Goodbye Captain Peter Dorkenoo (Part 2)

The sad death of Captain Peter Dorkenoo on 30 September 2014 has left me with the feeling that I have lost part of myself!

Why?
Let me explain. It was Peter who taught me everything I knew about motor racing, a sport that has retained my interest for over 40 years. I visited him in London once when he was based there as a Ghana Airways Pilot. He took me for a spin in his beautiful Lotus Super Seven sports car, which was closer to a racing car in shape than anything I had ever seen. Forget the Austin Healey. Forget the Triumph TYR3. Compared to the Lotus Super Seven, those were luxury cars! The Super Seven was all engine and suspension. Peter assured me that it was 'something else' when taken to a track meet. In London, though, it had major disadvantages: whenever Peter shot away from traffic lights, the police assumed he had jumped the lights and he either got a ticket or had to provide some pretty convincing explanation!

A few years later, he took me and my late wife, Beryl, to Brands Hatch racing circuit to watch a full-blown Formula One race. On the way, he got out of the driving seat of the Lotus Elite he was then driving, and allowed me to drive it. This was on the most beautiful road in Britain at the time, the M1. To my disappointment, I found that the Elite under-steered a bit and I didn't quite enjoy the drive as much as I had anticipated. To Peter, however, under-steer or over-steer were of no concern: a good driver drove a car as it was - I mean you don't go to sit in an aeroplane and begin to wish thee manufacturer had done this or that - you just mastered the machine and flew it as it was. It was a lesson I found useful to take to journalism - radio is different from television, and both are different from monthly magazines, which are, again, different from weekly newspapers, which are also different from dailies. A good journalist mastered all of them — each in its own different way.

One of the most enjoyable moments I spent with Peter in London was when I was able to arrange for an interview with the then World Motor Racing Champion, Graham Hill, and Peter accompanied me. We found Graham Hill a very nice man, who was willing to tell us a great deal about the behind-the-scenes goings-on in motor racing. He regarded those who made the rules for F1 as slightly-mad guys: he was then driving a BRM F1 car and he said, 'The rules about the size of engines giving the cars equal power is bullshit. Because you'd be behind that Lotus, and driving as hard as you could. And yet you'd seer that Lotus pulling away from you and disappearing from your eyes! Yet your car was supposed to have the same size of engine as it had. The speed doesn't just come from the size of the engine but other things in the equation!'

Both Pete and I adored Graham Hill's baby son, Damon, and we each carried him in our arms. Damon never cried, though we must have been the first black people he had ever set eyes upon! Little did we know that Damon would grow up to become World Formula One Champion himself - like his Dad. Needless to say, I followed Damon's motor racing career with great interest, and even today, whenever I see him commentating on motor racing on Sky TV, I cannot prevent myself from smiling and saying to myself, 'Who would believe that I once carried him in my arms when he was a baby?!'

Apart from the great love of motor racing and sports cars that Peter Dorkenoo instilled in me, he enriched my life in many ways. He loved films, and it was he who got me to go and see Stewart Granger in  Scaramouche.

Peter also loved music a great deal. He once played E T Mensah's song,  Stormy Ass,  to me and picked out the fantastic guitar riffs and saxophone parts in it for me. He later also introduced me to the tenor saxophone of Paul Desmond, the star in the Dave Brubeck jazz band. He took me to Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, and it was there that I first heard the great guitarist, Joe Pass play. I also hear Count Basie there, and got myself an autograph from the famous trumpeter, Clark Terry. My enjoyment of the music of Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Paul Webster, Miles Davis and Oscar Peterson all have their origins from the music to which I was first exposed by Peter Dorkenoo.

Peter's love of music got him into trouble once. He'd heard a beautiful song, 'Our Love Is Here To Stay' played by Victor Silverster's Band - a famous band often heard on the General Overseas Service of the BBC. He persuaded me to buy the record, and whenever he visited me and asked me to play it for him, I'd guess that he had fallen in love with some new young lady. Now, I had a funny column in  Drum  Magazine called  Ghana Plaba,  in which I related some of the funny events that took place in the lives of people in my circle. I foolishly wrote about a friend who kept falling in love, and tried to mask the identity of the individual by pretending that apart from love, his main interest was - guns. Apparently, Peter's resident dictator of the time read the piece and wasn't fooled by the masking tape I'd wound around it. Peter slept on the sofa for a few nights, something which I again wanted to write about, but on second thoughts, refrained from doing. It was to his immense credit that he laughed over the matter, instead of becoming upset.

Peter was the soul of generosity itself. I once asked him to buy me a new wheel for my Sunbeam Alpine, after its spare tyre had been stolen from the boot. He not only bought me a new rim but he fitted a brand new tyre to the rim, then pumped it full of air, and brought it to me at home, ready for use that instant! Who else could have the imagination to do such a thing?

In another instance, I asked him to buy me some Leggo blocks from London for my youngest kid. He bought such a fabulous Leggo set that for years, my youngest would threaten those who annoyed him, 'I won't let you play with my Uncle Peter's blocks!'

Peter could make me laugh all day - his sense of humour never deserted him, even after he had retired from Ghana Airways and was living a rather ordinary life at Teshie Nungua. Once, after I had helped him to trace a nephew of his in the USA to whom he needed to pass on the news of the death of the chap's father, he texted to me, ' Akwasi, wo ho ye hu!'  (Akwasi, you are wonderful!). That was the first time I had ever heard him use Twi. I laughed and laughed. He used to pick out funny things from popular songs and ask me whether I understood what was being said. One went like this:

And I hope I hope I hope
Dat you too kataasa me!
He translated  'kataasa me'  as 'can trust me!' I laughed till I nearly dropped dead.

Now, Peter is gone for good. Apparently, his family had trouble getting medical help for him when he fell sick. A brother-in-law of mine believes strongly that 'the over-sixties are an endangered species in Ghana' and sure enough, Peter was apparently turned away from two hospitals before being admitted to a third - where, I am told, there was no doctor at hand. I know that bereavement often causes people to exaggerate matters, but the perception that health care for the elderly in Ghana is gaining ground and i| hope out medical authorities will open their eyes much wider to the problem. In the UK, geriatric medicine is now one of the best-supervised in the country, simply because the elderly tend to be so absolutely helpless when they fall ill.

Ei, so Peter is gone? Who can ever make me laugh like that again? With whom can I sit at a beach restaurant at Teshie and drink Club beer and eat grilled tilapia and laugh till the sun set over the horizon, far out to sea?

May God receive your soul, Peter, and give you blessed, eternal rest. You were one in a million, and if there is a community of good-hearted individuals with a good laugh somewhere in the ether, may you join them and continue to enrich their lives (whatever it's like) as you certainly enriched mine when you were down here.
 
Da yie, wae!. ( Sleep well!)

By Cameron Duodu 
www.cameronduodu.com