View of the World (16 page)

We crossed the new bridge over the Volta and immediately entered a new country. This had been German colonial territory until 1919, when the country had come under League of Nations control and been divided rather crudely and purposelessly between the British and the French. There were few signs of jubilation in these villages. In the outskirts of Ho a shop still carried the title Buch Handlung, although it no longer sold books. At this point, we ran through the tail end of a rain storm and the
thick spicy odour of an old-fashioned grocer’s reached us from the wet jungle.

I had a letter of introduction to Mr Mead, who had been formally known as Resident of Togoland but whose official title had now for some time been modified to Regional Officer. My arrival could not possibly have been worse timed. The situation at that moment in the surrounding villages was officially described as explosive, and Mr Mead, whose job it was to see that no explosion took place, had had no sleep for several nights. A minor upset had been caused by a tornado that had ripped through the edge of the town that afternoon, torn off some roofs, and put the town electricity supply out of action. Finally the RO’s wife was in the last stage of a difficult pregnancy, and a car stood by, ready, in an emergency, to rush her to Lome, the capital of French Togoland, where, Mr Mead said, the medical services were better developed than the local ones.

Mr Mead faced these difficulties with an Olympian calm. We dined splendidly on the vast polished veranda of the Residency, served by white-coated, whispering stewards who moved as stealthily as Indian stranglers. Almost certainly having first discovered through the steward in charge of the guest bungalow that I was travelling very light, Mr Mead had asked to be excused from dressing for dinner, and we ate in civilised, tieless comfort. Like all great administrators the RO seemed to admire and respect the customs of the people he ruled, although he thought that they were rather letting the side down in their violent and non-constitutional reaction to their integration with Ghana. My host was a master of magnificent understatement, and his only complaint arising from the vexations of the moment was that there was a shortage of bath water. About halfway through the meal a dispatch-rider arrived with an urgent message, and, excusing himself hurriedly, the RO departed for his headquarters for another sleepless night, carrying with him a copy of
À la recherche du temps perdu
.

Next day I set out to see something of Togoland. Etiquette first called for a visit to the paramount chief of Ho, but here a difficulty arose. A schism had taken place in the leadership of the Ewes of Togoland over the
issue of their permanent incorporation with Ghana, and a very strong minority had asked to remain under British rule until such time as they could unite with their brothers in French Togoland to form a separate nation. When the division of Togoland had taken place in 1919 about 170,000 Ewes found themselves transferred to the British, and about 400,000 came under French control. The Ewes complained that they suffered by this change of masters. The British slice, in particular, of the ex-German colony, they said, became no more than an unimportant appendage of the Gold Coast, and from 1919 onward no Ewe had much hope of self-advancement unless he left his native country – as great numbers did – and migrated to Accra. The two political factions dividing the country – those in favour of the CPP and union with Ghana, and their opponents who had lost the recent elections – now regarded each other with implacable hostility. What was perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this situation was that the original paramount chief who headed the apparently pro-British faction had come under Mr Mead’s
displeasure
, and diplomatic relations had been broken off between him and the Residency. The British, in fact, officially supported a new pretender from the royal family – a member of the once revolutionary CPP (which still talked sometimes about breaking the chains of imperialism – although in these days with no really convincing show of acrimony).

It was a problem to know which chief to visit first, as it had been hinted to me that either might feel himself slighted if it came to his knowledge that I had placed him second on the list. In the end I decided to make it the dissident chief who was notorious for his readiness to take umbrage. I found him living in a small single-storey house. From the bareness of the furnishings and the absence of comfort, I got the impression that this chief – like so many minor potentates of West Africa – was a poor man. Chiefs are elected from a number of suitable candidates drawn from the royal family and I was told later that no Ewe candidate stood much chance of election unless he was the kind of man who got up early every morning and set off, hoe over his shoulder, to work on his farm.

Chief Togbe Hodo’s reception was not a genial one. I found the chief
in his courtyard, wearing his working clothes and seated on a piano stool. He was a man of about sixty. According to old-fashioned local usage he affected not to notice my entry, and appeared to be absorbed in his study of the faded coronation picture which provided the room’s only decoration. A ‘linguist’ invited me to seat myself on a worn-out sofa and whispered that the chief would answer my questions when his council of ‘wing-chiefs’ arrived. He then fiddled with the knobs of a radio set until he found a station broadcasting hymns, and turned this up to a fair strength. The council of wing-chiefs, who had evidently been fetched from their work, soon trooped in, and seated themselves on a miscellany of chairs that had been placed round the courtyard. There were eight of them, and one of them wore a carpenter’s apron and sat clutching a plane. This was my cue, as Mr Mead had warned me, to get up and shake hands with each chief in turn, starting with the man on my right and working my way round the circle. Speaking on behalf of the paramount chief, who now appeared to have noticed my presence for the first time, the linguist now said, ‘You are welcome. Pray begin your questions.’ Formal palavers of this kind form a great part of African small-town life and any visitor from another country, however unimportant he may be, is expected to enter with good grace into the spirit of the thing. I don’t remember what questions I asked, and these certainly only provided an excuse for the exposition by the council of their views on the burning theme of union with Ghana. Chief Togbe Hodo’s Grey Eminence turned out to be a nonconformist minister, who had been hurriedly sent for. The Reverend Ametowobla had been at Edinburgh University, and he spoke with persuasion and grandiloquence in the soft accent of the Scottish capital. There had never been much hope for Togolanders, he said, since the Germans who wanted to make a show-colony of it had left. Now that they were to be delivered up to the mercies of the politicians of the Gold Coast, there would be none at all. One of the chiefs present was old enough to remember what it was like under the Germans. Herzog the German governor had wanted to outstrip the Gold Coast and had set to work with tremendous energy to develop the country. There had been compulsory schooling for all, whereas in these days there was about 85
per cent illiteracy. On the other hand the Germans had introduced forced labour. Chief Togbe Hodo made no contribution to this discussion except in his native tongue. I believe that he understood English but would have considered it undignified to dispense with his interpreter on such occasions.

The opposition chief, Togbe Afede Asor, turned out to be young and agreeably expansive. Once again there was the business of waiting for the assembly of wing-chiefs before he could speak, but after this he brushed ceremony aside. We shook hands. I said, ‘How do you do?’ and the chiefs smiled widely and said, ‘Okay.’ After a brief discussion of local affairs the chief asked if I had any objection to his performing a libation. This pagan custom is in wide use all over the Gold Coast, despite the most vehement protests from the Christian clergy and in particular from the Bishop of Accra, and on national occasions it is carried out by Dr Nkrumah himself in exactly the same way as his counterpart in Europe might lay a wreath on a cenotaph. Dr Nkrumah when he makes a public libation uses the traditional Hollands Gin, but Chief Togbe Asor said that Black and White Whisky would in his opinion be just as acceptable to the ancestral spirits to whom the libation would be made, and he liked it better himself. We went into the chief’s living-room, which was densely furnished in Victorian style, and there the chief poured about a teaspoonful of the whisky out on to the green linoleum, at the same time praying in a loud and matter-of-fact voice for the success of any mission I happened to be on, and – as at that time he still supposed me to be a Government servant – promotion in my particular department. After that we completed the ceremony in the approved fashion by drinking a stiff whisky apiece ourselves. Chief Asor told me that he was a Catholic, and that among the Catholic flock in Togoland only chiefs were allowed to pour libations and possess more than one wife. As another chiefly privilege he had ‘medicine’ buried in his back-yard to protect the household from malevolent spirits. When I left he invited me to come round next morning at six, when he would sacrifice a sheep in honour of the flag-raising ceremony of the new nation. He also presented me with a neatly written biographical note, reading as follows: ‘Togbe Afede Asor II was born in June 1927 by Fia
Afede XII of Ho Bankoe and Abla Dam of Taviefe. He was educated at the Catholic Mission School from 1936–46. He was Assistant Secretary to the Asogli State Council from 1947–52. He was installed on 22nd February, 1952, on the ancient Asogli Stool of Ho. Togbe Asor II was the descendant of the great grandfather Asor I of Ho who led the Ewe emancipation from Notse 360 years ago. Hobbies: Table-tennis, Walking, Gardening.’ The stool referred to here is the ancient West African symbol of kingship: the counterpart of the crown in Europe. It is kept under close guard by a functionary known as the Stool Father, whose power may almost equal that of the chief. The stool is considered to be impregnated with a magical essence, which in the old days was ‘fed’ or revived, by the blood of human sacrifices, and although it is too small and too sacred to be sat upon, a chief may be held in contact with it in the seated position from time to time, to allow him to absorb some of its power.

After saying goodbye to Chief Togbe Asor II, I made up my mind to drive on to Kpandu, one of the principal centres of the resistance movement. In the preceding days, abandoned training camps had been found in the bush round Kpandu, and several caches of weapons and explosives had been unearthed. This was March 5th – eve of
Independence
Day – and it was feared that despite the precautions taken to send military units into the area, rebellion might break out at any moment. There were few signs of life in the villages we passed through. Houses and shops were shut up, and there were no decorations. The driver, who was understandably nervous at the possibility of running into a battle, took to stopping at every village to inquire about the situation along the road immediately ahead. This meant a de rigueur call on the chief and his council and a certain amount of punctilious time-wasting.

Dzolokpuita stands out in the memory. Dzolokpuita was a pretty little Italianate-looking cluster of neat stone houses built on rust-red earth and shaded by flame trees in full blossom. Here the opposing factions had withdrawn to opposite ends of the village and were waiting, so the chief told us, with their cudgels and knives, ready for the coming of night. This chief was a rare pro-Government one – that is to say, he was pro integration with Ghana, and he was in fear of his life because his party
was in the minority. He was the poorest chief I had so far met. He received me on the veranda of his hut, seated in a deck-chair with a replica of his sacred stool at his side. A child’s chamber-pot had been hurriedly pushed out of the way underneath the stool. The chief’s linguist was literally dressed in sackcloth, although, when the council of
wing-chiefs
came scrambling in, I noted that some of them wore old French firemen’s helmets – a suggestion that they had seen better times. The wing-chiefs were scared stiff – they expected to have their throats cut that night – and they fidgeted and peered nervously about while the interminable routine of formal questions and answers was being got through. It was clear to me that even in the shadow of bloody revolt the chief wasn’t going to be balked of a prolonged exchange of the courtesies. After I had asked him how many children he had begotten, and he had gravely replied, ‘They are numerous,’ he was going on with a full recital of their names, together, so far as he could remember, with those of their mothers, until he was stopped by cries of protest from his thanes. An army truck with a soldier crouched purposefully behind a Bren gun rolled into the square, and a wing-chief went rushing out to demand its protection; but the driver hastily accelerated away again, leaving the wing-chief waving his helmet frustratedly after it. ‘We shall all die, tonight,’ the paramount chief said. He asked me to bring their desperate situation to the notice of Queen Elizabeth. After that a sackcloth-clad official poured a libation of locally distilled bootleg gin, and I was allowed to get away.

I went up to Kpandu, and back through this brilliant and menaced countryside. There were soldiers drilling in little groups of threes and fours in the open spaces of small towns, with the passion and dedication that West Africans bring to their military exercises. Where there were no soldiers there were lurking groups of cudgel-armed men. The market in Kpandu was nearly deserted and dreadfully malodorous. Here they sold millions of tiny sun-dried fish, and smoke-cured cane rats that filled the air with a fierce ammoniacal stench. You could also buy lovely
ancient-looking
beads copied from Phoenician models, spurious amber made in Japan, short-swords used in the north for protecting oneself from hyenas,
pictures of Princess Margaret and Burt Lancaster, and a clearance line of portraits of Dorothy Lamour in her sarong. While I was mooching about, a small, spruce soldier arrived with a portable gramophone, wound it up and put on a tune called ‘Ghana Land of Freedom’, which, while serving as a kind of unofficial national anthem, has the unusual advantage of being a high-life, and is danced to as such (the other side of the record features Lord Kitchener in ‘Don’t Touch Me Nylon’). While the record was played through to the ostentatiously turned backs of the few traders about, the soldier stood to attention. A moment later, what was clearly a local man of substance came up. He was dressed in Accra style in toga and sandals, and after offering me his hand in the easy genial way of unspoilt Africa, he nodded at the back of the retreating soldier and we exchanged knowing smiles. ‘I fear, sir, he is batting on a sticky wicket,’ the new arrival said. I was inclined to agree with what was clearly an Achimota University man. And although that night, to most people’s astonishment, passed off peaceably, and no one slit the throats of the chief and council of Dzolokpuita, it was a verdict that I was afraid might be applied to the nascent State of Ghana as a whole.