Fri, 30 Jan 2009 Feature Article

A Walk Into The Pages Of World History By Cameron Duodu

One of the weirdest radio programmes on the air at the moment is broadcast on Saturday mornings on Radio4. It is called Saturday Live.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/saturdaylive/saturdaylive.shtml

Last Saturday (24 January 2008), the item that caught my ear was a laconically-related account of life in Damascus under blackout during the June 1967 war between the Israelis and the Arabs.

Another contributor related the story of how she went out of her office in Savile Row, London, one lunchtime, to buy sandwiches for her workmates only to run into fine music being played from the rooftop of "Apple Records," the business office of the Beatles. The Beatles were recording an album up there. Two policemen who got to the scene, as the crowd thickened and blocked the road, also gave their accounts. Ironically, one of the tracks recorded by the Beatles up there was "Get Back". Another was "Don't Let Me Down."

I was pondering over coincidences when the thought struck me: "Wait a minute! You've walked into a few coincidences of your own, haven't you?"

Yes -- indeed I have. The first occurred in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1958. It was during my first trip outside Ghana and it happened as I was on my way to Moscow to attend the first Afro-Asian Writers' Conference in Tashkent, USSR. This link will take you to a picture of some of the delegates, including the late black icon, Dr W E B Dubois) first left. I'm on first right).

http://negroartist.com/WEB%20DUBOIS2/pages/AfroAsian%20Writers%20Conference,%20Tashkent,%20ca_1958%20October_jpg.htm

The Middle East, as ever, was in turmoil. There had been a coup in Iraq, which had sent ripples throughout the region, and afraid that there would be civil war in the Lebanon, President Camille Chamoun asked the United States for assistance. President Eisenhower sent in the Marines.

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:jcT4QkaEFwIJ:almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/900/902/1958/marines/marines-in-lebanon-1958.html+american+troops+beirut+1958&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1

Now, there were groups in the Lebanon who didn't like the idea of American intervention one bit, and snipers were taking pot shots at the "Yanks". But Air Liban's officials insisted on driving us in a bus to a hotel right in the centre of Beirut.

It was of the worst nights I have ever spent in a foreign country. Throughout the night, we heard the sound of gunfire. I had never heard guns fired in anger before and the rapid machine-gun fire, tah-tah-tah-tah, frightened the daylights out of me.

In Cairo too, I had a coincidence of sorts. After resting for a bit, I put on my colourful kente

http://www.ghanaculture.gov.gh/displayimage.php?displaytype=Filmstrip&albumid=17&position=17

cloth and took a walk in a park near my hotel. People came to me from everywhere to feel the texture of the cloth.

I returned to my hotel to find that -- I couldn't gain entrance to it! The place had been blocked off by the police. Mr Ferhat Abbas was being installed as Prime Minister of the Algerian Provisional Government in exile.

http://www.bookrags.com/biography/ferhat-abbas/

On the plane to Moscow from Cairo, we stopped in Rome for a while, where I saw headlines linking Boris Pasternak,

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1958/pasternak-bio.html

the Russian writer, with the Nobel Prize for Literature. I, of course, knew nothing about the trouble Pasternak was having with his winning the Price after the publication, in the West, of his novel, Dr Zhivago, and I must have innocently annoyed my hosts of the Soviet Writers' Union no end by pestering them to arrange an interview with Pasternak for me! In fact, Pasternak was imprisoned and made to renounce the Nobel Prize.

One day, the Russians took us to a reception in the Kremlin. For a young journalist who had heard so much about the Kremlin, this was most exciting. So out came my kente, though the temperature felt like it was around freezing point.

Soon after arriving in the Kremlin, I "heard" the whole place fall silent. Next, everyone broke into applause. The Soviet leader, Mr Nikita Khrushchev,

http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:1VCBtMARD68J:www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSkhrushchev.htm+nikita+khrushchev&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2

had made his entrance. At that time, "Mr K", as he was known to the world press, was perhaps the most famous man in the world, following his denunciation of Josef Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956.

I was taken to a small circle around him with other African delegates. I bent down to admire the Order of Lenin on Mr K's chest as a photograph was taken. The picture made it to the pages of the London Times.

From Russia, I was invited to China by a poet called Yang-Shuo. There, I attended a banquet at which about a score of different, extremely delicious dishes, were served. On another day, we were strolling in a park at Wuhan, a city on the Yangtse river, when we were suddenly surrounded by a group of very young Pioneers, red scarves gleaming around their necks, who sang to us with the most angelic voices. I can still sing one of their songs (after a fashion!) It was called "socialism is good".

In Beijing, I met the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr Zhou En-lai,

http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:yUFu-AGc-KMJ:www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDenlai.htm+chou+en-lai&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2

who told us that "in China, we don't think in terms of today or tomorrow or even decades. We think of thousands of years." He was the man who had the foresight to bring Henry Kissinger, and later, President Richard Nixon, to China,

http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:RLZ74W7tZZQJ:www.gmu.edu/library/specialcollections/nixon_in_china.html+nixon+in+china&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6

and thus paved the way for the entry of China fully into the international arena. This is the diplomacy whose results we see today in China's emergence as a major economic player in the world.

A sad fact to end with: my friend, the poet Yang-Shuo, is reported to have committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution

http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/riley/787/China/Cultural/Cultural.html

of 1966-78.

Martin Cameron Duodu is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster. After publishing a novel, The Gab Boys, in 1967, Duodu went on to a career as a journalist and editorialist.. More Martin Cameron Duodu (born 24 May 1937) is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster. After publishing a novel, The Gab Boys, in 1967, Duodu went on to a career as a journalist and editorialist.

Education
Duodu was born in Asiakwa in eastern Ghana and educated at Kyebi Government Senior School and the Rapid Results College, London , through which he took his O-Level and A-Level examinations by correspondence course . He began writing while still at school, the first story he ever wrote ("Tough Guy In Town") being broadcast on the radio programme The Singing Net and subsequently included in Voices of Ghana , a 1958 anthology edited by Henry Swanzy that was "the first Ghanaian literary anthology of poems, stories, plays and essays".

Early career
Duodu was a student teacher in 1954, and worked on a general magazine called New Nation in Ghana, before going on to become a radio journalist for the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation from 1956 to 1960, becoming editor of radio news <8> (moonlighting by contributing short stories and poetry to The Singing Net and plays to the programme Ghana Theatre). <9> From 1960 to 1965 he was editor of the Ghana edition of the South African magazine Drum , <10> and in 1970 edited the Daily Graphic , <3> the biggest-selling newspaper in Ghana.< citation needed >

The Gab Boys (1967) and creative writing
In 1967, Duodu's novel The Gab Boys was published in London by André Deutsch . The "gab boys" of the title – so called because of their gabardine trousers – are the sharply dressed youths who hang about the village and are considered delinquent by their elders. The novel is the story of the adventures of one of them, who runs away from village life, eventually finding a new life in the Ghana capital of Accra . According to one recent critic, "Duodu simultaneously represents two currents in West African literature of the time, on the one hand the exploration of cultural conflict and political corruption in post-colonial African society associated with novelists and playwrights such as Chinua Achebe and Ama Ata Aidoo , and on the other hand the optimistic affirmation of African cultural strengths found in poets of the time such as David Diop and Frank Kobina Parkes . These themes come together in a very compassionate discussion of the way that individual people, rich and poor, are pushed to compromise themselves as they try to navigate a near-chaotic transitional society."

In June 2010 Duodu was a participant in the symposium Empire and Me: Personal Recollections of Imperialism in Reality and Imagination, held at Cumberland Lodge , alongside other speakers who included Diran Adebayo , Jake Arnott , Margaret Busby , Meira Chand , Michelle de Kretser , Nuruddin Farah , Jack Mapanje , Susheila Nasta , Jacob Ross , Marina Warner , and others.

Duodu also writes plays and poetry. His work was included in the anthology Messages: Poems from Ghana ( Heinemann Educational Books , 1970).

Other activities and journalism
Having worked as a correspondent for various publications in the decades since the 1960s, including The Observer , The Financial Times , The Sunday Times , United Press International , Reuters , De Volkskrant ( Amsterdam ), and The Economist , Duodu has been based in Britain as a freelance journalist since the 1980s. He has had stints with the magazines South and Index on Censorship , and has written regularly for outlets such as The Independent and The Guardian .

He is the author of the blog "Under the Neem Tree" in New African magazine (London), and has also published regular columns in The Mail and Guardian ( Johannesburg ) and City Press (Johannesburg), as well as writing a weekly column for the Ghanaian Times (Accra) for many years.< citation needed >

Duodu has appeared frequently as a contributor on BBC World TV and BBC World Service radio news programmes discussing African politics, economy and culture.

He contributed to the 2014 volume Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80, edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah and Ogochukwu Promise.Column: Cameron Duodu

Disclaimer: "The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect ModernGhana official position. ModernGhana will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements in the contributions or columns here." Follow our WhatsApp channel for meaningful stories picked for your day.

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A Walk Into The Pages Of World History By Cameron Duodu

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