Chapter 7 Ghana , then Back to School

Somewhere on the Volta River, 12 May 1972

I’m writing this to while away the time as we sail down the Volta Lake from Tamale to Akasombo on a ferry. The journey is supposed to take around 36 hours. As nobody in Tamale knew what time the ferry left, we had to get up at 5.00 a.m. and drive out along an awful road to Tamale Port, thirty miles away, in case it left very early in the morning. As it turned out, it didn’t leave till 10.00 a.m. so we arrived with plenty of time to spare. Since I last wrote, we moved on from the luxury of being waited on hand and foot in Elmina to roughing it somewhat in Dixcove, a beautiful little village, nestling as the name suggests in a cove and surrounded by sandy beaches lined with coconut trees. In Dixcove we again stayed in a old castle, Fort St Cross, sharing the accommodation with a motley assortment of grass-smoking hippies and dropouts, seasoned travellers, and several other VSOs and Peace Corps volunteers making the most of their holidays. Just before we left Elmina, imagine our surprise when who should turn up but three girls from Yola who had also travelled to Ghana – so we clubbed together and carried on to Dixcove as a group. Just before we left, two girls from Bauchi also arrived – it seems like the entire VSO population of NE State has descended on Ghana!

Conditions in Fort St Cross were much more spartan than in Elmina, with a privy down the garden, no electricity, water from a well rather than a tap, and one miserable little kerosene cooker shared by about 20 people. However, we managed to survive on a diet of tinned meat, bread, pineapples and coconuts.

Then

Fort Metal Cross
In the 1680’s, the Ahantaland around Inhuman settlement was a bone of contention between the English and Brandenburg.
The English were determined to acquire land there to build a fort because many English interloper captains were accustomed to trading at Fort Gross Fredericksburg to the detriment of English commerce.
The chief of Upper/Greater Dixcove leased to the English a promontory site near Inhuman village, located on the shore of a large and sheltered bay, later designated as Dick’s Cove (Dixcove).
The Cove’s calm waters and sandy beach made it an ideal “harbour” for canoes and small boats while ships could anchor about 3 kilometres offshore.
The Royal African Company commenced construction of the fort in 1692 but was unable to complete it until 1698 because of spasmodic attacks by the Ahanta people which continued well into the 18th century on account of the presence of the Dutch fort Babenstein at Butre.
The original fort, as seen and described by writers like Jean Barbot, was square with a pointed bastion at each corner except for the southwest corner which had a round tower.Curtain walls linked the bastions and tower. The inner structure comprised apartments, storage rooms and kitchen arranged round a small courtyard.
Subsequently there were several alterations to the original structure: a spur ending with a bastion, which was constructed in the 1St century, consisted of garrison apartments storage rooms and a workshop. One of the hollow bastions in the main section of the fort was employed as a slave prison. By 1750, the fort was equipped to carry up to 25 canons.
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The beach was superb for surfing – you could hire a surfboard for 1 shilling a day – and the breakers were enormous. So big in fact that I nearly smashed my hipbone when the front of the board dug into a wave, then into the beach, and then into me! However, I was only bruised and have now recovered.

Then there were coconuts. The whole two mile long beach was lined with coconut palms. All you had to do was knock one down and open it – delicious! But no grass-skirted dancing girls otherwise it would have been just like paradise! Occasionally a small boy from the village would appear and sit with legs crossed and arms folded in front of you, waiting to be sent off an an errand to the village to fetch a Coca Cola or a pineapple, just like the genie of the lamp – your wish is his command.

One evening several of us went for a walk to the beach a couple of miles away. It was already dark, and when we got there we decided to go for a swim, though we hadn’t thought on to bring our swimming things. We left our clothes on a rock next to a bushlamp and splashed around in the water for a couple of hours. When we got out, the lamp was still perched on the rock but all our clothes had disappeared! So we had to wait two or three more hours until it was quite late, everything had gone quiet and most people had gone to bed, before streaking the two miles back to the castle without a stitch of clothing to wear.

After three days of blissfully total idleness we decided it was time to head on for Kumasi, where we stayed with a couple of VSOs at the University of Science and Technology. While there we took a trip out to a nearby village which makes Ashanti stools and fertility dolls, and another village where they make really beautiful hand-woven Kente cloth. But it was so expensive – about 12 cedis (£5) for a strip 6 feet long by a foot wide that we just took some photos of the weavers and didn’t actually buy anything, much to their disgust. There were some really nice carved stools for around the same price, but as I couldn’t think how to get one home I settled for a smaller, lighter one which didn’t weigh so much and posted it to myself – but the postage came to more than the cost of the stool!

From Kumasi we set off at 6.30 a.m. to get to the Volta River at Jeji in time to catch the eleven o’clock ferry. We’d been told they went at 8.00 a.m. 11.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m. We arrived at Jeji at 10.45 just in time to see the ferry setting off - it had already got about 150 yards from the bank. So we adjourned to a café in the village for a drink of lemonade - and were given seats outside by the proprietor, who also insisted on presenting us with a loaf of bread. We decided at about 1230 we’d better go and see if the ferry had arrived back, so jumped on our motorbikes, only to discover that mine had a puncture. So we had to take the back wheel off and go down to the landing stage to look for a mechanic to mend the puncture. By the time we’d got the puncture repaired and the wheel reassembled, the next ferry had left, so we had to wait for the last one of the day at 3.30. So by the time we reached Tamale it was 7.30 at night and we were completely shattered. They had dug up large parts of the road into Tamale from about 30 miles out, and driving along laterite roads with trenches dug across them in the dark is a fairly terrifying experience. Our worst experience so far was the road to Dixcove. It had just rained and for a three-mile stretch the road was between one and three feet deep in mud. We arrived completely covered in mud from head to toe after taking about an hour and a half to go the three miles, assisted by a vast army of locals who pushed, pulled and dragged our motorbikes though the quagmire. The ferry should reach Akasombo tomorrow afternoon, but it is quite well equipped, with loos, a shower, and even a fridge with cold drinks. We brought plenty of food and there are several large bales of cotton on the deck which should provide a comfortable bed for the night.


G S S Kaltungo 2nd June 1972

I arrived back in Kaltungo a few days ago after what must have been nearly eight weeks on the road. On the way back through western Nigeria we visited Ife, a famous Yoruba town and the site of the archaeological discoveries known as the Ife bronzes. They also dug up a lot of terra cotta heads which are now in the Ife museum, which also houses some terra cotta pavements and the chief’s palace. Ife has great historical signficance as the centre of the cult of Oduduwa. He was supposed to be the world’s first blacksmith, and they show you a great lump of iron shaped like a pyramid and weighing several hundred pounds which he is supposed to have used for beating metal. I went off in search of Oduduwa’s shrine and was shown a mud hut, rather like any other mud hut in appearance, but the locals got out the priest of Oduduwa, who posed to have his photo taken. He wanted £1 but was persuaded to accept 1/- and the locals assured me this was the “real place”. I’m still not quite sure whether or not they were having me on.

In Oshogbo there was a very interesting juju shrine, kept up by a mad Australian woman who got interested in juju and married the juju priest. It was a bit pseudo, however, rather like the Nigerian equivalent of a Victorian gothic fake medieval castle. In Oyo, which specialises in leather goods and carved calabashes we bought some very nice calabashes and a couple of leather pouffes.

Bida, the capital of Nupeland, is a very quaint old city. One of the traditional industries is glass-blowing, and they make an incredible assortment of beads and glass ornaments from melted down recycled bottles. So you can buy Guinness bottle beads (brown with white circles), Milk of Magnesia bottle beads (dark blue), Star beer bottle beads ( dark green), Sprite bottle beads (lighter green), Fanta bottle beads (clear glass) and so on. Quite amazing really, someone must have consumed an awful lot of Milk of Magnesia tablets for there to be so many empty bottles to re-cycle! They also make brass trays decorated with different elaborately ornate patterns. The industry is organised along the same lines as the pre-industrial domestic system used to be in England, with different huts each making different items.

From Bida we continued on to Kanduna, and thence to Jos, via Zaria, and ancient walled city and one of the capitals of the Hausa emirates. Unfortunately the road from Zaria to Jos, famous for its notoriously awful laterite with huge potholes, finished off one of my shock absorbers. My brand new bike was guaranteed for the first six thousand miles, and I’d just done 6200 when it happened! I tried to get a new one in Jos but they were out of stock.

On arriving back here in Kaltungo I set off again the next day with the school van to Maiduguri to get some books for the library. You can borrow up to 200 titles for six months at a time from the State Library there. Actually the title “State Library” is something of a misnomer – its about one-tenth of the size of Hoylake library. I didn’t manage to get a shock absorber there either, so I will have to try in Kano. One of the teachers, Mr Alexander, is planning to buy a new car and needs someone to drive his old car back when he goes to Kano to collect it, so I will probably angle to go with him. The last thing I heard about the drums of books you sent was from Walford Wingate, the forwarding agents, who wrote to say that the ship they were on, the Hoegh Gunvor, had broken down irrepairably in Abidjan and that all the cargo was being forwarded to Port Harcourt via the SS Egori. I received four bills of lading from the Nigerian agents, Umarco, but as these had been posted before the letter from Walford Wingate, I assume they still won’t have received the books. Anyway, with the Principal’s assent I wrote to Umarco saying that when they arrived they should forward them to Gombe station for collection from there. There was slightly worrying paragraph in the letter from Walford Wingate saying that “the company have declared a general average on all cargo” and that I should inform my insurers to avoid delay when the cargo arrived in Lagos. I’m not quite sure what the implications of a general average might be – could you let the insurers know?

Some bad news on the housing front. The Senns informed me that they are expecting several new teachers at the Teachers College this term and I would have to move off the compound. When I told the Principal all he said was “Don’t worry – and don’t bother doing anything until they throw you out!” He is building a new house at the school for the Alexanders, but its not ready yet and still needs painting. When they move, I will probably move into their present house, halfway up a hill in the centre of the village, with a splendid view but no mosquito netting on the windows, no electricity, and all the water has to be carried up the hill from a well at the bottom. However, it has a commanding view over the entire village so makes up in aesthetic value for what it lacks in convenience. However, I’m not too worried as, this being Nigeria, it may never happen!

I tried to call on Peter Heaps while in Maiduguri, after getting his contact details in your letter, but according to his cook he hadn’t arrived back from England yet. The girl I stayed with had, it turned out, been down to Kaltungo at the beginning of the long holiday for a Christian Leadership course held at the Teachers’ College here. Guardian Weeklies have started arriving four at a time, once a month, but they’re excellent as a way of keeping up to date with the news – and when you’ve read them, being printed on tissue paper, they also make good toilet paper when torn up into small pieces! My salary for this month still hasn’t arrived but when it does hopefully I’ll be able to reduce my mounting debts! Could you collect old comics and magazines and send them out in bundles if possible – other volunteers reckon they go down very well as supplementary reading material – Bunty, Princess et for the girls, Lion, Dandy, Beano, Superman etc for the boys.

G S S Kaltungo June 13th 1972

The school is in a great turmoil because the Principal has just arrived back from Maiduguri and announced there is going to be an inspection during the fifth week of term to see if the school is up to standard to enable the 5th form to take their GCE exams here next year. Various officials from Maiduguri will be turning up. As a result, he announced that we will have to work six days a week this term – no Saturdays off –until the inspection has taken place. A great deal of window dressing and covering up of past omissions is now in progress. He handed out a pile of exercise books and instructed all the teachers to concoct lesson plans and records of work going back to the beginning of last term.

The insurance papers for the books haven’t arrived yet, but I keep getting frequent letters which I have so far ignored from a firm call Scanship saying if you don’t have the insurance papers then you can pay 5% of the value of the good and let them get on with it. None of the textbooks we need for this term have arrived yet – though they were ordered in Fabruary, so we’re having to make do in Literature with the Pride and Prejudice, which we have already read to death, and various duplicated poems which are taken from a book called West African Verse.

Yesterday I went to visit Pastor Ibrahim, who helps with the Sunday School. He was complaining about the rising cost of living and that the £5 per month which he gets from the local church council isn’t enough to make ends meet. I suspect he hopes I might contribute! He gave me some eggs and took me to a birthday party. I even got a letter the other day from some boy in Ghana I don’t even remember meeting, asking me to help with paying his school fees!

I was hoping to go to Kano with Mr Alexander when he went to collect his new car yesterday, but the Principal wouldn’t let me go because of the need to prepare for the forthcoming inspection, so I asked him to get me a new shock absorber while he is there. Meanwhile the bike is going well and is actually a lot less bumpy now that all the oil has leaked out of the old shock absorbers. I’m just about to have supper – steak, chips and cabbage, followed by mango and bananas. Just at the moment there seems to be a great surplus of food – I’ve got so much stashed away in the fridge its in danger of going off, which makes a change from last week when there were no tomatoes, oranges or bananas in the market, the hens stopped laying eggs and I forgot to tell the cook to buy some meat, so I had to survive out of tins. On Saturday night I had the Current Affairs Society round and showed them slides of the 6-day war in Israel and also some of Italy.

I’m still expecting to have to move fairly soon, but there’s no sign of them painting the Alexanders’ new house, so at the moment I’m lying low and saying nothing. It’s possible that the person thyey have lined up for my house won’t actually arrived in Kcaltungo until September. Apparently its some American missionary bod who is going to be teaching Maths at the Teachers’ College.

P.S When you send letters, can you underline GSS Kaltungo, as although the last few were addressed to GSS Kaltungo, via Gombe, NE State, they all got delivered to GSS Gombe – they only read the last line of the address!

G S S Kaltungo June 18th 1972

There doesn’t seem to be much news to report this week – for the first time in my stay here I may even have trouble filling up an airletter. The main event of the week was a continuation of the long-standing antagonism between Kaltungo and the nearby village of Billiri, about 8 miles away. We had a football match arranged at the school yesterday afternoon between our school and Billiri Secondary School. Various local celebrities had been invited including the Mai Kaltungo (Chief of Kaltungo) who was officially visiting the school for the first time, and the princely sum of £6/10/= had been spent on refreshments – orange squash, cola nuts and cigarettes – for the honoured guests.

After about 15 minutes Billiri were winning 2:1 They had a couple of free kicks awarded to them, and one of the Kaltungo team tripped one of the Billiri lot up. The referee awarded them a free kick, but they all upped and walked off the pitch in protest at the rough tactics of Kaltungo. They then spent about half an hour debating what to do, and finally decided to refuse to play any more. A near riot broke out when some of our students tried to stop the Billiri team climbing into the Kaltungo school van, which had brought them from Billiri and was to take them back, saying that if they wouldn’t play, they should be made to walk back to Billiri. Eventually the game continued with the Kaltungo team playing another team of Kaltungo students, but this proved to be a bit of an anticlimax. So the saga of Billiri vs Kaltungo continues. Sixty years ago, I suppose they would have gone on the warpath for less and taken a few heads!

Then


Rev Hall describes an account of how the Eastern Tangale and Western Tangale became enemies:

“In olden times, after our people settled in this southern part, our people and they of Western Tangale lived west of here, nearer the present Western Tangale. Intermarriage prevailed. It came to pass that one Western Tangale man named Lakarai and a man of our town were in competition for the one woman as wife. When the time of cutting roof grass came round, both cut at the same place, but with a line dividing them. The grass that was being cut was still green; and they stacked their stocks of cut grass until they should dry, each stack in its own place.

After some days the man of our town went back to his stack and began to strip it clean. The Western Tangale man came upon him thus employed and charged him with appropriating some of his grass. Our man denied guilt. The Western Tangale man continued charging him and making threats. It was simple jealousy over the woman. They came to blows, beating each other furiously; and Laharai killed our man. The people of our section then made a combined attack on the Western Tangale people, and, fighting to kill, the combatants went on, until after a time our people withdrew to this present location, and the people of Western Tangale to the hills in which they now live. They lived in warring enmity. Seven years would be counted for war, and then peace would be made. Seven years of peace would be counted, and then war would break out again, continuing like that, with seven years of alternating peace and war until the white man came, who set them at one and put an end to war”.

He goes on to describe the head hunt:

“At day break the war chief announces the intended attack. Baked cakes of millet are prepared that forenoon; these to be the food of the men off at the fight. Their food is prepared in that form because it will keep fresher than the ordinary mush. In the evening, armed with spears, axes, knives and shields, the fighting group leave home for the distant bush, to the spot planned for the attack. They hide themselves in the thick growth of the ground. In the early morning a man of the Western Tangale group – the object of the attack – passes on the road nearby to get to his farm. He does not know an ambush lies in the way. The men fall upon him, kill him, and cut off his head. They dismember him completely and tear his flesh into fragments and carry it off. The man whose spear entered or first entered the man, the head is his. The three next to touch or spear the man are included with him, and these four are called “the men of the head”.

Various ceremonies and celebrations arise from the capture of a head:

“The slayers gather together. They emit yells and sing to the man to whom has fallen the head. They run home, declaring they’ve done it, they’ve done it. On the way they come to water, and dropping the head into it, they wash it. Washed, it is put into a string bag and the mouth of the bag tied up, the men singing all the time the praises of the slayer. …. The priest of the sacred grove appears. The bag with the head is handed to him. He takes the head out of the bag. All are gathered at the sacred tree of the hamlet. The priest is seated at the stone set apart for the reception of heads. He presents it twice towards the stone and withdraws. With a third presentation he sets it right side up on the stone, the eyes looking towards the bush, and says , “You ugly mouth, you! Did I ever think your head would come into my hands?” Dancing and feasting then takes place for the next night and day.

The head, placed by the priest of the grove on the stone for the reception of heads, stays there until the late afternoon, when it is lifted, put into an earthen basin and placed on a limb of a baobab tree close to the hamlet. After three days the head is removed from the tree. The hair is shaven clean. Pieces of corn-stalk are set into the bottom of a cooking pot, to form a rest for the head in cooking. The head is placed thereon, water is poured on, and the pot placed on a fire. The head cooks. The hairs (i.e. the roots) come out with boiling and drop to the bottom of the pot below the corn-stalk rest. When it is boiled, the meat is clean, free of hairs. The pot is removed from the fire. Elders bring an earthen basin, and, pulling off all the flesh, eyes also and all soft substance, gather all into the basin. There just remains the skull. The elders divide the meat amongst themselves and eat.

The business of burying the skull is then proceeded with. The place is either behind the slayer’s house, or under the sacred tree of the hamlet, according to the choice made. The ground is opened up. The skull is placed in an earthen basin and set into the hole. Another basin is brought and inverted over the lower basin. The earth is brought back, and covers the whole. Then a moderately long stone is placed on the spot, partly buried. It is known as a stone of a buried head.

Hall, ibid, pp 199-204


This morning we started off the Sunday School again. It went very well, although the numbers seem to have dropped off a bit. One of the teachers seems to be rather losing interest, but I gave him a lift to make sure he got there!

I succeeded on Friday in getting some money out of the bank in Gombe as I managed to get there only half an hour after they had officially closed, not an hour and a half after as happened the week before, when they wouldn’t let me have any! Now that they are making us work on Saturdays its very difficult buying anything – you have to go straight into Gombe as soon as you finish on a weekday.

On Friday I got a letter from the Teachers’ College Principal, “for my interest and cooperation” asking me to vacate the house by the 21st (Wednesday of this week!) . I told our Principal, who said he would write and ask if I could stay for another month, as they have still not wired or painted the Alexanders’ house. He said if he asked for a month they might let me stay at least for another week!

Today an unexpected visitor arrived in the person of Anne, a VSO from Gombe, who was to go into the local hospital here in Kaltungo for a minor .operation, but on arriving at the hospital discovered that the doctor had gone off somewhere and noone knew when he would be back. So she’s staying here until he puts in an appearance! He usually turns up for work by mid-morning on a Monday after a weekend away. They were opening a new mosque in Bauchi on Saturday and anyone who is anybody in the North East state was invited, presumably the doctor included.

The Principal said it would be ok to take the Boys Brigade camping to Tula sometime this term, so its merely a matter of picking a suitable weekend when its not raining heavily. I promised him I would go and have a look at what the road was like ; I think he was a bit afraid we might get there and then it would rain, and the drifts would be too deep to cross in the school van and we might have to stay there for a week, living on a diet of fruit and dog.

Later


Newswatch Magazine reports:
For the people of Tula, the administration of Mohammed Danjuma Goje is the best thing that has happened to them in a long time. Tula, located on top of a hill overlooking Gombe town, once played a prominent political role as the headquarters of the Native Authority for the area. But it lost that pre-eminent status after independence on account of its unfavourable terrain.
Rather than open up the area and make it accessible, Tula was abandoned to its fate. The political capital of the local government administration was moved to Billiri instead. Billiri is closer to the main access road to Gombe. Tula, therefore, remained a victim of official neglect until Goje became the governor of Gombe State.
Goje re-built the only access road into Tula. Today, the 15 kilometre road which usually took one whole hour has been reduced to less than 20 minutes and the people are happy.
One of those who cannot hide his joy over the changes that have taken place in Tula since the coming of Goje is Andrew Aliyu, 64-year-old Biology graduate of the University of Jos and district head of the area.
Today, Tula may not have regained its pre-independent political role as the seat of local administration, but it has benefited from the generous disposition of the Goje administration towards the spread of modern amenities. Its road has not only been reconstructed, it has been asphalted. It also boasts of electricity, potable water, a hospital with modern facilities and qualified medical personnel and a science school.
Tula is only one of the many positive stories of change that has taken place in many communities in Gombe State with the spread of modern amenities.
Newswatch reported Goje as saying:

“When I took over as the governor, I knew what was to be done. Our rural areas were so remote, neglected, and inaccessible. There were no rural roads linking them up. I don’t know if you have been to Tula. It used to be the headquarters of Tangale Waja Native authority. Because the place is located on top of a hill, the Europeans loved the place and settled there and made it their base and administrative headquarters”. Goje explained that, “After independence, the seat of local administration was moved down the valley to Billiri due to lack of access road to Tula. In fact a military governor once told the people of Tula to relocate down the valley because there was no way a road could be constructed to link them at their present location to the rest of the state. When I came, I knew a road could be constructed to link up Tula and the rest of the state. And by God’s grace a road has been constructed”.

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on 21.02.2009

We should be getting some new teachers in the next few weeks, students from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria who are filling in before starting there in October, and also some student teachers on teaching practice, so the workload should go down a bit, although the Principal instructed us that we had to sit in on their lessons and generally supervise them, not just leave them to get on with it.