Born on July 14, 1864, the guidebook described him as one of the outstanding West Africans of his generation. Ferguson was educated in Methodist-run schools in Cape Coast and also in Sierra Leone. At 25 he left for England on a Gold Coast Government scholarship for technical training in surveying, mineralogy and geography at the Normal School of Mines. He became the first West African to receive a certificate from the Royal School of Mines. This is the type of relations Europeans should have had with Africans, Abdul thought, helping them to acquire skills they didn’t have instead of dominating their lands and persons. But colonialism did not come to develop neither land nor man but rob both. Abdul also found it curious that Ferguson was so grateful for the opportunities he had been given by the British that he became a staunch champion of British colonial ambitions. If Abdul agreed with the guidebook that Ferguson’s work in West Africa as a surveyor and cartographer deserved praise, however he couldn’t accept that even the demerits of imperialism couldn’t eclipse the fact that he was a remarkable and an extraordinary man. When the balance sheet is drawn, would the good colonialism bring Africa outweigh the evil? Even if it had, did Europeans have to colonize Africa to bring it their so-called civilization?

Abdul wrinkled his nose on recalling that Ferguson carried out his duty with zeal. Happily doing the dirty work for the colonialist, Abdul sneered. Thus in 1892, Ferguson undertook the first of his major expeditions to the North of the Gold Coast, concluding treaties with the Gonja rulers in Tuluwe, Bole, and Daboya as well as the Dagomba. Expeditions which helped to fix the boundaries of today’s Ghana. Abdul wondered if Ferguson thought he was aiding his country or the British when he not only made treaties of protection and freedom of trade with the territories through which he passed but also convinced the local chiefs in the North to sign treaties of friendship with the British which turned out to be treaties of domination, bondage and deception. However Abdul appreciated three qualities Ferguson displayed: first, for settling disputes between the local chiefs; second, for his field work in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast in the late nineteenth century and his detailed reports on the countryside through which he passed which enabled him to fix the location of places and provide maps; and third for his commentary on the ethnography and history of Asante and the Northern Territories. These show that the African was capable of achieving high standards if allowed to do so. However egoistic interests made the pre-colonial European traders and their colonial administrators to miss this opportunity to make all of humanity better and Africa and Africans partners in the development of the world.

One man’s meat being another person’s poison, Abdul was not surprised that slave raiders were not kind to Ferguson. Hence, in 1897, he was captured by Samori and beheaded for aiding the Whiteman.

Abdul knew that Samori had undertaken a not so successful all out assault on Wa two years earlier in order to help an ambitious man, Kongwuar Abudulai, to wrench the Paramount Chieftiancy. But his simultaneous attack against Benyalipe to the south not only led to the defeat of the Tuluwe forces but also caused much destruction and enslavement of the people. However the British halted his campaign east in Ghana, while the French encircled him from the north and west and from their Ivory Coast forts in the south. Samori surrendered to the French in 1898; they deported him to Gabon where he died two years later. Abdul shook his head recalling the great havoc and ruin the Samori Wars caused in Western Gonja.

“For your fight against slavery,” Abdul said pompously, holding the wreath at arm’s length, “leading a team to halt raids led by Samori and Babatu, here’s a wreath for you.”
            Abdul laid the wreath on the preserved grave and turned stiffly to go. His intention was to travel 19 kilometers to Wa, but knowing Bulenga lay on the way, he decided to see it.

It was with feelings of joy for some Africans having constructed a wall to save themselves from slavery, anger against others for subjecting their kind to such terror for the benefit of Europeans and gratitude towards an African for taking an anti-slavery stand—even if it was for ulterior motives—that Abdul headed south to Bulenga to see the natural fortifications which saved the people there from ending on the other side of the Atlantic as chattel slaves. This time it was caves that saved them. Abdul was shown round the caves in Bulenga which were places of refuge for the inhabitants fleeing from slave raiders.

Traveling a few kilometers from Bulenga, Abdul came to Sankana. Like elsewhere in the district, its low flat land stretched away indefinitely, dotted with trees and white boulders. Abdul headed for the center of the village, along whose dusty road a few people ambled and others pedaled bicycles. All about were flat, square, thatched clay compounds surrounded by scenic rock formations over a four square kilometer area. Abdul passed by women and children carrying home water they had drawn from mechanized boreholes and hand pumps until he arrived at thatched structures in the center where a guide with a shiny, broad forehead and hair too dark for his age assembled a handful of tourists and led them under the rock formations where they found a network of caves.

“These served as bunkers which protected our people against slave raiders,” the guide said.

Abdul took another look around the caves. A hideout for animals, he thought bitterly, became a hideaway for human beings.

“When slave raiders were sighted on their way to Sankana, women, children and the aged would take refuge here. Then warriors posted sentries and laid ambush with their powerful bows and deadly long distance arrows on top of the rocks and the hills.”

Abdul’s blood beat fast to hear the rest.

“When the sentries gave the signal, from their strategic hilltop locations, the warriors readied their weapons. As soon as the raiders appeared, they unleashed a hail of arrows on them.”

The visitors clapped ecstatically. Abdul found his left fingers gripping an imaginary curved piece of wood while the right drew the taut string to shoot the pointed arrow at a slave-raiding band.

“Were the raiders able to stand the hail of arrows?” a well-proportioned Diaspora woman with totally white hair asked.

Tittering, the guide shook his head. “In a pitched battle with the army of the notorious slave raider Samori whom I’m sure you’ve heard of—” Many visitors nodded and murmured invectives against him. “—despite the enemies’ superior weaponry, the people of Sankana defeated them.”

The visitors clapped again while the white-haired woman piped, “Thank God they did.”

“The Chiefs and people of Sankana celebrate this victory with a mock war at the Fiok festival.”

“Yeah, such a victory calls for celebration,” Abdul shouted.

“During the festival, the arms captured from Samori’s army and which are held in private possessions, are put on display.”

            After seeing the exhibit as evidence of slave raiding in Sankana, Abdul’s mind zoomed back to Professor Little and he let the guide arrange a little talk with the elders of the village.

Seven of them convened under a large baobab tree in the market square. Crouching like the guide, Abdul exchanged greetings with the wise old village elders—a fountain of knowledge, the link between the past and the present—sitting on a tree trunk. The guide whispered that most of them were past ninety and a few were one hundred. That such people were still mentally alert and physically able contrasted sharply with their counterparts in the West tucked into old people’s homes to hibernate and pass away.

Abdul stole looks at them while they waited for women to bring drinks, a necessary formality before any conversation could be made with a visitor. Two of them wore smocks while the rest had animal skins on their backs. Talismans conspicuously hung on their arms and loads of copper and iron rings adorned their gnarled fingers. Some cooled themselves with raffia fans whose handles were decorated with leather.

The elder to the right had large bright eyes which gave him a surprised, best, a haunted look. He leaned towards his neighbour and whispered something into his small ears plastered against his head. The neighbour nodded and ran his long fingers through his white goatee. The third one’s large, smiling, inquisitive eyes caught Abdul’s and he nodded with a grandfatherly smile which made the guide bow; Abdul bowed in deference too. The forth one chomped a long, thick, yellow stick.

“The oldest elder has a match this evening,” the guide nudged Abdul and said.

“What match?” Abdul asked.

The guide drew nearer Abdul and whispered into his ears: “That’s an aphrodisiac,” he said and laughed softly.

“Do you mean that man has a wife?” Abdul asked.

“Certainly!” the guide said.

“He took another one not long ago. Our elders continue to have children till they die.”

Abdul shook his head in disbelief while the man clutched the end of the stick in his wrinkled fingers, bared what remained of his stained teeth and scrubbed the stick over them, vigorously from left to right and then slowly from up to down. The next man dozed while he clutched his walking stick with a smooth head between his long legs. Stumps of grizzly hair dotted his cheeks and chin. Once, his neighbour with a white soupstrainer moustache nudged him and whispered something to the last man who was chewing tobacco. He spat a dark liquid before answering. Then he took out a snuff, shook some onto his left horny thumbnail, whiffed it into his wide nostrils and sneezed loud, causing the sleeping elder to jump. The man between them grinned toothlessly, his frail body shaking.

Women soon brought jars of pito. Abdul felt honoured to be served this sweet, mildly alcoholic beverage derived from millet and sold by brewers in open air bars and drunk from calabashes. The eldest woman filled a calabash and laid it before the oldest elder. He stuffed his love-stick in the grimed pocket of his old smock, spat out bristles of the stick and prayed; then he poured libation to the ancestors. He waved to the guide who then poured the brown brew into all the nine calabashes. Then everybody took a sip. The oldest elder nodded and the guide asked Abdul to speak.

“I want to know what spirit lives in the caves,” Abdul said.

The guide translated and the assembly stared at each other. Almost simultaneously the circle erupted with cries of outrage and incredulity. The elders who were sleeping and the one chewing tobacco sprang to their feet—a feat unbelievable for their ages—and stormed off, rattling off something. The others lowered their heads into their palms.

Abdul gaped at the guide. “What did I do wrong?” he asked, a shade of alarm in his voice.

“They said it’s not the appropriate moment to discuss such issues,” he said after consulting the elders.

“When is the right time?”

“Normally after a sacrifice of a sheep or a fowl.”

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

The guide said something to the elders. “They want to know if you have another question.”

“May I ask how the people of Sankana came to know the god in the cave?” Abdul said cautiously.

The elders shook their heads and all laughed, showing a few teeth grimy with the chewing of kola nuts and tobacco, as Abdul looked about in confusion,

“They say what you want to know is like an enemy asking them to reveal the recipe for the poison concoction smeared on the tips of their arrows.”

“I’m not their enemy,” Abdul said defensively.

“They now say it’s like a small rock wanting to know what lies beneath a big one. Can the small rock lift the big one?”

The elders consulted each other while the guide explained in an embarrassed tone that they don’t easily give away ancestral secrets.

The elder with the bushy moustache spoke.

“Exactly what I was saying,” the guide said. “They say outsiders are not allowed to penetrate the mystery of Kalibi, the god of the most sacred cave, who, when raiders first attacked Sankana, roared so loudly that the ground trembled as if there was an earthquake.”

“Did it?”

The guide nodded.

“We descendants of former slaves are dying to know what happened to our ancestors,” Abdul almost pleaded.

The elders nodded when the guide translated. “They say on the contrary they’re anxious to forget the horrors our ancestors went through. They don’t like to talk about slavery. It opens old wounds.”

Abdul felt let down but he understood the elders. If the sorrow of these relics was difficult for him to bear, what about those who know for sure that their ancestors really lived them? He understood the people’s wounds couldn’t be totally healed with these perpetual reminders of slavery around them. It was vital to break the silence around slavery, but those who hold the knowledge must first be made to know the importance of it. He would be back for an extended stay to buy their confidence like Professor Little did.

“Before, they talked freely to foreigners, especially those who suggested tourism projects, but scheming tourism scouts have killed their optimism,” the guide explained. “They say they are proud about the bitter part of their history just like a soldier is about a scar earned in battle. And like the soldier, talking about the wound may bring memories of the wound too much to bear.”

Abdul finally asked the question haunting him since their refusal to answer his questions. “Why did they accept the meeting?”

            The old men looked at each other. The toothless grins again. “They say an elder cannot refuse to answer when his child calls him. Who knows, he may have something important to say. But it is their duty to warn the child if he wants to probe deeper than required for his age.”

            The meeting over the guide whispered to Abdul to make some donation. Abdul dished out 50,000 cedis—about $5. This was greeted with an outcry. The oldest elder fished out his stick and began to munch dreamily again.

            “What’s the matter again?”

            “They say what you gave isn’t even worth the pito served.”

            Abdul shrugged, picked up his bag, bowed and walked off while the elders stared after him, shaking their old heads slowly. In the tradition, Abdul should have indicated his intention to go. They would give their assent. But they should rise first and lead him part of the way, or let the guide do so. Abdul’s attitude could have cost a local a heavy fine but what could the elders of Sankana do to a stranger?