The Masque Of Africa Part 5

Someone in our party asked when the Oba was going to come out. We were told what we already knew, that the Oba was changing his clothes. So we waited.

Eventually he appeared, coming out through a door at the back. Two policemen in black uniform came out before him; and some chiefs, coming out through another door, stood on the Oba's left. The Oba was a tall man with a wide, kindly face. He carried a whitish whisk made from a horse's tail. He handled this whisk in an impressive way. He used it to thank, to acknowledge, and to suggest in the most delicate way to a speaker that enough was enough.

The Oba's wife, who had come out with him, and was sitting demurely on his left, was young, with a lively questioning face that made her appear separate from the court formality. She considered us, one by one, and I felt she liked us.

The fine woman in pink, who had greeted us, and was now sitting with us, as though she was part of our group, said in an undertone, speaking of the friendly young woman on the Oba's left, "She is the real power behind the throne."

There followed the speeches and the formalities. The Oba, with his soft voice, cut in with a little piece of business. He asked the people from the tourism department how they were getting on with the pavilion for traditional religion. The men among the officials stood up, made the royal obeisance, doing their half crouch, touching the floor with the tips of their fingers, so that (like the courtiers before the Oba of Lagos, but those courtiers were wearing gowns, and these officials were wearing suits) they looked like sprinters waiting for the starter's pistol. Then they stood up and correctly, holding one hand over the other, they told the Oba that many things had been done and, in fact, they were hoping that one day when he had the time he would come and have a look. He said he would, one of these days.

Then the officials, speaking on our behalf, asked for permission to visit the sacred grove. The Oba gave it graciously, making an encouraging gesture with his white horse-hair whisk. We were dismissed. He went out by the door through which he had entered, and the policemen and the rest of his suite followed. We had a few words then with the Oba's wife. She was as friendly and interested as she appeared.

We left the durbar hall, with the officials from the tourist office. As soon as we went out of the main gate the ragged court musicians started up: drums, metal on metal, and pebbles shaken in calabashes. The man who was our sponsor-he was from the publis.h.i.+ng house-made as if to give money to the musicians. But another man rounded on him, saying, "I've already given them money. Don't give any more to the scoundrels."

THE SACRED grove took my breath away. After the Oni's palace, the garden of the Source of Life, the Yoruba heroine of long ago, the petrified staff of the Yoruba giant, I had expected only more myth-making, something calling once more for a suspension of disbelief. grove took my breath away. After the Oni's palace, the garden of the Source of Life, the Yoruba heroine of long ago, the petrified staff of the Yoruba giant, I had expected only more myth-making, something calling once more for a suspension of disbelief.

But the grove was real and it was beautiful: a piece of tropical woodland which had been left untouched for some time, and where no animal or creature was to be killed. That was what we had been told; and that was what we found. At the limit of the grove families of monkeys took their time to cross the public road. Smaller, sad-faced monkeys, tormented elsewhere, looked without fear at our party and the cars that had brought us.

The grove was walled off or fenced with a fascinating wall of masonry or terra-cotta, the work of an artist whose melting forms recalled the playful designs of the Barcelona architect Gaudi. The textured wall was touched with moss; it was in keeping with the design. Through the wilderness of tree-trunks and hanging lianas inside we had glimpses of the river that ran through the sanctuary. It was a muddy tropical river, and no attempt had been made to beautify or soften the turbid water; the scalloped melting forms on the wall were intended to match the bounce of the fast-moving river, narrow at this point. As in the design of the Kabakas' tombs in Uganda, where the design had been religiously laid down, everything had to be local, had to be of the place as it was.

It was all very moving to me, especially the idea of the grove as an animal sanctuary. It was said to be a hundred and sixty acres in all, a quarter of a square mile. I wished it was ten times the size.

A big gate opened into a short lane-this was for the procession at the time of the river festival. The lane led down, past a number of small home-made shrines at the foot of trees, to what was said to be a pavilion, just where the yellow river curved. It was an open pavilion, thatched, with timber uprights. To one side of the pavilion was the big shrine. The shrine was also thatched, and had mud walls decorated with figures in white, chocolate, rust and black. The priests and the soothsayers lived within those walls. The legend was that the pavilion stood on the site of the palace of the first Oba of Osun. At the time of the river festival, as people said, thousands of people of the black diaspora came here. There were morality plays in every corner of the wood.

Perhaps it was artificial, as some people said; perhaps it was all made up. The site was too beautiful, the symbolism of the ritual too easy; perhaps it had been all put together by someone whose business it was to stage events. But it was also possible that all rituals began like this, in artifice.

The event had now taken hold; and the people of the diaspora who came for it would understand that though they had taken many of the Yoruba G.o.ds across the water, and though the whole apparatus of the supernatural had also travelled with them, reminding men of the precariousness of their hold on life, and though they had taken much of this Yoruba magic to the New World, making that difficult world safe, they could never take the sacred grove with them. That remained in Africa.

ON THE way back to Lagos our driver stopped a few times. He was looking for palm wine. The palm wine here, in the country, was the real thing; in Lagos the palm wine was diluted. He eventually got his palm wine, but he didn't offer the rest of us a taste. He was saving it up for the evening. He would call his friends over-they didn't live very far: it was almost the driver's definition of a friend in Lagos: someone who didn't live far away-and they would "kill" the bottle. way back to Lagos our driver stopped a few times. He was looking for palm wine. The palm wine here, in the country, was the real thing; in Lagos the palm wine was diluted. He eventually got his palm wine, but he didn't offer the rest of us a taste. He was saving it up for the evening. He would call his friends over-they didn't live very far: it was almost the driver's definition of a friend in Lagos: someone who didn't live far away-and they would "kill" the bottle.

We should have had a clear run to the city. But just inside the city the traffic caught us, or we caught up with it, and it wore us down. It even began to look as if the driver might have to postpone his palm-wine evening.

8.

THE NORTH of Nigeria was Muslim. I had heard from Adesina that in the colonial time missionaries-he meant Christian missionaries-had not been allowed in the north. All the intellectual life of the country had been in the pagan or Christian south; but it was the more populous north that with independence had come by the greater power. of Nigeria was Muslim. I had heard from Adesina that in the colonial time missionaries-he meant Christian missionaries-had not been allowed in the north. All the intellectual life of the country had been in the pagan or Christian south; but it was the more populous north that with independence had come by the greater power.

My friend from the north-he had helped with the hotel on the night or morning of my arrival-said one evening at dinner that the south was "degenerate." He might have been speaking lightly; or he might only have been making a standard provincial joke; but jokes are always more than jokes, and this one spoke of the cultural fracture between north and south.

It is better to go to the north by air.

Somewhere before Kano, the great city of the north, you start to look down at what might be parkland: isolated big trees, dark green, on pale gra.s.sland. It is the kind of soft landscape that is created after forbidding forest has been cut down, all but the isolated big trees, which have been left for shade or beauty.

Outside the small airport building there is an immediate feeling of strangeness. Men in blue or white Muslim gowns, working garb for them, standing in a semi-circle well away from the pa.s.sengers. Some of them are selling prayer beads and white Muslim prayer caps. You quickly get to the town outside, since there are no immigration or customs formalities for people from Lagos. The town is seen to be a town of dust and dirt. The road is a wavering path between dirt and garbage, which people here seem reluctant to get rid of; and Christian churches. The churches are surprising in this Muslim area, but I am not to get the wrong idea. I am told, "Only foreigners live here." And this is the only place where churches are allowed, on the periphery of things.

There were two dogs on a mound of garbage, and the poor creatures were the colour of garbage.

Beyond this is the town proper: many goats eating garbage, plastic and paper. The goat is the perfect animal for this area, living on air until it is slaughtered. And children: innumerable, thin-limbed, in dusty little gowns, the unfailing product of multiple marriages and many concubines. Horses, in this place which is supposed to have a cult of the horse and horsemans.h.i.+p: but the horses thin, like the boys. Garbage here, gathered up in little mounds. Innumerable okada okada motorcyclists, doing their routes, picking up pillion pa.s.sengers. motorcyclists, doing their routes, picking up pillion pa.s.sengers.

Only one active building site, with seven people working on it, one man mixing mortar, which is then pa.s.sed from man to man, and finally to the mason on the brick wall. In the centre of the town there is a big abandoned multi-story building: this is a relic of the time when Kano was a boom area, but now, with the absence of power, that boom is far away. The children that are now unceasingly produced by wives and concubines, boom or no boom, have no future, except buying or hiring or leasing motorcycles, to add to the city's okada okada force. force.

We were told later that one of the great sights of the city, well worth coming for, took place every Friday, the holy day, when after prayers the garbage-strewn streets erupted with hundreds and hundreds of thin little Muslim boys with their begging bowls, waiting patiently for alms from the pious who had said their prayers.

The good Muslims of Kano see their situation as "dynamic." For these people, once the state is Muslim, and the culture Islamic, there can never be a crisis; the world is whole. This sets them apart from the rest of Nigeria, which lives in a perpetual state of crisis.

THE HOTEL had an unusual number of black-and-white signs, perhaps done on a computer, asking guests not to take away the hotel fittings. had an unusual number of black-and-white signs, perhaps done on a computer, asking guests not to take away the hotel fittings.

Some friendly local intellectuals in white gowns came to see me after dinner, and we talked by electric light in the sandy garden, away from the parked cars, between the hotel proper and the hotel's "Calypso" restaurant. We fought off mosquitoes and sand-flies while we talked.

One man, a former Fulbright scholar, taught literature at the university. A man in a red fez did media, and worked for the government. A third man, modest and attractive, said he was "a tiny writer" in English.

They were all proud men of the north, and they had done much thinking about their ident.i.ty in the mish-mash of Nigeria. They didn't appear at first to see the Kano the visitor saw. They saw growth and dynamism. Kano, they said, was an ancient trading centre and it still held its place, although the trans-Sahara trade had gone down.

Later, not understanding that they were saying something different, they said that Kano was conservative, and the challenge to it came now from education. There were two kinds of education. One was Western; the literature-teacher said he was part of that. And there was the traditional koranic system. This made people literate in Arabic, and sent them out into the "informal" network. That was a formal academic way of saying that the koranic system sent them out to s.h.i.+ne shoes, to drive okada okada motorcycles, to hawk things in the street, and generally to do "low" work which kept them at a subsistence level. The koranic way, in fact, made the streets of Kano what they were. motorcycles, to hawk things in the street, and generally to do "low" work which kept them at a subsistence level. The koranic way, in fact, made the streets of Kano what they were.

This couldn't have been an easy thing for these proud Islamic men to live with, but their heads were full of the problem of ident.i.ty as reflected in language, and they let it pa.s.s.

The literature-teacher said they were inward-looking people. They wrote in Hausa, a language of the north; they had very few English writers. He said, "We want to look out, but all these writers write in Hausa."

The man in the fez, the media man, said, "We need new ideas."

The man who said he was a "tiny writer in English" said, "Kano is a strange place. I look at people who are happy one minute and very unhappy the next. All right and then angry by turns. I look at them because they are my characters, and I want to understand them." He couldn't say why they are angry. "They are not vocal. I don't know why they are so alienated. I feel their anger even though we are an urbane and commercial centre."

The academic, the literature-teacher, didn't feel the anger the tiny writer felt. "It is not so palpable to me. It could be an ident.i.ty issue. What pigeon-hole they fit in."

They then talked about what was closest to them, the question of Hausa ident.i.ty.

When did that ident.i.ty crisis begin?

They said it was started by European anthropologists. And, indeed, there was an American academic in the hotel at that moment, who had come to write about the Hausa and was now at the end of his "fieldwork."

The tiny writer in English said, "The inwardness of people in Kano is part of our ident.i.ty, and maybe this is why the social and political advancement is limited."

We had gone far beyond the brave att.i.tudes they had adopted at the beginning.

I wanted to know how they were reacting to the dilapidation of Kano. In the beginning they had appeared not to notice it.

The media man in the red fez said it was growing, both the city and the dilapidation. "They are all like ants milling around. We do not have much new development." Again, very different from what they had said in the beginning. "There is a great influx of people, but no jobs, and so many people just do the okada okada thing." thing."

The literature-teacher said, "It is a lament these days, but there is no magic wand to solve it. People will have to solve it on an individual level. Just as I solved my power problem with a generator."

I wanted to know about the position of the Amir. Was he like the Oni of Ife, or was he more?

They all said that people respected the inst.i.tution. There was no coercion.

The writer said, "The Amir does not control production. He is identified with Islam and he stands for the inspiration of the people, and he is revered." The people of Kano did not think of themselves as Arabs. In this they were different from the people of Sudan. "They are black as night but pretend to be Arab because they speak Arabic. We will never want to be Arabs."

IN THE geography books I read at school, Kano was a great mud-walled city. Photographs showed smooth-plastered walls, pierced with narrow drainage pipes. I had wished then to see Kano, but now I had to be content with that faint memory, of an old photograph seen long ago. I couldn't find anything like that, and I found in the end that some cultural arm of the Germans was looking after the little stretch of mud wall that had survived. Its surface was dug up, and very far from being plastered and smooth. geography books I read at school, Kano was a great mud-walled city. Photographs showed smooth-plastered walls, pierced with narrow drainage pipes. I had wished then to see Kano, but now I had to be content with that faint memory, of an old photograph seen long ago. I couldn't find anything like that, and I found in the end that some cultural arm of the Germans was looking after the little stretch of mud wall that had survived. Its surface was dug up, and very far from being plastered and smooth.

The first palace I saw was the Amirs' weekend palace. With a name like that it should have been many miles away from the city, but it wasn't, leaving one to worry about its purpose.

The walls were high and ochre-coloured. Their only decoration was a series of abstract designs in raised concrete, which might have been created by moulds. Here too children ran after visitors and waited patiently for the gratuities that were doled out at the end of the visit. The doorway or gateway was set in the middle of the wall, which was apparently many feet thick, but when you looked up you saw that the thickness was an illusion, that above the ceiling (of corrugated iron) was a vacancy that reached to the very top.

The ceiling was broken in many places and open to the sky, and there were birds nesting in the corners. The wall was hollow. Inside there were courtyards around small low buildings that were shut. Against one wall was a very old tree, with a thick trunk. At the very back there was an orchard, walled again, where the concubines of the Amir of two generations ago might have relaxed, if they weren't too old or if they hadn't been discarded.

The main palace, to which we came in due course, was more challenging on this day of heat. It was in a big open dusty semi-arid maidan maidan, sun-struck and bare except for the neem trees in the driveway, with great distances between the cool of the three gateways. The walls were high and brown.

In the second gateway a small white kitten with a patch of colour on its back was crying. It was like the kitten I had seen in Uganda in the Mountains of the Moon hotel. It was possibly the last of the litter, surviving heaven knows how. It would have taken very little to comfort it, but I was with people to whom cats were spirits and familiars; and I had to leave the dainty little creature opening its mouth and crying, still remarkably whole, still nourished by the milk of its mother, now perhaps persecuted and killed.

This little tragedy, and my own helplessness, cast a shadow over the rest of my visit to the palace, to the various durbar rooms, including the England room, where framed photographs on the wall showed Queen Elizabeth being received many years ago by the Amir of Kano.

These inner rooms were being repaired or redecorated, especially the ceilings with their raised decorations and earth colours, the colours of sand and gold in one room, and grey, black and white in another. There was a harem area in the palace, unlikely as it seemed, with wives and concubines and slaves and eunuchs, Islam living out its good old ways at its African limits.

The harem was, of course, off limits to me. I sat on a dusty chair in a durbar room and waited for the rest of the party to come back.

9.

DELACROIX'S PICTURE of the ladies of the harem in Algiers shows idle women in colourful clothes. The vacancy of their minds shows in their faces. I suppose some such picture-the clothes, the idleness-had worked on the imagination of the Indian woman I met in Delhi some years ago who said she would have liked nothing more than to be one of the harem of the Emperor Akbar. This woman was not a Muslim, had no idea of a harem, and even with her folly would have been dismayed to find that the harem of an African ruler (no doubt in this woman's mind some notches down from the real thing) was in the main a place of homeless derelicts-slaves and concubines (many of them gifts from other African rulers), discarded older wives, eunuchs (bought from Egypt)-people who had outlived their usefulness, had no talent, no family, no outside life. of the ladies of the harem in Algiers shows idle women in colourful clothes. The vacancy of their minds shows in their faces. I suppose some such picture-the clothes, the idleness-had worked on the imagination of the Indian woman I met in Delhi some years ago who said she would have liked nothing more than to be one of the harem of the Emperor Akbar. This woman was not a Muslim, had no idea of a harem, and even with her folly would have been dismayed to find that the harem of an African ruler (no doubt in this woman's mind some notches down from the real thing) was in the main a place of homeless derelicts-slaves and concubines (many of them gifts from other African rulers), discarded older wives, eunuchs (bought from Egypt)-people who had outlived their usefulness, had no talent, no family, no outside life.

Old age and idleness gave them the freedom to go outside (the eunuchs always in their uniform), and they used this limited freedom to do little errands in the town for people in the harem. Apart from this there was nothing for them to do. They were waiting now only for death, were fed like dogs, and slept on the floor of the harem in such corners as they could find.

This was the picture that was given me later, by a woman whose mother had spent some unhappy years in the harem of a small northern Nigerian chief.

Polygamy, the way of life of the harem, had its own rules. The most important of these was the separation of women from their children. This happened when the children were born. The children were given out to other women and were brought to the natural mother only to be fed or suckled. While this was happening the natural mother covered her face with a cloth; the child was not to get to know her or think of her as a source of special affection. When a child was six or seven it could be told who its natural mother was. That caused no disturbance; the child did not lose its affection for its foster mother.

These complicated rules-like a little religion within the larger religion-were intended to break down any idea of the "nuclear" family and to inculcate the idea of a broader family unit within the walled harem. Polygamy as the sound Islamic way had its champions and theoreticians, and they could be well educated. For these people the nuclear-family idea was the origin of the selfishness and breakdown of other societies.

Laila was the romantic name of this woman's mother. And perhaps it was one of the things that had helped to give her some idea of the life she wanted for herself. She had grown up with television; she read the Mills and Boon novels, and believed in love. Her family were big landowners, rich enough and secure enough to have some idea of the modern world. They had sent Laila to a convent school in the cool plateau of Jos for a couple of years. There she caught the eye of the ruler or caught the eye of one of his matchmakers. Her family were delighted, and so was Laila. She knew, of course, that Muslim men could have four wives, and a ruler any number of concubines. But her education, her secure family background, and her imagination had made her believe that when she married she would enter the realm of love and somehow be exempt from the common destiny of women around her.

She became pregnant. She had a daughter. She called the little girl Mona. They, the ruler's court, wanted to take the child away and give it to a foster mother. She refused, and her pa.s.sion was so great that the court, fearing that she might do something to her child, let the matter drop. One of her servants brought back the story that some people were calling her the white woman. She thought this funny, and it seemed to her that she had won. But what she next heard wasn't funny at all. She heard that her husband was paying betrothal visits to the parents of the young girl whom he wanted to make his second wife-visits just like those he had made to Laila's parents.

Laila felt herself sinking. Her husband tried to calm her; he told her that nothing would change the love he felt for her. This other marriage was something he had to do as an Islamic ruler; it was expected of him. His father had about thirty children. He couldn't be more precise about the number of children because it was unlucky for a man to count his children. His grandfather had about fifty, but things were different in those days.

n.o.body in the court could understand why Laila refused to be comforted, and continued to make a fuss, threatening the harmony of the harem; many of the women said that the white woman had been unhinged by the English books she had read and the convent education she had received. And Laila was cast into the very pit of despair when her parents made it clear that they couldn't support her; she had expected them at least to understand.

The second marriage went ahead, without reference, it seemed, to Laila. She felt shut out of her own marriage. She felt that her humiliation was complete. She felt mocked by the past. She began to think of withdrawing from the ruler, having no intimate contact with him. It was hard for her to decide; there was a part of her that thought everything could still be made all right. When that idea faded, she discovered that she was pregnant again.

Now began a strange time for her, living alone with the mess of harem life, the rivalries and quarrels, the hatreds, the constant tension. She was protected to some extent by her solitude, her ambition for something beyond the harem, which the others couldn't even begin to suspect. Within that solitude she discovered a cause: she became determined to spare her daughter what she had gone through.

Her second child was a son. They wanted to take him away. She let them. She covered her face when she nursed the boy. The boy grew up. Thereafter she let the years pa.s.s.

The idea that she might do something to save Mona never left her. It gave her a kind of solace, though-living within the walls of the harem, a kind of prisoner-she had no idea what she might do for her daughter. But she felt that because she wished it so much, she would one day be shown a way.

For a year or two a relation of the ruler had been appearing in the harem. He was a doctor from Dubai in the Persian Gulf, a man of mixed Arab and African family. He had become one of the physicians of the ruler. (In the old days the ruler would go to London for his check-up, to Harley Street or the Cromwell hospital; but prices in London were going up and up, and this London jaunt was now too expensive, especially as the ruler was required by his style to travel with an entourage.) The doctor enchanted the women of the harem with stories of the wonders of Dubai, of gra.s.s and gardens being made to grow in the desert, of aeroplanes constantly flying in and out from all points of the globe, of hotels being built next to the ocean.

Laila loved his stories. She liked his clothes. They brought back her old dreams of a world outside. When he discovered that she could read, he brought her English-language newspapers from Dubai and other places. He, for his part, appeared to be more interested in Laila than was correct. People noticed and talked. She was disturbed. She didn't feel she could at this stage of her life handle more enmity. And if someone in the harem hadn't said one day, "This doctor is more interested in Mona than in anybody else," Laila might never have noticed. She studied the doctor when he next came. She saw that he was, indeed, interested in Mona. She wondered that she had missed it. And then she saw the hand of G.o.d in the arrival of the stranger from Dubai. She pushed Mona towards the doctor. In time he asked for the girl's hand.

Perhaps it wasn't the best arrangement in the world. Laila had no idea what life in Dubai would be like for Mona, but she saw the hand of G.o.d in it.

Mona had heard her mother's stories many times. Laila's suffering, and the harem life she had known, had hardened Mona, prepared her for whatever might come her way. She was better able to withstand the shock of the doctor's second wife, and it did come; and the further shock of the third. She never told her mother.

CHAPTER 3.

Men Possessed.

A LARGE LARGE part of the contemporary West African state of Ghana belonged to the kingdom of the Ashanti. The Ashanti kingdom was huge. An old English map shows the area of "Ashanti authority" as about four hundred miles wide and two hundred miles high. On this old map you have to look hard for Accra, the modern capital of Ghana, among the many sea "castles and forts" set down since the fifteenth century-by Portuguese, Danes, Swedes, Prussians from Brandenburg, Dutch and English, all dreaming of gold and slaves-on this long east-west stretch of African coast. part of the contemporary West African state of Ghana belonged to the kingdom of the Ashanti. The Ashanti kingdom was huge. An old English map shows the area of "Ashanti authority" as about four hundred miles wide and two hundred miles high. On this old map you have to look hard for Accra, the modern capital of Ghana, among the many sea "castles and forts" set down since the fifteenth century-by Portuguese, Danes, Swedes, Prussians from Brandenburg, Dutch and English, all dreaming of gold and slaves-on this long east-west stretch of African coast.

Kojo was an Ashanti, and his wife was the daughter of the previous King of the Ashanti. The king, Kojo said, had asked him to marry his daughter. It is one of the more straightforward things about Kojo. But when he tells it in his own words it acquires a strange tone: "My wife's father was the previous king. He very tactfully suggested that I marry his daughter. She was studying medicine in school and I was a dentist. She was Ashanti, and I agreed."

I saw a lot of Kojo when I was in Ghana. At one time we had dinner together every day. He was always ready to answer questions, always helpful and civil. Yet at the end he remained mysterious, almost as mysterious as he had been when he talked in his deadpan way of his marriage to the king's daughter. At first it seemed to me that in spite of his readiness to talk, there was a reticence about him, an aristocratic African reticence that made him underplay everything. And then I thought that his life had been too varied, full of unconnected or disparate parts, and he hadn't worked out a way to present himself. I suppose that meant he hadn't been able to make a whole of his experience.

Here are pieces of the jigsaw as they came to me. Kojo's father went to Achimota, the famous secondary school set up by the British to train the children of chiefs and local dignitaries for "public duty" (Kojo's words). The Achimota student became a schoolmaster and served in different parts of Ghana. The schoolmaster's father (Kojo's grandfather) was a palace chief, a senior adviser to the king on cultural matters. Kojo said he received a "special" African education.

Kojo (in his reticent style) did not say what this African education was. He only said, "It taught him to fulfil his inherited designation. He was not a top chief or a very powerful one. His fiefdom was limited. He had less land. Land here means status and power. He did not have that kind of power although he was a wealthy man. He was wealthy because he had cocoa farms outside k.u.masi. His tenants grew the crops, harvested them and dried them, and then bagged them in sisal bags and sold them to the agency. He had to spend time in k.u.masi because of his court duties."

Kojo said, "My clan produces the kings of Ashanti. There are five other prominent chiefs who can also produce chiefs. But we, of the Oyoko clan, give the leaders.h.i.+p on my maternal side."

The famous Ashanti wars that gave Gold Coast and then Ghana its final shape took place in the 1880s. This would have provided Kojo's grandfather with enough drama. But the big disturbance in Kojo's life came with independence and especially with the dictators.h.i.+p of Nkrumah, the first president of independent Ghana. Nkrumah wished to redraw the Ashanti borders. He wished to make the Ashanti people less dominant. He brought in mining acts that took away the mining rights of the Ashanti. The Ashanti lands were famous for the gold they produced; in colonial times Ghana was known as the Gold Coast. Nkrumah's mining acts decreed that below a certain depth in the ground all the mines belonged to the government.

Kojo said: "I could see myself in trouble. I was used to living in a country where there was the rule of law and where there were human rights and everything was regulated."

From this period come his London stories, where his addresses are in Belgravia; this is when his three sons ("three of my boys") go to Eton.

I met one of the boys at the very end of my time in Ghana, the evening of my last day, at the airport. He was charming and resourceful, full of manners, a great help in the airport mess and crowd; and I felt that it might be possible for this boy (though lacking his father's experience) to have a steady way of looking and acting that his father (whose memories went back too far) wouldn't begin to have.

Kojo was brought up as a Christian. In this part of West Africa this usually means a background, or indeed a foreground, of traditional African belief. But Kojo said this was not so in his case. He loved the "Ashanti spirit," but Christianity had made it mellower and less warlike. Paganism did not pervade Ashanti; Kojo was not exposed to it. The Ashanti have ancestral G.o.ds, but they are figures of healing. Certain cultural rites have to be performed at times of death, birth and p.u.b.erty. Every family has an elder who can do the rites; the knowledge is pa.s.sed from generation to generation.

2.