The Boy in the Oversized Smock: School Memories in Living Color

By Kwame Frimpon

This is the simple but powerful biographical story of Mensa. Mensa went to school under the colonial British educational system during the eventful post-independence years. The profession of his parents, who were both teachers, put him always on the move. But his problems of movement were compounded when the parents divorced. Eventually he ended up in boarding school, and he loved it to death because the alternative was a nonexistent home life.

The novel captures his life from school to school, hopping from home to home. It is mostly about boarding school life interlaced with wicked humor. A parallel poignant story is the story of kids from broken homes, especially the one in which the woman plays the role of the vanished parent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450077613

Kwame Frimpon

The author has taught and has been on the move for the greater part of his life. The schools he has had a stint in are the following: Apam Secondary School, Ghana St. Teresa’s College, Nigeria John Tyler Community College, Richmond, Virginia Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia Virginia State University, Petersburg, Virginia University of Phoenix Online Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Ghana He also worked in corporate America as a senior analyst at Circuit City, Richmond, Virginia, and with HNTB Corporation in New Jersey. Currently, he is a lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Ghana. A sequel to this novel is in the works.

Book preview

Contents

Tamale Memories

The Longer the Name . . .

The City in Heaven

Teacher’s Pet

Spelling and Pronunciation

Under the Baobab Tree

The Make-believe World

Playing Hardball

The Ultimate Excuse

The Preacher’s Son

Sweet Revenge

Phone Booth Pranks

The Case of the Broken Radiogram

Judgment Day

Cops Everywhere

Judgment Time

Sipolo Feasts

The Choice of Freedom

The Terror of Being Laid

Dangerous Escapade

The Eye Duel

The Visit of the Century

I Love to Go A-wandering

Follow the Leader

Farewell to Tamale

Pokukrom Memories

Village Life

Ananse Stories

Combat under the Moonlight

Bird Orchestra

Life in the Outback

Asaa the Magic Fruit

The Snake Catcher

The Teacher from Hell

Tables Turned

Payback Times

The Sardine Bait

Apprentice Dad

Toilet Olympics

Puppy Love

Wanzam Time

Ultimate Embarrassment

A New Chapter in Life

Anhweam Memories

Comparing Grandpas

Beds versus Mats

Mother and Child Reunion

Life in DC’s Kingdom

City Shepherd Boy

Benign Alcoholism

DC’s Last Days

Kotei Memories

Another New School

Scariest Encounter

Cobra Encounter

Dirty Money

He Who Runs Away from the Battlefield

Asawase Memories

Lady Roommates

Top Dog

The Feast That Never Was

The Midwinter of Marriage

Anhweam Again

Errors of Motherhood

Baldness at Twelve

Things Fall Apart

The Toli King

The Matrimonial Circus

The Man from Nowhere

A Peephole into the Soul

A Modern Biblical Job

Forward to the Past

The World of the Unknown and the Misunderstood

The Spiritual Interlude

Healing the Hard Way

The Demon-possessed Angel

An Unforgettable Trip

Sermon under the Wooden Shed

Festival of Taborrar

Betrayal of Trust

The Beginning of Happiness

Ofinso Memories

Kejeitia

Home, Sour Home

Strange Happiness

Krifé the Protector

Homo Trotting

Interesting Characters

Foreign Volunteers

Thank God It’s Thursday

A Spiritual Illness

Greed Not So Good

Class Profiles

School Politics

Crises Management

Thank God for PEPOL

Finally the Os

Prempeh College Memories

A Campus to Swoon About

The Triumvirate

Campus Maintenance

Discipline

Academics

Sibling Rivalry

Mens Sana . . .

The Legend of Mo Tei Form 4

Amazing Race

Paradise Found

Reckless Character

Bad Friday

Who Killed Bonsu?

At Last a Visitor

Roll Call of Interesting Characters

Class of the Year of Our Lord AD 1975

Wings Like a Dove

Pre-Tech Memories

First-Ever Job

The Long Waits

Family Feud

Konkonte Treks

Forbidden Love

Tech at Last, Tech at Last

The Roommates from Heaven

Palm Oil Tycoons

Tech Memories

A Tribe Called Tech

The Hunt

Site 14

First Year Tech Life

The Roommates from Hell

Rag Day

The Tech Krifés

A Tech Funeral

The Lawson Elements

The Runaway Roommate

The Babylon Principle

Faculty Characters

The Night of the Long Folders

Aluta Continua

The Movie

Damanko Trip

Waiting and More Waiting

Hell Ride

The Bay of Pigs

Post-Aluta

The Dreamy Vacation

The Flashback of Nanka

An Unforgettable Canoe Trip

The Rise and Fall of JJ

JJ’s Regroup

June 4, Infamy or Liberation

The Computer Deity

The Last Days

Apam Memories

New Beginnings

The Servicemen from Heaven

The Actors on the Stage

The Servicemen from Hell

The Juliet Factor

A Time to Work and a Time to Chill

A New Beginning

The End of a Chapter

The Good

The Bad

And the Unknown

A Transfiguration

Tamale Memories

The Longer the Name . . .

That the pupils of standard 1 in Sakasaka Primary School were fascinated with big words was obvious. They listened openmouthed as strange multi-syllable words rolled off the tongue of the new teacher with the calculated sluggishness of a pregnant sow. Next on the list:

Ca-sa-blan-ca.

The effect was mayhem; whistling, catcalls, and animal sounds that, well, only children in standard 1—a.k.a. saa 1—could make drowned the voice of the speaker. But far from getting upset, Teacher Ponko, a.k.a. TP, was overjoyed; the first few days at the job couldn’t have gone any better. If teaching was this easy, then he won’t have any problem doing it forever.

Straight out of teacher training college, the strategic-minded teacher’s agenda was to work in the noble chalk-and-blackboard profession for five years and then move on to the big things of life. But five years was a long way off yet, so he was going to devote his energies to the job at hand, which was to make something out of the little people staring up at him like he was the new messiah.

TP’s agenda was also in perfect synchronicity with that of the founder of the nation. The president was moving heaven and earth to bridge the developmental gap between the impoverished North and the not-so-impoverished South. School enrolment, which was particularly weak, was being tackled head-on. Already the pupils in Sakasaka were being supplied with free uniforms and items such as imported guinea corn, imported powdered milk, and imported rice. According to the party propaganda secretary, a.k.a. district commissioner, a.k.a. DC, the Father of the Nation loved the people so much that he had imported the items at great cost to the government, even though boldly stamped on the bags were the words Donated by the United States of America.

The freebies were a great attendance booster. Parents, who were hitherto leery of Western education because of its corrupting influences, escorted their wards to school, ostensibly to make sure they didn’t cut class and also to demonstrate their commitment to education. And they put up behaviors that would have merited special mention from the PTAs of the best schools in the world. But the reality was that the children were enrolled in school because the law made it an offense not to. For some, they would rather their wards either went to the Madrassa to study Islamic literature or herded the family cattle, goats, and sheep. The giveaways did more to win them over than the platitudes from the DC espousing the value of Western education. On the days when the largesse was doled out, the parents dragged even their sick children to school. And therein lay the agenda of the parents.

The children also had their agenda albeit a simple one. They were hardly aware of any gap in development and the grandiose schemes of the government to bridge it. The farthest south the majority had been to was the town of Yeji where flowed the mighty Volta with its great ferry. To them there was nothing the city of Tamale lacked, except that it had only one cinema house. On weekends people with good money had to be turned away. That was the place to start for anyone trying to bridge any gap. The free items that their parents yearned for interested them a little bit; why not? Food wasn’t that easy to come by, and so far as the freebies from the government lasted, the parents were less irritable and spared the rod somewhat. Without the free uniforms, many of them would go to school in tattered clothes, but that was more a concern for the president and the school authorities; they played around naked or in skimpy outfits and were fine.

The new teacher claimed to be teaching them about places that were bigger than their Tamale, something that was hard to imagine. But they could care less about his cities. Their interest in the exercise lay in the length of the names, for big words and long names tickled them like nothing else. The previous year, they had learned about Sho-ko-lo-ko-ban-ko-shé and recalled everything about this character for the sole reason that he had the longest name they had ever heard. Mumuni Bawumia, who carried the record of the having longest name in the class, was promptly rechristened Shokolokobankoshé and then shortened to Shoko. Now perhaps only his mom called him by his non-Shoko name. So far they had not been overly impressed with the new teacher. The man had a fertile imagination to have come up with long but nonexistent names like Casa-something. But until he came up with a word of the order of Shokolokobankoshé, they could not confer a cool nickname on him. TP hadn’t done anything goofy yet to merit a nickname, but with a name like Ponko, a.k.a. horse, who needed a nickname? Normally horses are named after humans. For example, Shoko’s dad owned many horses with names such as Yaya, Kolo, and Zabzugu. But here we had a human that was called Ponko. A pupil with that kind of name would have been teased out of school.

The children couldn’t believe their ears when TP was first introduced at morning assembly.

Standing on my right hand is Mr. Paul Ponko.

Doing the honors was none other than the most feared figure in the school. Teacher Asem, a.k.a. TA, waited for the import of the name to sink in. Then grinning from ear to ear, he went on:

"Mr. Ponko is the new teacher for standard 4.

Children, Mr. Ponko can run very fast. Be careful not to offend him for you can’t outrun him, unless of course you are on a horse. Ha ha ha!

That was a good one all right, but what kid would be crazy enough to laugh at an adult brandishing a baranzu! The assembly area was as still as a cemetery save the cackling of the teachers. Ponko beamed with the widest smile; apparently, he was used to people making fun of his name. But he was most impressed by the orderliness of the children. That was about the first time a crowd had not burst into laughter upon hearing his name.

With the intro over, he was now officially a teacher of Sakasaka Local Authority Primary School.

This morning was the first day of school for him and the first day of the term for the children. A little smile crossed his face when he remembered the popular saying

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

This was the first day of a lot of things, and he knew he better make a good first impression. The topic Cities of the World had turned out better than he thought. The first one had really gone down well; now unto the others.

Stretching himself to his full height, he stared into the eyes of the children for a full measure of eternity and then waved the school-issued baranzu with an awkwardness that revealed his unfamiliarity with it. It wasn’t mandatory, but most Sakasaka teachers always carried the baranzu around. The longer-serving ones treated their baranzus like a staff of office. Teacher Asem hardly went anywhere without his scratched, weather-beaten, and frail best friend, for the look of his baranzu depicted the obvious signs of regular use or misuse. When he was in a good mood, he could twirl the baranzu around his hand like a skipping rope, hurl it in the air, and make it boomerang back as if it responded to voice commands. When angry, which was most often, he whirled it with extreme speed and made it hiss like an angry cobra. Very dexterous with the baranzu, it seemed it was stuck to him like a third arm.

So what at all is a baranzu? A baranzu is a whip fashioned out of a male horse’s genitalia. Its only objective was to inflict pain. Cows that plough the earth and donkeys that carry heavy loads are usually at the receiving end of baranzus; so are horses during festivals. In the Dagomba Damba dance festival, both riders and their well-trained horses do a spellbinding dance involving intricate steps and adept horsemanship; the baranzu ensures that the horses remember and execute what was practiced. Ponko’s baranzu was not the very bad type; it was supposed to leave only blemishes but not scald and perforate like the one used by TA. Nevertheless, its sting was very painful; and the pupils did whatever it took to avoid it, including something as tough to do as keeping from laughing when Polo, the class clown and an accomplished baranzu absorber, was making faces behind a teacher’s back.

In the teacher’s left hand was the list of cities that he had compiled to be used for this exercise. On to the second city:

Dar es Sa-laam.

The word oozed from his lips with deliberate reluctance making the children wonder if the magical-sounding city was a real one or a figment of his imagination. They began another series of whistling, catcalls and the singing of spontaneously composed songs, and again it took a brandishing of the baranzu to quell the cacophony. It was two of two; so far so good. Even though he was teaching this topic for the first time and without the benefit of pictures of the cities in question save London and Accra, his enunciation of the names suggested that such exotic-sounding places could be anything but exotic.

The classroom had the typical setup, five rows that were ten deep. The boys competed for space at the rear where they played mischief, but girls big or small never sat at the back. A spot near any of the four windows was coveted, but the most coveted seats were the ones nearest the two rear windows. The reason was clear: one could vault through a window when danger, in the form of a baranzu-wielding teacher or parent, approached.

Normally it was a struggle to keep primary school kids quiet without the use of an enforcing tool. Already he had lost too much time in his inability to keep order. A glance at his watch told him he had to hurry up. He combined three names this time.

A-dis A-ba-ba, Tim-buk-tu, Ac-cra.

Addis Ababa was TP’s personal favorite because of his interest in the embryonic African liberation struggle. The great city had been in the news due to its pivotal role and influence in African liberation and also as the city of the great emperor Haile Selassie. The children had heard of it through a civics class, and it was reported that the president had even gone there for a great meeting. Therefore, they were certain that this city was no figment of mythology. They clapped raucously, and again only the threat of the baranzu was able to quiet them down.

Timbuktu was not an unknown; in fact, some of the pupils knew of people who hailed from there. But the deliberate way it was enunciated made it appear like it was the first time they were hearing this name.

Then it got to their capital city of Accra. None of them had ever been to Accra, but it was always in the news and was therefore without the exoticism of the foreign ones. The articulation didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. With only two syllables, Acc-ra sounded abrupt, as if the name had been truncated in mid sentence. Posam, an inconspicuous kid at the back row, made enough gestures to catch TP’s attention.

Sir, why can’t we call Accra Acarara so Ghana can also have a sweet-sounding name for a capital, like Casablanca?

TP was bemused but decided to play along.

"So what if we renamed Accra Akarara or Akarararara? How many raras will be good enough for you children?"

A million hands shot up, and not even the wielding of the baranzu could quiet the storm. A scrawny kid with a shrill voice that could hardly be heard above the din was trying hard to say something. Even when the class quieted down, TP could hardly understand him, for he lisped and spoke as if he was in extreme hurry. He spoke with the staccatolike rapidity of a Zabzugu gong-gong beater. After two attempts, TP finally made out what he was agitating.

"Sir, Bolgatanga sounds more capitalist than Accra because Accra is too short."

The new teacher did get the import of what the little kid meant by Accra being too short. Accra was short in terms of the number of syllables, for Accra had two, Ac-cra, while Bolgatanga had four, Bol-ga-tan-ga. It hadn’t been hard to figure this one out. In fact, the names on the compiled list had been chosen with that in mind. Children everywhere were fascinated with long names, and these ones couldn’t be different.

But that was not the interesting part of the story. The boy called Mensa had used the word capitalist in a manner that was so funny, and TP could hardly restrain himself from bursting out. He excused himself and went outside where he ran smack into his colleague TA. There he related to him the story of the standard 1 pupil who wanted so badly to impress his mates with big words and had used the word capitalist to denote a capital city. Teacher Asem then gave him more information about that kid. That boy, he claimed, was charging a fee to read the Daily Graphic to illiterate adult friends of his grandfather. Obviously he was doing this with the connivance of the old man, and he might have picked up the word in one of his reading forays. But who could blame the poor kid? Sometimes even he, Asem, was befuddled by the English language. He played the organ at church and was therefore the organist. How come the capital Accra could not be the capitalist or have something to do with capitalist? A few of the children had also heard of this big word; but until it was used here, they thought capitalist—together with colonialist, neocolonialist, imperialist, and other words of the—ist family—were diseases that afflicted white people. The president liberally used them in his speeches when he appeared angry with the American and British people.

Presently, another hand shot up; and Moses began to talk in earnest without being asked to, a violation of class protocol. A small wave of the baranzu was enough to send him back on his behind. Nevertheless, TP asked him what he had on his mind.

"Teacher, is the name Nkran or Accra?"

"Officially it is Accra, and it has always been Accra? Why?"

"My dad said it used to be Nkran, and the white man, unable to pronounce Nkran, made it Accra."

This was not entirely false; many folk, illiterate or otherwise, preferred the name Nkran to Accra. An old wives’ tale making the rounds was that a villager, upon visiting the big city for the first time and seeing the multitude of people walking up and down a busy street, exclaimed,

Oho, look at all these people walking briskly like soldier ants!

Nkran is the vernacular for soldier ants; unresolved was Accra’s name before this soldier ants’ story.

The City in Heaven

The children’s fascination with tintintos, as long-syllable words were called, was obvious, for none of the names that had enthralled them had less than four syllables. Paris, a favorite of the teacher, elicited a mute response. Kumasi and Tamale sounded okay, but Accra, Lagos, and London to them were no-nos. On the other hand, even long local names like Takoradi, Nalerigu, and Atebubu had sent them into a frenzy of catcalls. As TP amateurishly brandished the baranzu in an attempt to bring sanity into the discussion, a small voice spoke barely above the din.

"Why can’t we name Accra Sakasaka?"

Normally, a kid that spoke so audibly without being given express permission was asking for it, but Comfort Amakpe was different. She was not only the tiniest girl in the class; she was also both the most decorous and most decorated. The girl had a brain that was inversely proportional to her body size, and she looked so fragile that even the sadistic Asem, a man that derived pleasure from the screams of children in agony, could not bring himself to touch her even when she was late to school.

Sakasaka was the hallowed ground on which the school was perched, but he had not given a thought as to how graceful the name sounded. The topic Important Towns and Cities in the Country and Other Parts of the World had metamorphosed into Cities and Towns with Rhythmic Names.

He didn’t mind; important towns and sweet-sounding towns were not mutually exclusive anyway. If the sweetness of the sound was what would interest these hard-to-interest children, then so be it.

In his mind, he began to go over a scenario of a newscaster reading the news on the radio.

The president of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, met Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, the prime minister of Nigeria, in Sakasaka, the capital of the great nation of Ghana, yesterday.

Sakasaka sounded so cool, and the children were ecstatic. They had discovered to their delight that school wasn’t boring after all, for this topic had captivated them like none before.

Unwilling to use his enforcer, it took a good while for the ruckus to die down. Then it flashed through his mind that he had set a record of some sort; for the whole morning, he had not struck anyone with the baranzu. Even the awkward manner in which he held it portrayed a man that was not comfortable in the business of inflicting pain. Fact is, he was not averse to using it, but he was just as excited in this civics class. It was a good feeling to know that he was beginning to be liked, not feared, which was an achievement for a primary school teacher. Normally it was very difficult to get and sustain the attention of such children, but this session had revealed to him that with good planning and a careful choice of topics, a primary school class could be managed without the looming presence of the baranzu. But it was time to move forward with the next name on his list. With legs akimbo, the list in the left hand; and the right hand twirling the benign baranzu, he vocalized another magical word that he believed was about to send the class into an ecstasy to rival the biblical Rapture.

Je-ru-sa-lem.

TP dragged the syllables with deliberate sluggishness, pausing to survey the effect on the children.

Surprisingly, the demeanor of the class had turned to one of solemnity. Even without the threat of the baranzu, the room was engulfed in silence.

He was scratching his head to figure out the reason for this sudden drop in enthusiasm when the same kid that had entertained him earlier broke the ice by speaking with his signature shrill and lisping diction. Eager to find out what was on the boy’s mind but even more relieved for the break in the silence, he ignored this violation of class protocol and turned in his direction.

Sir, can we add names in heaven like Jerusalem, Canaan, Bethlehem, and Nazareth?

Surely lightning can strike twice in a day; earlier on, this same kid had been thumping his chest with big words like capitalist, and now he was fatuously bellowing to the world that Jerusalem was in heaven. He chuckled at the sheer absurdity of the question, but refrained from laughing out as he did earlier; in fact, he had laughed so hard that his ribs hurt. Nevertheless, he was amused that anyone would cling to this childhood belief in this day and age. Casting his mind back, he couldn’t recollect when he quit believing in myths such as Father Christmas, dragons, and ghosts. This was a culture in which adults fed children with a bunch of superstitious nonsense in order to keep them docile. But he was sure he knew Jerusalem was earthbound before he was eight years old. Nonchalantly he stared down at the little man and measured to the cowering figure a little dose of his growing irritation.

Jerusalem is not in heaven.

This simple phrase seemed to have punched the beehives. The class erupted with children trying to outshout each other to catch the teacher’s attention. Defiantly Mensa continued to stand; apparently, he hadn’t finished with what he had to say, for he had made up his mind that he would rather be a martyr than allow this heretic to malign his religion. Baranzu or no baranzu, the truth must be told: Jerusalem was a holy city, and holy cities are not earthbound. He drew himself to his impish height of four feet, take or leave an inch, and spoke with defiance:

Mensa: Sir, Jerusalem is in the Bible, so it is in heaven.

TP: No, Jerusalem is in Israel, in the Middle East.

Mensa: No, sir, Jerusalem is in Israel, in heaven.

The class was in chaos with pupils frantically waving their hands to catch the attention of the blasphemous teacher and cure him of his ignorance. Israel and Jerusalem were in heaven; this fact was somewhere in the Bible, only they couldn’t remember it off-head. Surely the city where Jesus roamed was in heaven. Even the Muslim pupils joined in heckling the new teacher; they couldn’t afford to be passive bystanders for it was only a matter of time before he told them that Mecca and Medina were also on earth! Still unwilling to use the baranzu, Ponko looked on sheepishly as the noise in standard1 reached a crescendo. Plastered on the walls of the classroom were pictures none of which was of Jerusalem, and of course of Nazareth, Canaan, or Bethlehem. He was scratching his head to figure a way out of the quandary when the bell mercifully tolled. The children streamed out of class to assemble for the end-of-day closing session still swearing at the ignorant teacher that had laughed at them earlier in the morning. Now the shoe was on the other foot.

TP was now a dunce who didn’t know theological geography. Worse still, he was the personification of evil for daring to downgrade the city of Jesus to a mere earthly entity. This was more than a display of ignorance; it was a heresy.

Leading the charge for action against this act of blasphemy was none other than the sultan of verbosity. Mensa was going to report him to the almighty grandpa for summary action. The old man wouldn’t know the difference between a church house and a doghouse, but among his ablutions before he commenced snoring was a quick sign of the cross. He must therefore be as outraged about this act of ungodliness as anyone else.

Ponko was in a daze. This one was in the bag already, but how did it get out? In the span of a single class period, he had won and then lost the admiration of a young community that hung on his every word. In this day and age, it was laughable for anyone to believe that Jerusalem was in heaven; but it was no laughing matter that he, a trained teacher, could not persuade mere children to debunk this comical belief. Self-doubts began to take seed about his ability to succeed in the vocation.

Maybe he better beat a retreat from his strategic plan. He thought the family business could wait, but now he wasn’t that sure.

"Five years," he found himself muttering. Five years was too long a time to endure a job one was not good at.

The newbie was jolted into reality by the unmistakable voice of his new pal. Asem was surprised at the cause of his colleague’s downcast state. He couldn’t fathom why a teacher could claim to lose control of such little people when he wielded the ultimate weapon of obeisance. To him there was no problem that a baranzu couldn’t solve. He reassured the distraught new teacher about the vagaries of the job; saying with a knowing air that primary school children are easier to lose than to win over. It is the baranzu that made them to stay put. Asem was however, livid when he learned that the Mensa kid was the spearhead in disrupting his colleague’s class and promised to do something about that.

Teacher’s Pet

The boy Mensa loved to read. The fondness for reading was inculcated into him by his parents who were both teachers. The mother taught in a primary school whilst the father headed the only middle school in town.

Unfortunately, the parents went their separate ways. The divorce might have been acrimonious, for the mother abandoned the matrimonial home and the father was left to fend for the two issues in the marriage. To the rescue came the father’s own father, Nana Forson, a.k.a. NF. The old man volunteered to take in his eldest grandkid. NF a merchant roamed across the length and breadth of the country and finally decided to settle in Tamale, the biggest city in the North. Tamale schools were not predominantly populated by the indigenes as is usually the case; there was a healthy representation of people from across different ethnic backgrounds, especially from the south. The pupils and faculty did not speak the same ethnic language, and English was given due prominence as the language of communication and instruction. In fact, the use of the vernacular was forbidden on the school grounds, and a kid caught speaking any language but English was given a few strokes of the baranzu. If one couldn’t speak English, he kept mum—simple.

For a kid his age, living with a grandparent was the best; grandparents, especially first-time ones, are known to dote, and NF was no exception. Mensa’s long apprenticeship in class 1 and being the son of a two-teacher couple put him in good stead, for he could read better than children his own age. NF was eager to show off his prize little scholar; he would buy the Daily Graphic, the national daily, and wager a friend that this little man could read this or that passage. The friend, usually a stark illiterate, would wager to the contrary. Mensa always delivered, and the friends would look at him with disbelief while NF crowed his usual I told you so. This simple exercise of public reading and playful wagering encouraged the lad to acquire a good habit of reading. He read dailies, magazines, journals, books, and stuff that were years ahead of his age. Mostly he was interested in the enunciation of the words, parroting them with little understanding of what they meant. It was in one of his reading exhibitions that he came across the word capitalism. Capitalism had little to do with a capital city, but how was he to know? His reading audiences were mostly people that got by with Pidgin English. NF used to call them the I-dey-go, I-dey-come crowd. To such folk, the little voice of a child articulating big words like neocolonialism, imperialism, communism, and capitalism was like music to the ears, for in those days, newspapers were replete with ideological jargon that usually terminated with an—ism or—ist.

Spelling and Pronunciation

Collecting money to read to grandpa’s friends had exposed the boy to words far beyond his age. It had also set him questioning the logic or the lack thereof between the spelling and pronunciation of many words. For example, the big town where he and the father had stopped for lunch on their way from Kumasi to Accra was pronounced as Nko-koo but spelled as N-k-a-w-k-a-w. The dad said something to the effect that the first British colonial officer who had stumbled upon it and thus discovered it, as the Europeans were wont to do, had a little too much of the palm wine that the environs was famous for. This obviously inebriated white man had spelled it in this manner in his records. Everybody talked about the silliness of the spelling even long after the colonial masters had departed, but it still stood. Why couldn’t someone be bold enough to remedy this universally recognized error?

The answer came like a bolt from the blue: adults. Old people better known as adults won’t do it because they didn’t suffer any consequences for getting spellings wrong. Children bore the brunt of such oversights because without the spelling and pronunciation trickeries, who were the old people—such as Teacher Asem—going to use the baranzu on during English dictation?

In this despised exercise, the teacher read a passage one sentence at a time, and the pupil was expected to write each sentence with each word spelled as pronounced. There was a baranzu stroke for each wrongly spelled word. No wonder the pupils of Sakasaka Primary School looked toward this period with fear and trembling.

The obvious absurdity of the mismatch between the spelling and enunciation of certain words could only be attributed to a conspiracy by old people to inflict pain on children.

Unless a child was psychic, how on earth could he spell psychic per the enunciation of the teacher? Was the person who first put p in front of psychology psychologically sound?

Nothing exemplified best the confounding in the positioning of the letter p in such cases as in psalm. His friend Posam used to be called Niko. The boy could recite Psalm 23 with his eyes closed. But one day, in a quick moment of brain slip, Niko had said Posam 23, and that was it; he instantly became Posam 23, which had now become simply Posam.

Why the need for the e in opposite when it is pronounced as op-po-sit?

It was laughable what they had done to laff. Whose idea was it to use gh as an f substitute when f’s are easier to write and free to use?

Nothing gored him more than the dual role the alphabet c played in causing unnecessary havoc in reading. When and why was it decided to make the alphabet c to sometimes sound like s as in dice and sometimes k as in cat? Why have adults conspired to visit hurt on children by making things so difficult? In any case, why difficult instead of difikult? Is the c more beautiful than the k or what? One can pronounce Islam as Is-lam, one can pronounce Israel as Is-ra-el, so why did Babatunde deserve a stroke of the baranzu and a new nickname to boot for pronouncing island as is-land? The teacher said the s is silent, but he kept the secret on how to determine when an alphabet was or was not silent to himself, for obvious reasons.

As the list of absurd spellings and pronunciations grew longer, he found himself growing correspondingly more upset. To him school would have been a whole lot more fun if pronunciations had any logic to them.

It was time for all little people to get together and do something. The baranzuing should cease. But first they, the children, should stop giving out bad nicknames to each other and reserve them for the teachers. This travesty wasn’t like the weather where everyone complained but did nothing about, for he, Mensa, was going to do something about it. When he grew up, he was going to champion the cause of bringing sanity and logic into spellings and pronunciations. He knew he would have the support of his compatriots in Sakasaka Primary School who continued to suffer injustice at the hands of adults like Asem. His quest to revolutionize and simplify spelling would have to wait though; right now he was making a killing leaving things alone, for the illiterate old men were at their giving best when he aced the pronunciation of a word such as psychotherapy even though he had no clue as to what it meant.

But try as he must, the pronunciation of certain words simply befuddled him. On one occasion, he was sent to the local beer bar to purchase a popular beer beverage. The boy had been around adults quaffing the stuff but had never heard them mention it by name; apparently, it had a nickname that he was not aware of. On this occasion, he was shown the bottle and asked to go get another couple of bottles. As he made his way to the pub, he rehearsed how he was going to pronounce the word Heineken conspicuously written on the label on the bottle.

Was it a two-syllable Heine-ken, a three-syllable Hei-ne-ken, or a four-syllable He-i-ne-ken? Sooner than later, he got there after having resolved that the two-syllable one sounded more like it, for adults, especially the drunk variety, will not use more than the necessary number of syllables. Barely able to peer over the counter, he meekly asked for two bottles of Heine-ken. The bartender looked puzzled; apparently, he had never heard of this new drink and told him he didn’t have it in stock. The boy meanwhile was staring at rows of bottles of that beer on the shelf. It was time to try the other name combos.

Mensa: I mean Hein-e-ken.

Bartender: We don’t have that one either.

Mensa: He-in-e-ken.

Bartender: He-what? Tamale is really getting behind times, all these new beers and none of them hit town yet.

The interesting exchange between the little boy and the bartender had attracted a little attention. A patron sizing up the situation came to the rescue; the beer the boy was pointing at was called Abinga, the local parlance for Heineken. The mostly illiterate customers looked duly impressed by the little boy who had treated them to a string of good-sounding English words, never mind that Heineken was not an English word.

NF’s grandson continued to accumulate pennies as his popularity with the neighborhood’s adult illiterate population grew. As a new kid on the block, the pennies he earned from his grandpa’s playful wagers were enough to buy him entry into the comity of kids, who normally would have put him through the proper rite of passage before accepting him into their midst.

Under the Baobab Tree

On weekends, the space under the mighty baobab tree became an auditorium for the little people. The branches of the huge tree provided a welcome respite from the sweltering heat in the daytime and a roof during the infrequent thunderstorms. Children by the dozens seemingly sprouted from nowhere and indulged in juvenile arguments, conspiracies, and infantile discussions.

A most recurring topic was flatulence. The topic was always triggered by the foul odor that assaulted the nostrils anytime TM showed up. TM was short for TMTB, an acronym for Twa Mua Ta Bon, literally meaning one who always fouled the air as he passed by. The boys thought the sulfurous smell in his wake was because he farted so often, plus he was allergic to water. TM could go days without water touching the body.

An epitome of cynicism, he walked about with a look on the face as though the world around was conspiring to pull the ground from under his feet.

And he was very superstitious. TM believed in all there was to believe in the mysteries of the world and beyond. He claimed to have had personal encounters with witches, dragons, ghosts, leprechauns, and even Cyclops. He had a list of things he always did, and another of what he never did. This encyclopedic catalog of idiosyncratic alwayses and nevers was adhered to with religious zeal.

For example:

He always

• spat into his pee so no juju or voodoo man could collect his pee and use it to bewitch him.

• placed his right foot first, never the left, on a plank traversing a stream as a sign of respect to the river god.

• prayed with one eye open, thinking someone would pull a fast one on him. It was even rumored that he kept his right eye open even when sleeping at home at night.

• pointed at a river with his right hand or else the disrespected river spirit would sweep him off.

He never

• whistled at night, claiming it attracted spirits and ghosts.

• said hi to anyone on the way to the toilet, claiming it would make his mother get diarrhea.

• bought charcoal and palm oil after six o’clock in the evening because witches smear these on their bodies before flying off at night.

• pointed with his right index finger at the cemetery, claiming a ghost might mistake him for another ghost and pull him toward him.

• sang during bathing because his mother would die.

Cross-eyed, bowlegged, and short—in addition to the permanent stink on his body—TM was not the best specimen of human caricature. Nanka, who spotted him a couple of inches, teased him mercilessly. On many occasions, he would yell out,

"TM’s growing has been put on pause, it would resume only after he completely stops fo-shéeing!"

The onomatopoeic fo-shéeing was Nanka’s demure way of avoiding the word farting.

TM’s usual response was that anyone whose fart didn’t smell bad needed to see an herbalist. To him the more badly one’s fart smelled the healthier one was.

"Farting is God’s way of expelling bad stuff out of the body," he chimed in his squeaky voice. An announcement like that would start a farting match, which the initiator never took part in.

Fo-shéeing was the subject of numerous arguments. Do great people fo-shée? Nanka had heard Rev. Abotsi say that the queen of England didn’t fo-shée like the rest of mankind; certain medications had been created for her so she didn’t need to do it. Also the queen’s shit, a.k.a. topo, didn’t smell at all. Posam said he had heard someone say that the queen did fo-shée in the toilet once a month, but her fo-shée didn’t stink at all; rather, it smelled like lavender, and it was so precious that many of the most expensive bottled lavenders contained a little bit of it. It was so precious no one could afford a full bottle. TM—the expert in the field of fo-shée—countered, claiming that everyone farted although some people’s fart, like the queen’s, didn’t stink. There was an old adage that went thus: Hweo ron hweo ron, hwan na onea onta? Hwan na onea onta? translates as Who doesn’t fo-shée when he is topoing? but the Hweo ron hweo ron? could not be clearly explained by the children; perhaps it was meant to simulate the onomatopoeic whistling sound of the fo-shée. The queen of England was the only one that violated this adage, so to speak. Mensa had some insight on this messy topic for he claimed to have overheard some adults discuss that the queen’s topo and fo-shée were both so precious that they were treated as national treasures. A special person had been trained to handle the queen’s topo as it dropped into a pan of pure gold. That lucky fellow was paid a tidy sum of money so he wouldn’t attempt to sell that priceless mess.

Sala’s yarn was the most incredible. As he told it, the queen didn’t topo into a pan; rather, her topo was flushed away as soon as it hit a white porcelain commode containing water, never to be seen by any human. More incredibly, she actually did not squat but sat comfortably, sometimes reading a newspaper as she topoed. Sitting down and topoing like a baby on a chamber pot! That was a new one.

A water closet system was not on the knowledge horizon of the children of Sakasaka in Tamale. Having never seen or heard of this futuristic system, the group jumped on Sala for inventing stories that seemed impossible even in their fantasy world of golden pots and antistink potions.

Posam added another twist to the imbecilic story of nature calls. According to him, Jesus’s being holy implied that He didn’t topo or fo-shée either. Jesus was known to sleep, eat, and drink, but nowhere in the Bible was it stated that He went to topo or was caught fo-shéeing; nothing that stunk this badly could ever be associated with holiness. Posam’s argument did not receive a single dissenting voice. It was easy to believe that God didn’t fo-shée, but what about demigods like Nkrumah? Maybe he didn’t do it, or even if he did it, the fo-shée didn’t stink. To them, it was difficult to imagine that something this odious could be associated with heroes such as Samson, Hercules, Tarzan, and of course, the newest one, Kwame Nkrumah.

So for interminable amounts of time, the children shouted themselves hoarse about such infantile topics until the noise caused the adults in the neighborhood to come drive them off.

TM’s role model was the white priest Father Juan. It was rumored that this priest had lived in a monastery in Spain for the better part of his life before embarking on missionary work where he unfortunately ended up in Nanka country. Maybe TM wanted to live away from people of the type of Nanka that was why he wanted to be a monk. Nanka thought TM was better fitted for a life as a monkey than a monk and pointed to his bowlegs. TM was not deficient in humor, but he could take any tease except this monkey joke. And anytime Nanka compared him with a monkey, he would lunge at him, and there would be pushing and shoving, but no blows were ever thrown, for the little man knew he was at a serious pugilistic disadvantage.

The Make-believe World

Nanka, a ten-year-old who could charm a bird out of a tree, was the unquestioned leader of the pack. The boys were particularly impressed with the way he rankled adults. But his great persuasive skills were balanced by an insatiable appetite for mischief. Too young to hold a job and too old not to go to school, Nanka was every parent’s nightmare. Most of the parents in the neighborhood had warned their wards to stay away from him because Nanka, whose name meant viper in the vernacular, could lead them into trouble one day. For starters, he frequently skipped school to pursue his passion of a gypsy. His favorite hangout after the Baobab tree was the local movie theater, where he had perfected a way of sneaking into the cinema hall without paying the required entry fee and had gotten into trouble numerous times. Eventually the cinema authorities got to know him so well that he was given free admittance to the movies. Nanka didn’t disappoint; he became a fixture at the cinema house and watched, analyzed, and graded almost every movie, until even adults sought his opinion on what movies to watch or to skip.

And thus began his folk hero persona, for any kid that had a free pass to movies to hobnob cinematically with John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Gary Cooper, Frank Sinatra, Jack Palance, Gordon Scott, Johnny Weissmuller, and Steve Reeves was worthy of a following. He learned and knew so much about these movie heroes it appeared he had not only met but had also moved with them in real life. From the way he told it, he was their best buddy, only they didn’t know it. The little devil was greatly admired by the little people, who marveled at his ingenuity and street smarts, and they simply gravitated toward him. Nanka seemed to have an answer to every question that arose out of their many riotous discussions, except this befuddling one about hero topos and fo-shées.

Animated shouting matches and near skirmishes about matchups between superheroes dominated their discourse. A recurring argument was who would win potentially the greatest fight in the universe between