"Remembering A Friend"
Ebow Daniel
to
Lt. Col. Ekow Dennis

"I  come to bury Caesar, not to praise him”. That is Mark Antony announcing his presence in a Shakespearean play. It will not do for us who are not at play or a burial, only a remembering of another who, in tragic circumstances too real for comfort, has gone the way of all flesh, since reduced to ashes by burning where we could not be present. It is not his tragedy who has gone AWOL, so to speak, but our’s who had wished to shake hands with him, to bid him farewell.

He was one of us, among some one hundred boys who enrolled at Adisadel College in January 1954, to begin their secondary school career. His father had been there three decades earlier. The father’s name shows against 1928 on the “Fisher’s Mathematics Prize Board”, which still hangs in Canterbury Hall. Chip off the old block, the son’s name would go on another Board, the “Dyce Sharp English Prize”, against 1958. In a school noted for the vibrancy of its sports programmes, he was “Victor Ludorum” for 1960, which shows on yet another Board, also in Canterbury Hall.

In the run-up to Independence, the Military Academy at Teshie was the post-secondary institution that was beginning to attract the flower of the country’s youth. The young man from Adisadel also enrolled, to be sponsored for the engineering programme at KNUST, to return to the Field Engineers Unit at Teshie. Because of proficiency at his job and easy relations with both officers and men, he might have been expected to go places.

But, Ghana’s population includes a segment, now in its twilight years, for which nothing seemed to go right. This was the generation that had been taught not to meddle in politics, if they valued their peace of mind. Yet, for heeding advice to mind their own business as public servants, they still fell victim to dislocation engendered by collapse of government after government under heavy artillery. In the process, many had their careers truncated long before they could reach retirement age. It is the story of the young man who is the subject of this piece.

Cape Coast, the young man’s home, is where the Bond of 1844 was signed; where also efforts at “unsigning” same were more persistent; where the “Aborigines Rights Protection Society” rose to stave off sequestration of native lands by the colonial government. This was the home of Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, proto Pan Africanist; home also to Kobina Sekyi, British trained barrister, and none more native in sartorial; again, home to Kobina Arku Korsah, who in the coming years would become the first Chief Justice of sovereign Ghana. Attoh Ahuma, clergyman and a political activist as well as the majority of the country’s professionals and intellectuals operated from here. They do not come better recognized for service to the fatherland than John Mensah Sarbah. Nationalist to the core, Mensah Sarbah Hall at the University of Ghana, Legon, is named after him. His authorship of “Fante Customary Law” attests to originality of scholarship and capacity for making state institutions recognizably relevant.  He died in 1910, and only 46! 

From interaction with waves of European nationals arriving by sea from more than 500 hundred years before Independence, they speak in Cape Coast like no others anywhere, providing a peculiar flavor and colouring to an otherwise familiar dialect of a familiar language.  The stranger who comes strutting the streets in a swagger as if his kind has not been seen before invites a special treat: “Saskatchewan,” “Manitoba!” And there is more still where those come from, meaningless sounds, but by no means approbatory:  “Damskopel!”

It is the reason natives do not come showing off in Cape Coast, fear of scolding: Ose wonye n’den? Wonwhe noso!  In joining the military, the young man from Adisadel had more than the basic requirements, but not anxious for disapprobatory comment back home, he was not about to ask for  special treatment; or cast himself as some national liberator; or assume any non-traditional role. He suffered for that. First, he lost footing for not showing enthusiasm for the destabilizing interventions that had become fashionable; and then was incarcerated for fear that he might become the rallying point for returning to barracks to be confined soldiers who had overran civilian embankments. Escaping from prison, he became a fugitive, eventually to migrate into exile.

The story of the young man’s trials and tribulations including betrayal by friends as he groped for exit into exile reads like the peregrinations of Odysseus.  Everybody who heard of how close he came to danger not once, concluded that providence was protecting him for something worthwhile. As official histories are hardly ever balanced, here was hope of reading also from a “public enemy”, one so designated by officialdom. There was evidence enough in Canterbury Hall of writing skills.

There is also the essay he wrote – My Ideal School – which showed capacity for imagination and humour, if also mischief. This was a mixed school where there was no desegregation in the classroom or the dormitory. No clothes were worn to bed, not even underwear. However, anyone found in the wrong bed stood dismissed instantly. It was all for training in self control, according to the text. But there were daring details that others thought might earn instant dismissal for the author. Nothing happened. The essay was returned with comment, “childish; otherwise well written”! Coming from the bearded soft-spoken Arthur Baker, Senior English Master, this was quite some commendation for writing effort.

In exile, the young man could not contemplate much beyond scraping around for a living. Braving inclement weather to subsist on takings from a mini cab, how long could he even hope to survive?  But he had a spirituality that sustained him. It was not for nothing that he was Chapel Prefect at Adisadel for two years. He sang in the choirs at Christ’s Church, Cape Coast; St. Nicholas Chapel, Adisadel; and the Garrison Church, Burma Camp. He could pray with great intensity. Taking Holy Orders would not have surprised any who knew him. Lay Reader, Interpreter, eventually, Chief Administrator of the Accra Diocese, the father came close to taking that step himself on retirement from the Ghana Civil Service.  In another environment, both father and son would be celebrated for their humility, loyalty and integrity. Somehow, in our part of the world, it is the selfless and altruistic who so often come to harm while others not so attractive prosper from generation to generation!

Alone in a foreign country, it was some time before the demise of the sojourner on the run came to notice. Back home, he had started a family which could not be consolidated before the running commenced. It was thus misfortune continued to play him havoc at every turn, though none deserved better; wherefore, even the more resolute in faith begin to despair, “where is our God”?

Recalling happier times, Canterbury Hall once erupted to tin-kon tin-kon-kon, the virtual gong gong or the verbal simulation that announced arrival on stage of a one-man-show in what promised to be fun. It began with a piano recital, consisting of a single note, the same note struck again and again to the prototype of a rap, all about a layabout, or an “unbiss” in Cape Coast-speak, whose daily routine of roaming the streets ended at home to alternate between eating food poached from the kitchen and a noisy evacuation of the bowels in the nearest toilet. It was an unusual material for a school entertainment. With staff in the audience, it was also rather bold, bolder still in Fante, as was the case, featuring one too many rather explicit vocabulary in the script. Quite possibly also, the calculation went that staff around, mainly expatriate at this time, would be no wiser to proceedings in any local language. Whichever way, both conception and execution of the entertainment piece required a certain measure of self-confidence. There was plenty to show. It is the reason we remember.

Further to happier times, the track relays were the high points at Inter-Colleges Athletic Games, when the mass choirs of all the Houses, Hamlyn, Elliott, Quacoe, Canterbury and Knight, joined by our ever supportive Old Boys, would give full throat to the noisiest of our repertoire of cheer songs:

Give them laps
Give them laps
Give them laps
Glory, Glory, Alleluia!
Give them laps
Give them laps!

Running the anchor at various times, Kodwo Elliott, Henry Ofori Nyarko and William Kwarteng would round the final bend ahead of the pack, romping home, galloping, gasping for breath, yet deploying every technique of acceleration, to breast the tape, victor ludorum, each one of them, departed merit since. Le Garcon has also now breasted the tape, as he had done several times before. More than a budding entertainment empressario or Fante “concerteer”, he was another victor ludorum, need we be reminded? Like the others, he too has put away his running shoes, to run no more. And if there is no rest eternal awaiting them who have been on the run so long, then we learnt nothing at school.

But we did learn something, we know now, if not before. Rooted in the traditions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), the Adisadel experience is not without advantages. The unique opportunity for the contemplative engagement in a supportive environment is one such. Another is the privilege of fellowship with the truly courageous, dutiful and uncomplaining, the undisputed profile of the dearly departed who is on our minds. Both advantages are among the legacies of a missionary run boarding school, which turns out also to be the basis of much of the social cohesion that we tend to take for granted. From the contemplative engagement, we come to appreciate that life could be better than is our immediate experience; it could also be worse; but it could not be worse merely on account of early introduction to the theology of the hereafter, which comes in the SPG tradition.  Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord. This much we believe.

John Dutton Ferguson Dennis, Adisadel College, 1954-60, begotten son of J. A. Dennis, SPG Grammar School, 1924-28, was called to his Maker, late May, 2011, in London which had become his temporary home for three decades already. At 73, he may not have attained the slippery heights others would breach peace on earth to reach, but we can agree with Milton: “They also serve who only stand and wait”!

Our fathers, J. A. Dennis and G. F. Daniel, were friends, contemporaries at SPG and in the civil service, among very few who beginning from the grade of Second Division Clerk, could be admitted to the Administrative Class of the colonial civil service, to be deployed to the administrative districts of the country as Government Agents, progressing to the position of Principal Secretary in the First Republic. The two of them had no more education than could be had from Cape Coast in the early years of the last century. Yet, they would not be intimidated by expatriate colleagues or lettered compatriots. They were proud natives of Cape Coast, the toast of their generation.

T. K. Impraim was our uncle, because he was more than friends with our fathers. Oxford BA, he was Deputy Secretary to Cabinet and Chief of Staff at Flagstaff House of the First Republic. Before that, he was Lt. Tufuantsi Kobena Impraim, one of only two from the Gold Coast, the first to be commissioned into the British army. That was during World War II. Knowing is humbling; and coming so many years after the precedent that humbles, which of Uncle TK’s nephews in the military or public service was going to hold out as the rare celebrity?

In the century before the present, youth who had had the benefit of early exposure to the rest of the country through travels on civil service postings proved to be men of the times, certainly less parochial than the stay at home or most of their generation. Known to the Daniel children as Uncle Kweku Tawia, J.A. Dennis was one of those who left home early. He broke new ground against prejudice. At some cost, no doubt, he struck a blow for inclusiveness. Si monumentum requiris, circumscipe! But, enough of digression for one day. Belated farewell to the recently gone from us is more the business in hand; wherefore:

Stay well, my friend, my brother!

Go in peace, Lt. Col. Ekow Dennis! 

Ebow Daniel; of
“Another Den”, Tema
Ridge Church, Sat. Nov. 12, 2011