Ghana, 1975
By Francis Hyland
20 Sep 2009
It was the day after Boxing Day. The weather was good; the season of the harmattan; hot, arid and dusty; the sky a yellowy haze; the air desert dry, a liberation from the muggy humidity of the rainy season. The petrol tank was full. The radiator fluid had been checked. Jodie, Denzil and Xavier, the suitcases and the boys' surfboards were all loaded into the light blue Peugeot 404 Estate – a reliable workhorse of a car that had conveyed the Lewis family throughout Ghana on regular family adventures south from Kumasi to Elmina, Cape Coast, Senya Beraku and Accra on the coast; north-east to Amadzofe, nestled high on a mountainside above the cloud line; north to Mampong in the Northern Hills; and as far afield as Lomé, the capital of Togo. The clutch had been replaced fairly recently, the oil had been changed and so it was with confidence (along with a fair amount of excitement) that Albert stepped into the sturdy French automobile, pulling the heavy door closed with a solid "thunk!" He turned the key and the engine eagerly sprang to life.
"Who wants to go to the beach?" Albert's voice was lively, backed by a broad, satisfied smile.
"I do! I do!" From the back bench seat, the boys squealed animatedly in unison, their arms raised and waving. Jodie was laughing gently, her calm, blue-gray eyes half closed and twinkling enticingly. Her blonde hair was swept forward over her right shoulder covering her collar bone. She was wearing a mid-thigh length, white linen A-line dress that she had had made by a local dressmaker from a design she had found in a recent Laura Ashley catalogue. Her arms were crossed across her lap. Albert leaned over and kissed her cheek, his beard tickling her soft, lightly tanned skin. How he loved this lady! He was drawn for a moment into her soft, alluring gaze, his mind drifting back to the air-conditioned lobby of the Continental Hotel in Accra, ten years earlier, seeing Jodie for the first time with her Gauloise cigarettes and Club beer, waiting for her friend, Mary Bauer (an American professor of Mathematics at the University in Legon), who had taken Jodie's eighteen month old son Denzil to the zoo so that Jodie could squeeze in a visit to the hair salon. Before he had had to leave, Albert learned that she taught music at the Prempeh Girl's College, she was recently divorced from her Ghanaian husband with whom she had had a son – the playful and easy-going Denzil – and that she planned to stay in Ghana, "for the time-being, at least."
"Daddy?" Xavier's little voice snapped Albert's mind to attention.
"Yes?"
"Are we there yet?" A quiet giggle followed.
"Just around this next bend."
Jodie put her arm behind Albert's shoulders, stroking his smooth, black hair. And then they were off.
Albert's head almost hit the roof of the car. "That must have been a boa constrictor," he took a deep breath to calm his frazzled nerves, "or perhaps a fully-grown African python." He was needless to say, a little shaken. Whatever the species, it was huge! Albert hadn't recognized what it was until the car was about to run over it; through the shimmering road haze it had looked like a line in the tarmac itself, a road surface repair, or the shadow of a tall, thin tree. Certainly no creature could have been so long as to stretch across the entire width of the road! With two loud thumps, the car had driven over the reptile. Xavier, jumping up to look out of the rear window, watched as the massive basilisk slithered off apparently unconcerned by the incident into the thick rainforest through which the road had been carved.
"It was a monster. And it's still alive! The monster's still alive!" At seven years old, Xavier was easily excited.
Denzil, four years older than his brother, was watching too. "It must have been a hundred feet long!"
Albert pushed the clutch in and allowed the car to coast along the road for a while. There were no other vehicles in sight, ahead or behind. Up until the late sixties, this road – the only passage through the rainforest that blanketed the country between the Ashanti region and the coast – had been nothing more than a rut-filled dirt road. The one-hundred and eighty mile journey from Kumasi to the coast road that now took a little over four hours by car had once taken six or seven! Throughout the sixties, the Lebanese had come in droves to Ghana and using their engineering expertise and foreign investments had been responsible for modernizing and improving the road system first designed by the British in the early forties. Albert listened for any new knocks, any unusual noises coming from the car. Everything seemed to be fine.
"We should stop for lunch soon. I'll check that nothing's come loose."
"Not here; the snake'll be angry with us for driving over him!" Denzil glanced behind him once more to make sure the snake wasn't following them. After a quick picnic lunch on the edge of the forest, they continued on their journey. Traffic was surprisingly light as they reached the coast road and they were soon passing through tiny fishing villages – no more than a dozen or so thatched, mud huts tucked away amongst the palm trees, just off the road.
The approach to Elmina was always wonderfully mystical: the surf-misted sunlight; the curtain of palm trees through which one first glimpsed the spectrally-white edifice of the fort; the gloriously refreshing smell of the ocean; it was as though the town were a mirage, a figment of the imagination. From whichever direction one came (one either entered the town from the east or the west), the majestic, red tile roofed, Dutch-built Fort St. Jago, standing alone on a high hilltop, rose up strikingly from the forest that surrounded Elmina on three sides – the small town ran right up to the Atlantic ocean, to a golden curve of palm tree-lined beach with a river estuary that sliced through to a small fishing port. Albert had had a book published on the history of the Colonial forts and castles that lined the Central Region of the coast of Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast, and once a central point in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade) and was well-known throughout Ghana and Europe for his knowledge of Colonial West African Architecture. Seeing the imposing fort (now run as a guest house to which they were headed today), with its seventeenth-century architecture perfectly preserved, perched above Elmina, Albert always felt a stirring inside his body, a warmth spreading outwards as he admired the graceful design. Below the fort, the town – an eclectic mix of old, two and three story colonial buildings, some dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ramshackle huts built from mud or wood, with rusting corrugated iron sheet roofs, and a few very modern, 'out of place' looking buildings (homes of wealthy Ghanaian businessmen) – bustled with life. On the other side of a new concrete bridge, on a rocky, wave-beaten promontory at the mouth of the narrow river that ran between the lagoons and salt marshes and between the busy port and the ocean, built right at the water-line, stood Elmina Castle. Much larger than the Fort St. Jago, Elmina Castle had been one of the primary slave holding prisons and would one day be featured extensively in the epic film portraying the life of a slave castle governor, Cobra Verde. (The castle at Cape Coast, a little way to the east, had been the largest and most prominent slave prison along the western coast of Africa, and the site of the infamous 'doorway of no return'.)
The car was welcomed into town by a swarm of half naked, excited young children. Xavier and Denzil held their hands out of the windows to accept the hand pats that the children were offering as they ran alongside the slow moving Peugeot. The fort appeared to be in the sky as the car came around the final bend before the bridge; both Denzil and Xavier gazed in wonder (as they always did), their mouths hanging open, their eyes wide and unblinking at the view laid forth before them. Albert brought the car to a standstill at the foot of the unfeasibly steep hill and revved the engine teasingly. He looked back at the boys, a serious, concerned look on his face. The warm air was filled with the salty ocean spray and the pungent smell of drying fish.
"Do you think we'll be able to make it? I think we can do it."
The boys loved this game; not in the way children love ice cream or kittens or birthday parties, but rather, in the way they adore the thrill of being scared knowing that they are safe from harm, safe under their parent's care; like when they are thrown high up into the air or swung around by the arms. The hill was indeed very steep. The narrow, brick-paved road was edged on one side by a deep concrete gutter and from where they were parked appeared to lead vertically up to the clouds, with the fort as the entryway into the heavens. An old woman, her body wrapped in a beautifully printed, sea-blue and sunflower-yellow piece of material, was sitting on the doorstep of one of the ramshackle wooden huts, a large, white enamel bowl full of soapy water on the ground in front of her, casually watching the Lewis' while she did her laundry. With a lurch, the car leapt into action in a spirited attempt at the ascent. On both sides and behind the car, the children, their skin radiant and beautiful, myriad shades of brown and black, their little faces full of excitement, whooped in delight. Xavier gripped the seat cushion that he was sitting on as tightly as he could; his jaw was set rock-solid, his eyes were wide with terror.
About halfway up, Albert, letting out the accelerator a little way called out gravely, "I don't think we're going to make it!" He revved the engine loudly. He pulled up the handbrake lever. Some children had run up the hill alongside the car and danced around gaily, pointing and smiling, enjoying the drama.
"You two will have to get out and walk; there's too much weight in here." Albert turned to look at the boys. They were pressed as far back into the seat as it allowed, rigid like astronauts during lift-off. Denzil was grinning.
"Come on Nosh, we've got to get out." ('Nosh' was the nickname he had given his brother, derived from 'Dishcloth', a name he had come up with after seeing Xavier regularly helping Kofi, the Lewis' resident housekeeper, with the washing and drying of the dishes.) Seeing that the back occupants were preparing to exit, the children rushed to open the doors for the boys, a multitude of helping hands reaching into the interior of the steeply angled car. After the doors were closed, Albert and Jodie drove on up to the top of the hill where the guesthouse keeper, a friendly-looking, white-haired and bearded man, his skin wrinkled like old leather and as black as coal, was waiting to help them with the luggage. Denzil and Xavier, accompanied by a bevy of laughing children, reached the summit just as large, heavy raindrops began falling. Albert looked up at the sky. The rain was pouring from a solitary, voluminous, dark gray cloud directly above them that was passing languidly across the sun. The harmattan didn't reach as far south as the coast and so although the winter season north of the thick rainforest meant five or six months of drought (and having to endure the fine coat of dust it left everywhere), the south was still susceptible to the wetter, tropical Atlantic weather systems. The guesthouse keeper quickly ushered Albert and Jodie up the steps to the small wooden drawbridge that lay across a modest, stagnant water-filled moat and led them into the fort. The boys remained outside, playing with the other children, clambering over the diminutive cannon that stood watchful over Elmina Castle, in the center of the parking area, running around the perimeter of the fort playing hide and seek as the cooling rain passed.
That night, as Albert gazed up at the white ceiling, bathed in a yellow light from the paraffin lamps in the courtyard below the open bedroom window, through the fine, white mesh mosquito net (hanging from little metal hooks in the ceiling) that was draped over the large, heavy wooden bed, he felt a calmness, a soul-filling contentment sweeping down over him. Jodie was sleeping peacefully beside him; her breathing was in time with the waves breaking on the beach next to the castle. Albert closed his eyes. From the blue-black, moonlit heavens above Elmina, Orion cast a watchful eye over the town.
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