Questions I'd Ask

Imagine that we could go back in time, some time back, not a hundred years, not fifty, but a mere four years and seven months ago, which was a time of immense hope for me. I'd never made so much money, never felt as top of my game as I did then, my father was alive, I lived between New York and Accra. It's cliched to think this but I felt then that the world lay at my feet.

Of course, life doesn't always move along this trajectory. I made a decision to move back to Ghana a year later to start a business here, hoping to parlay my contacts and the slick NY business skills into a life that unified more of the various aspects of my life. I felt unrooted in NY, my existence was pleasant, even anodyne, my problems were those of the overfed. Moving to Ghana seemed to be a place in which I could contribute.

In addition to all of this, I was anxious to be around my parents as they grew older - my dad was just into his ninth decade, my mother in her seventh.

So it was not an unhappy time, not a lot different from my consistent approach of self-belief and a pretty long-term view.

I went to Swedru, a relatively big Ghanaian town, to visit my Dad, who was then staying with a friend, and was there with his companion Auntie G. M. Dad had been traveling around the country, unable for some reasons to stay in his houses in Accra and Anomabo. It felt as though he was in pretty decent shape. I really didn't understand why he didn't stay in any of these well-appointed places, perhaps they were too big, perhaps he moved around because he liked being away from home - I often felt the same way living in a hotel room, for a while I could sustain the illusion that I had everything I needed, that I'd outran the mail, if you like.

I'd spent the previous week celebrating the New Year in New York. I threw a party that had the most interesting collection of people floating in and out. We even had a couple of people who had flown in from Denmark to spend the night at a party in New York. Fun, wasn't it.

And, buoyed by that entry into this seemingly unlimited future, and the euphoria of the Ghanaian election in which a hated government had been voted out, I flew into Accra in early July. It'd be naive to pretend that I didn't know that coming to Ghana would be a challenge, after all, if I didn't know that, I should have had an inkling of what might have lain ahead when our Ghana Airways direct flight was 15 hours late leaving New York. Unlike the other unfortunates who were on the flight with me, and who would spend almost a whole day and night at JFK, some sleeping on bare floors in the corridors, or slumped like disembodied sacks of charcoal against the walls of the terminal, I was insulated by the fact that I could take a cab back to the apartment and get a good night's sleep. Actually, I ended up going to a birthday party. I think my friend J. A-M might have been visiting and might have been conducting a tryst in my apartment. Anyhow, I wasn't too badly put out by this foray into Africa - the idea of not being able to travel, change plans on the fly, the confrontation with scarcity - all of this was cause for chuckling and bemusement, not enough of a reason not to move back here a year later.

I'd been to see my Dad at least once before I went back with my video camera to interview him, to record some impressions of their lives, especially since I was childless at that time and thought that this would be a way of bequeathing a family, I hesitate to call it a history, story to the eventual children I would have. And, funnily enough, I've had to view the tape again to remember the questions I asked in the hour of taping that followed, I didn't have a game plan beyond letting Dad himself run with the interview. He was such a gifted raconteur that he would fasten on your question and give you ten minutes of detailed reminiscence.

Still, if I'd been a professional rather than a doting son, I would have asked: why weren't you able to marry and settle down with a woman, despite your obvious desire and love for women? Why were you so hard for us to approach when we were kids, when you seemed to not even love your own children? How did you conceive of building these big villas and mansions, you, a poor kid from Anomabo? Why did your desire of acceptance lead you to accepting - perhaps even campaigning for - the Nkosohene title in Anomabo?

Boobee, I think you'll have the opportunity to ask me these questions, or at least your version of them, but I can only say, "don't be a doting son," when you do.

Be well, my lovely son.

By the way, this is the 28th anniversary of your great-grandfather Samuel Bus Kwofie's death. He was my mother's father, a person of some renown in the Gold Coast and, later, Ghana as a school headmaster (no small office in those days) and a journalist.