Untold Life Experiences: Miseries and Mysteries

By Mr. Tony

“Untold Life Experiences” is about a little boy who is brought up in hostile environments. Initially, his life looked bright. It was crashed by a painful divorce of his parents. He winds up in unstable homes and is entangled in hatred, enviousness, and abuse. His adolescent life portrays delinquency, truancy, and thievery.

He seems to be pushing life too fast. He experiences the taste of love, misery, and mystery at an early age. His love for travels and anxious for success are always taunted by negative life experiences. Strange life experiences which have crossed his steps are beyond human understanding. He wonders if he is a real human being or a ghost living among the living. He still thinks, he can make a difference. His destiny is probably accomplished long time ago. He is just watching and passing time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524619015

Mr. Tony

James Bamfo is currently a retired High School Science and Mathematics teacher of the New York City Schools System. His book, “Untold Life Experiences”, portrays his childhood hardships coupled with miseries, mysteries, and disbelieves. Even, as an adult, he continues to meet unfavorable life experiences that took him to a strange community he calls the “unknown world”. As a misfit, he returns to the real world to meet even strenuous life circumstances. He was educated at Nkwakom and Nkawie-Kumah Anglican Schools, Kumasi High School, and Berekum Training College, all of Ghana. He obtained an Associate of Science Degree at Bronx Community College, Bachelor of Science, and Master of Arts Degrees at Lehman College, all of the City University of New York. He currently lives in a solitary life at Yonkers, New York. He has four young adult children---three boys and a girl. His love for writing nearly got shattered by unprecedented life experiences. This is his first publication.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

AKWAABA

I am 66, wispy but good looking. I was born on February 14, 1950, a Valentine’s Day, to Mr. Moses Kwame Bamfo and Mrs. Selina Afua Ofori at Nkwakom, a village near Nkawie-Kumah in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. My parents lived at Bantama, a suburb of Kumasi, the capital of Ashanti Region. Their residence was a walking distance from a regional hospital Okomfo Anokye, but chose to go to the village about 14 miles away from the city to have me. This was because, my father’s mother was a great traditional mid-wife and had requested that, my mother should come to the village when the time was almost due. My mother had a successful delivery. It is said, my grandmother spat phlegm into my mouth after I was born, something signifying a transfer of good luck.

I don’t know when we went back to Bantama. I just remember, I had a good friend I always played with. Her name was Angelina. We were fond of each other. Her parents were our next door neighbors. We lived in Sam Prempeh’s house just close to the race course. We usually played with beer bottle tops, small stones, and counting sticks. One afternoon, we went out to play. We sang a song while hitting the floor with small stones and passing them to your partner. The song went:

An old lady said she was going

to fetch ember,

The ember jumped and burned

her pussy…

At that point, I stopped singing. I knew what a pussy was and I knew only females possessed it. I lowered my eyes to check out Angie’s. With the position of her legs and thighs, I could see a small opening in between her thighs. Even though, she was wearing under panties, it was loose and offered me a good look at the thing. It was pinkish inside and it seemed, there were small movements going on in there. I became inquisitive and tried to check it out with my index finger; it didn’t work. I took out my small short pencil I practiced writing with from my pocket and dipped it deep inside. In a moment, it disappeared; she started screaming. I tried to pull it out; it was stuck. I saw blood oozing out; I jumped and ran quickly upstairs and jumped onto my bed and pretended as if I was fast asleep. I later learned, she was rushed to the hospital to have the pencil removed. We were not allowed to play together again. She would occasionally, secretly dash me some alewa, a local candy. About eight years ago, I met her in Ghana. She now lives in London, the United Kingdom. She asked me if I remembered her. Of course, I do remember you, I said. In fact, I had forgotten all about the incident. She continued to say, the ‘thing’ you dipped pencil into is now grown and matured all in gray hair. You can now come and take possession of it. I immediately recollected the incident but shook off my shoulder saying, I don’t want any bearded meat that will swallow my pencil. She laughed and tried to hit me but missed. She is now single; I’m also single. We may be a perfect match but truly, I don’t want anything that will swallow my pencil. She had aged more than me and that was why she was probably not attracted to me. Anyway, time will tell.

Thenceforth, I usually went out all by myself to play. One Sunday afternoon, as I was playing outside, I saw a big bundle of red notes. I knew, they were money; I picked it up, one hundred pounds sterling, all in one pound notes. In those days, it could build a three-room house. Many people were all around rushing to the race course but nobody found the money. I ran and delivered it to my mom who was downstairs cooking. Most of the ladies in the house were all downstairs cooking by the kitchen. They all saw it and screamed. That kind of money was a kind of scary spectacle. After a few minutes, we held a man wailing at the top of his voice complaining of having dropped his money. My mother called him to the house and after logical interrogations gave back the money to him. He gave me one shilling in return and vanished into the thin air. Everybody in the house showered curses on the man. He was a very wicked man; he could have given me five or ten pounds. He was so overjoyed that he didn’t even think of fair reciprocation for the honesty of my mom.

After having had three children, my parents divorced. I was a little boy and had no clue of what had really happened. All I knew was, I was living at Tanoso, also a suburb of Kumasi with my great grandmother. I found a new friend called Akwasi. We played together all day long at the back of our house. Sometimes, we imitated the women and did role play cooking with materials we got from the house. We sometimes went to the farm with great grandmother. There was a stream near our farm. We would usually go there and catch shrimps. Those, we used for our role play cooking. It was a taboo to go to the farm on Sundays. One fine Sunday afternoon, as we were playing behind the house, we decided to go to the farm to catch shrimps. We left for the farm all by ourselves without telling anybody. It was very quiet and all we could hear were the singing and chirping of birds. Occasionally, we would hear the howl of monkeys. We made a substantial catch, but our cloths we used as fishing traps were wet and we couldn’t go home with that, otherwise, we would be caught of having gone to the farm. We therefore decided to spread our cloths in an open space in order to have them dried by the scotching sun. Sun down came and our cloths were still not dry. Great grandma had been looking for us everywhere in town, but to no avail. And, she never thought we could go to the farm all by ourselves. We left for home. Great grandma was very angry and we sustained severe beatings.

Akwasi’s father was a drunkard; he lived at Afari, a town about nine miles away. He would come and visit occasionally and always in the nights. He always carried a green bottle full of the local gin called akpeteshie. He would regularly sip from the bottle and dance to the tunes played on the radio. He had visited one night and had left early in the morning as usual. I had spotted a similar bottle he carried in another room. I told Akwasi that his father had left his bottle in that room. After a short deliberation, we concluded that, I should go and steal the bottle and bring it outside so that, we could taste the drink. I managed to bring the bottle outside. Akwasi started drinking it while I waited to take my turn. After some time, he dropped the bottle and started throwing out. It was kerosene. His eyes started popping out; his tongue elongated and stretched outside. He started sweating profusely. It was a horrible spectacle for a four year old boy. I took to my heels and went to the street without telling anybody. A woman who had just come to get firewood from the back of the house met Akwasi lying unconscious on the ground. She shouted for help and with the quick intervention of the people nearby, Akwasi’s life was saved. He was rushed to the hospital for treatment. The next day, he told great grandma that, I was the one who gave him the kerosene to drink. Great grandma could not control her emotions anymore. She sent for my father to come for me for, she could not live with me anymore. I winded up at Nkwakom, my father’s home village and my birthplace.

CHAPTER 2

RELOCATION

I was now at Nkwakom. Life here was quiet, slow, and boring. A few months after I arrived, my father’s mother, my paternal grandmother passed away. He was the queen-mother of the village. Preparations for the burial and funeral made the village very noisy. I am sure grandma was buried a day or two after her death. She was not stored in the mortuary. On the burial day, elders woke up early in the morning and performed all kinds of rituals. I had no clue what they were meant for. I saw them smearing some kind of silvery powder on the body. I later learned, it was gold dust. They decorated the body nicely with all kinds of gold ornaments and exhibited the body on a beautiful golden bed in one of the spacious halls in the house. Many people came from far and near to pay their last respects to her. Drinking, drumming, and dancing were the order of the day. We the children went round drinking the remnants in the bottles. I loved the potellos, the pinkish sweet kind of wine which were usually drunk by the women. Sun down came and grandma’s body was put in a beautiful casket with all the gold ornaments. Around 8PM, the casket was carried to the royals’ cemetery for burial. A lot of people were crying including my father and his siblings. Gun shots were fired, drumming, and acrobatic displays were performed and at about 10PM, the village went to silence. Everybody had gone to bed. The next morning saw chaos and confusion in the village. People rushed to the cemetery and some were driven back. Grandma’s tomb had been exhumed and all the gold ornaments and expensive burial cloths used for the burial had been looted by thieves. In a nut shell, grandma was given another simple burial without any gold ornaments.

From that day forward, peace was unknown in the family. There were frequent commotions and fights among my father and his brothers. My father was the youngest of the family and grandma had bequeathed all her properties to him. That did not go well with my uncles. They advocated for equal partition of the estates and my father would object to that. That brought the confusions and fights among them. Also, they knew grandma had a big copper vase full of gold and she would secretly transfer them to her only daughter, my aunt. The four brothers, excluding my father would often jump on my aunt and beat her up to surrender the gold. My aunt had grown-up children who objected to the beatings of their mother and would also fight their uncles to protect their mother. The confusions and fights in the house were beyond description.

After receiving frequent beatings from her brothers, aunt Akosua became fed up and secretly gave the gold to her best friend in town for safe keeping. In a few days, aunt Akosua was dead. My uncles searched everywhere in the house but couldn’t find the gold. They had a hint that my aunt had given the gold to her best friend for safe keeping. They went and attacked that woman and demanded her to surrender the gold. The woman denied having the gold but also secretly gave them to another woman in town, her best friend for safe keeping. Few days after, aunt Akosua’s friend also passed away. Now, news went round that the woman had given the gold to a third woman. She was my best friend’s grandmother, reserved and well respected in the village. My uncles went and attacked her too. She denied having them and secretly took the gold to the bush and buried them. In a few days, she was also dead. Guess the confusions that erupted in the village. There was one burial after another and if I remember well, the three funerals were combined and celebrated on a single day. Up till today, the gold have never been found.

Nkwakom was a farming community. By 8AM, the village would be as quiet as the cemetery. Everybody would leave for their farms. My father was a politician and worked at the administrative office of the Atwima Mponua Local Council located at Nkawie-Kumah, the district capital. It was about three miles away from Nkwakom. He would also leave early for work. There was a village school at the outskirts of the village. The school was up to Grade/Class 3 with all the students in one classroom and had one teacher. I was underage and had not started schooling yet. By the time I woke up in the mornings around 9AM, the house would be empty; everybody had left for their farms and the children had left for school. One morning when I woke up, everybody had left. Without cleaning up and putting on nice clothes, I decided to go to the school. With my face smeared with dried nocturnal tears, salivary emissions and spills, and my uncircumcised penis hanging under my belly, swinging from side to side like a pendulum, I entered the classroom. When the pupils saw me, they went hooooo. I had created excitement and confusion. The teacher picked a cane and chased me out. I ran as fast as I could. I came back in the afternoon with the kids in my house to the afternoon session all dressed up. That time round, the teacher accepted me in class. But, he offered me a seat at the back of the class on a bare floor. He gave me a chalkboard called slate and I participated in the learning activities that afternoon. My father heard about the news and from thence, would take me to work. There were no children at my father’s job to play with; in truth, I didn’t like the place. The messenger’s name was Yaw who was assigned to take care of me while my father worked. He was an elderly man in his fifties, tall and very reserved. The word no was not part of his vocabulary. He took good care of me. I don’t know who on earth I have ever bothered so much in my life more than that man.

When I was hungry, he would run to the market in town to buy me food. My favorite was fried ripe plantains. The market was quite a distant from the office, about a quarter of a mile. Sometimes, as soon as he brought the fried ripe plantains, I would say, I don’t want it; I want rice. He would run back to the market to buy the rice. As soon as he brought the rice, I would say, I don’t want the rice; I want roasted peanuts. He would run back to the market to buy the roasted peanuts. When he came back, I would say, I don’t want to eat nothing; I’m not hungry. When I had to use the bathroom, I would not tell him. I would just poop on me. He would clean me up, change my clothes, and walk me round the area. He was a good man.

At a point, my father started campaigning for the ruling political party. All I knew, he would drive a car clustered in red, white, green colors with a red cockerel in the middle with loud speakers mounted on top of the car and blasting music. The car played good music but were too loud. He left early in the mornings and came late in the nights. I therefore had to go to school with the kids in the house and I had to dress nicely. The back and bare floor of the classroom became my permanent spot. My dad taught me how to speak English as early as three when we were at Bantama. At the age of about four years and half, I was very fluent in English. I performed better than all the pupils in the class including the Grade/Class 3 pupils. Even in the arithmetic, I was the best. The teacher developed a great admiration for me and asked my father to buy me a regular school uniform so that, I could enroll as a full time recognized pupil. The following year, my father bought me the uniform and at 5, I started schooling.

I was now a legal pupil in the Grade/Class 1. We didn’t have much to learn–only the 3 Rs (Reading, Writing, Arithmetic) and singing. We also had the opportunity of playing soccer in some afternoons. My best friend at school was Franco. He was very smart and probably the second best pupil in class. He was the chief’s son and had many siblings. I did not see him often after school. I spent all my evening hours on a wall at their house. There was a big tree in front of the house which had been invaded by weaver birds. I sat down there to watch the activities of the birds. They were very busy. Most of them would usually fly out and came back with long strips of palm leaves. Those were what they used for weaving their nests. They were wonderful weavers. The fact that those small creatures had such wonderful artistic prowess was beyond my imagination. Watching carefully, I could also see that some were lazy and would not build nests. They kept on stealing their friends’ nests and that always ended up in brutal fights. They would at times fight until they fell down on the ground where I would rush to go and catch them. They would always fly away. Some would also build nice nests but almost at completion would abandon them and start a new one all afresh. Few of them would build lousy nests. After completion, they would lay in their eggs and the eggs would drop and got smashed. On few occasions, a predator usually a hawk, would stop by and cause commotion. They would attack vigorously and scare the predator away. Some of them took leisure hours to sing their sweet melodies; others would mate; others would be busy preening their feathers. It was very interesting to watch those birds.

One afternoon, as I was doing my routine bird watching, I saw a man approaching. He was tall and clumsy, walking side to side and looked as if he was going to fall. Who might that man be? It seemed, I knew him. As he approached, I made him out. He was Akwasi’s father. I had wanted to run away because of the kerosene drinking issue ; I changed my mind. He said, hi kid and kept on walking. He did not recognize me. I didn’t think, he knew me. At Tanoso, he would always come in the nights and was always drunk and would always leave early the next morning. I didn’t reveal myself to him because of the kerosene incident. He looked aged though, but was nicely dressed as usual. He was a frequent visitor at a hamlet, Yaw Taku Akuraase, about a mile and half away from Nkwakom. Access to the hamlet from Nkwakom was by a bush path. He had friends there who were palm wine tappers and owned akpeteshie, the local gin factory. Akwasi’s father loved drinking very much. Everyday, he would pass by but I didn’t know when he would return; probably, very late in the nights. One night, as I was getting ready to go to bed, I heard some kind of commotion on the street. People rushed out of their houses and assembled in front of the chief’s palace where I always sat to do my bird watching. I ran outside too to go and see what might had gone amiss. A whole lot of noises was coming from the bush path connecting Nkwakom and Yaw Taku Akuraase. Some were wailing, some were crying, and others were singing funeral dirges. There is surely a death but who can this be? The people appeared: Four of them in the front carrying a hammock and the rest following in a queue. They put the hammock on the wall and after some few interrogations from the village elders, they explained in detail of what had happened. Akwasi’s father, while visiting that day, was bitten by a cobra somewhere on the way. Slowly and limping carefully, he managed to get to