Teacher! Teacher!! (2)

The Ghanaian Times 21st June, 2011
After seven years at Asiakwa Presbyterian Primary and Middle Schools I left (at what was then Standard Four or later, Middle Form One) to seek greener pastures at Kyebi Government School.

Kyebi Government School had a fantastic reputation at Asiakwa. Our postal agent had attended it, and so had his

nephew who had succeeded him as our postal agent. Of course, we were not in a position to know whether they

had benefited much from their exposure to this particular school, for we didn’t know whether they performed

the duties of a postal agent well or not — since we didn’t have access to their books. Also, in assessing someone

else’s knowledge, the assessor must know more than he does. We didn’t possess that knowledge,

but because they had been to a “Government School”, we foolishly assumed they were both brilliant guys.

(The postal agent proved to me, at a later date, how dangerous it is to automatically assume that because someone had attended a certain school, he was necessarily brilliant. Invited to our home in Accra for dinner, he introduced himself

to my wife by telling her that he was her "mother-in-law" Kyebi Government School Standard Seven Certificate holder?

Yes. I was teased endlessly with it and whenever I said I was going to Asiakwa, she'd say snidely, "Don't forget to greet

my mother-in-law for me!")
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It is our assumption that attending an institution necessarily makes people educated that has got our nation into so much trouble over the administrators to whom we entrust the governing of the country. The assumption makes a lot of people

think,, as soon as they hear of the institution at which someone studied, assume that he is either bright or dumb.

Entrance to an institution, however, is only one step in the direction of true erudition. This assumption that institutional excellence automatically rubs off on people, is responsible for the fact that our [mainly illiterate] villagers almost invariably vote for lawyers and other ‘highly-educated’ people to go to Parliament. If they are educated — and thereby “better” than illiterate villagers – then they must know how to govern us well. Necessarily! In fact, once these educated people got into government, they made sure that the law that requires a prospective Member of Parliament must be able to read and write English, was retained (though this had been used by the British to keep out of government, people who might use the common sense and wisdom they had absorbed in their daily lives, instead of the "intelligence" conferred by paper certificates.)

Of course, it never occurs to us that educated people might go into government to improve their personal standards

of living and leave the rest of the populace in the lurch with no electricity, a proliferation of very bad roads, dirty, dangerous water and no decent places to go and attend to nature’s call. Indeed, as soon as we elect these people into Parliament, they acquire houses in Accra (if they didn’t posses any before) on the grounds that their work obliges them staying in the capital. The real reason is, of course, that there are better amenities in Accra than in our villages.

Another attraction of Kyebi Government School to me was that it was in a different town. This meant that I would be a little more “independent” than I was at Asiakwa, where I was constantly under the thumb of my parents. Anyway, the fact that its name had the word “government” in it, made me assume that it would be a better school than ours. So, I built up

fantasies around it – there would be little caning (how could the “government” allow its pupils to be caned mercilessly, when it had made laws against “assaults” by members of the public against each other?

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But above all, because the school was a “government school”, it would devote a lot more time to purely academic subjects and ignore the type of things that consumed so much time at Asiakwa Presbyterian, such as chewing hymns, Bible passages and Catechism, by heart, and being punished if one could not recite them flawlessly when called upon to do so.

My other mistake was in assuming that I would be “independent”. In fact, I was “put into the hands, or given” to a lorry driver friend of my father’s to “stay with”. This meant I was his unacknowledged or "glotified" servant, and I had to do all sorts of things I hadn’t been doing at Asiakwa. His wife stopped going to the river to fetch water, and it was I who had to go and fetch water twice in the morning before going to school.

The river was about a mile and a half away, so going to fetch water from it was no picnic. Our house was at a point where you climbed a hill going to the river, and you again climbed a hill coming from the river. Oh, how tired I used to get — and this was before going to school, where I was supposed to present my teacher with a fresh, rested mind for him to pump new knowledge into it! Sometimes, I even dropped off in class, when the lessons were particularly boring. When I got back from school too, I had to engage in hard labour — this time, I had to pound fufu in the evening for five mouths.

In addition, I had to return to Asiakwa each weekend and go to my parents’ farm to collect foodstuffs, which I putt

into a cocoa-sack and take back to Kyebi onh Monday morning. Sometimes I got to school late on Monday mornings, when finding a lorry was not easy. Yet — as you will discover later — getting to school late was not something to be courted.

I was only able to endure these burdens for about a year and then, having planted my feet firmly at Kyebi, found somewhere to hire a room for five shillings a month. I then became my own boss. But my happiness was short-lived when I stupidly agreed to share the room with another boy from Asiakwa, KwAku Tawia, in consideration for his paying half the rent — two shillings and sixpence. It is not at all pleasant to be moving from house to house in a strange town, and when Kwaku told me about

the difficulties he was having, I melted and took him in.

I should have asked him why he was moving house so often. For unfortunately for me, he turned out to be a practised master-thief. He used to buy thesame padlock as I used on my chop box, and raid my box of any tinned stuff I had brought from my father’s shop at Asiakwa. He even purloined my pocket money from me which meant that he got back his share of

the "rent" he supposedly paid me!
I couldn’t, of course. accuse him openly of anything, because I had no hard evidence. If someone had asked me,

”But don’t you have a padlock on your chop box? Has it been picked?”) I would have had to admit that I did

have a padlock, and that it had not been broken. And even my suspicion was on weak grounds, for I couldn’t prove

that the chap had a key that could open my padlock! It was so frustrating knowing the reality of what was going on and being unabke to do anything about it; I mean, in those days, manufacturers cheated us — they manufactured padlocks

whose keys could open other padlocks of the same make! Later on, when I left school and became prosperous, I detected that

a certain briefcase possession of which endowed one with the prestige of "having truly arrived" we5re also equipped with locks that could be opened with the keys of every similar briefcase. You bought the thing at a very high price in good faith, only to discover that a master-thief would just be laughing at you and commandeering your stuff to his selfish ends -- without having to pick the lock

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Needless to say, Kwaku Tawia made my life a misery and as soon as the next term came round, I found another room elsewhere to hire and left the old one to him. All this moving house sort of thing wasn’t earning me a good reputation

with my parents, who, of course, had no idea how wicked the world could be to a 14-year-old boy trying to make his way in a strange town. I couldn’t tell them about my troubles, of course, for it was I who had decided, by myself to move to

another town, not they who had sent me away. They had supported me, but I would most certainly lose face with them

if I admitted that my “wonderful” idea to move to another town had not turned out to be so clever, after all.

Being “precocious” has its price, I tell you.

I also discovered that I had been wrong in assuming that there would be less caning at the new school merely because

it was a “government school.” Every teacher was allowed to whip kids in his charge, but there was one particular guy

on the staff who used the cane more profusely than anyone at Asiakwa! And whereas at Asiakwa, each teacher only caned pupils in his own class, at Kyebi, this particular teacher could cane any pupil. I think he was the unacknowledged

head-teacher, though his formal title might have been deputy head or something. In fact, at the government school, there

was no head-teacher as such, but a “principal teacher” who didn’t teach a particular class (unless a teacher was absent or there was a temporary vacancy). Our principal teacher left much of the routine disciplinary matters to this cane-happy

teacher and occupied himself with wshatever took his interest, And these were many, ow which his best love was a subject called "Singing!".

We called the cane-lover “Kwasi Kckcc” (Kwasi The Red One) because he was fair-coloured. His usual invitation for caning us came when we engaged in “bad behaviour” – such as coming to school late (my forte on Monday mornings); not paying attention to him at assembly time; or tittering and giggling whilst he was taking assembly.

The practice we had of trying — unsuccessfully — to suppress our laughter when he was addressing us was what got

him more victims to cane than anything else. But why couldn't we hold our sides whilst he was taking assembly? You see, he did not know how to pronounce our names well, and yet he didn’t know that he was doing anything odd when he

called one of us by name. So there was a constant, unrelenting provocation by him to us to laugh; but briefcase he didn't

know why we were laughing, he piled on more, and we also laughed the more. And the more we laughed, the more

angry he became.
For instance, to him, I was Dordu! So, whenever he called me, someone else who couldn’t help himself laughed.

And Kwasi Kckcc would call the guy to the front of the assembly and order him: “Touch your toes.” Then Pah! Pah! would come the sound of the cane.

It went on for so long that I had to wonder why he attempted to call names he could never pronounce properly. I even

suspected that he might have done it purposely in order to get pupils to cane. But that seemed far-fetched. The prosaic

truth, though, was that, in this school as in many others, the teachers had no idea at all about what went on inside

their pupils’ heads. We just kaughed 0- and paid for it.

To him, Opoku became Opuku! (This, naturally, evoked lots of laughter).

Aboagye became Aborji (Laughter followed by Pah! Pah!)

Tenkorang became Otinkling; Frempomaa became Farimpoomah (Pah!Pah!Pah! “Don’t laugh when I am taking

assembly, idiots!”)
Buabeng became Borbing; and Frempong became – well, he had such difficulty with this one that he stopped

pronouncing it altogether and rather used the boy’s village to designate him, and so Frempong became simply

“that Apejor boy”. Apejor, I shall let you into the secret, stood for “Apedwa”, a famous village about six miles from

Kyebi, moreb well-known for a sensational murder that occurred there in 1943, bbut also, for the tasty nsibire mushrooms that were sold at the junction which took one from the main Accra-Kumasi road to the village.

In fact, this guy Yaw Frempong was more unfortunate than most of us, because in addition to becoming a bad advertisement for his village, what with his name changed to “that Apejor boy”, he carried a very funnily-shaped head, and so he had a second nickname: “the chap with the cinema-van head”.

Now, cinema vans in those days — each boldly inscribed with the words, “MOBILE CINEMA” — were very funny vehicles — in our view. They had a narrow base like other Bedford three-ton trucks, but the top was raised high and the sides widened, to enable it to carry the cinema screen with which it showed (usually silent) movies to villagers. This caused the van

to look as if it was skewing across the road and would be rolling on its side at any moment. Its ko-soro-kobor [lopsided] movements thus amused us a great deal. And because Yaw Frempong’s head amused us too, we added two to two and

got “his head is like a cinema van.” For someone whose head was like a cinema van to be also called “that Apejor boy”

turned him into a walking trap for us and there was never a time he was called to the front without Kwasi Kckcc getting

some “rascals” to whip. It never occurred to us that Yaw Frempong himself would be a miserable boy, having thus

been made the unwitting butt of our mockery, whilst getting whipped too, on top of that.

But “Cinema-van-head” was all right compared to three other guys. This ‘gang of three’ were guaranteed late-comers,

for they had to walk to school every day on foot, from Adadientam (over three miles from Kyebi). And somehow, they all had names that were difficult to pronounce -- even for us, let alone Kwasi Kckcc. So, whenever Kwasi Kckcc was calling the names of “late-comers” for punishment, we would hold our sides and wait expectantly

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Then out would pop from his mouth, “Korakoo!” (For: Kwa ‘Ako, shortened from of Kwadwo Ako.)

The guy would answer “Sah!” and move to the front of the assembly.

(And we would burst out: Hahahahaha!)
“Stop laughing! You, you, you …Touch your toes!” Pah! Pah! Pah!

“Onimpadu” (Onipadu)
“Sah!”
(Hahahahahaha!)
“Who are the fools laughing? Come here you! Touch your toes!” Pah! Pah! Pah!

“Ohinprooproo!”
This was admittedly a very difficult name: the original was ‘Ohwenpoporoh.’ In fact, since I left school, I have

never come across anyone else called by the name, Owhenpoporoh. Nor, come to think of it, Onipadu, either. Who gave

them such strange names? How did they contrive to get their names together on the same late-comers’ list every single

day like that? Their names were like magnets, attracting victims for Kwasi Kckcc!

So: “Ohinprooproo!”
“Sah!”
Followed by “Yieeeeeeeeeee!…. Hahahahahahahah!”

And Kwasi Kckcc’s angry riposte: “Have I not told you a thousand times to behave at assembly time? You!….You!… You! And you! Come here! Touch your toes.” Pah! Pah! Pah!

Despite his penchant for whipping, Kwasi Kckcc was one of the most intelligent teachers I came across in the school. He

used to call one of my favourite class teachers, Mr Awuah Peasah, “Akora”. I didn’t know it at the time but I later got to know that it meant they had been schoolmates at Achimota Teachers Training College. Mr Peasah later went to the University of Ghana and became a graduate. I think Kwasi Kckcc did the same, for I encountered him at Parliament House when I was working for the GBC. He was deputy editor of Hansard -- the daily report of Parliamentary Debates. I don't think he could have got that job without being a graduate -- no, not in those days of very high standards in the public service.

At assembly one day, after he had whipped us to his heart’s content, Kwasi Kkckcc, out of nowhere, came out with the

idea, which he imparted to us, that “the radio proves the existence of God!”

Many of us thought that no-one could prove or disprove the existence of God, but we listened attentively. Kwasi Kckcc said: “As you are standing here right now, you do not know that radio programmes are being broadcast in the air all around you

because you can neither see nor hear the sound waves.The air is as quiet as if there was no sound travelling through it. But

if you bring a wireless set here right now, and you have an aerial, and you switch the radio on, and you tune it to a

station that is broadcasting, you will hear a radio programme that only a moment ago, was non-existent to you.

"In the same way, God exists, but you have to tune in to Him before you know He is there. So science proves the

existence of God, and not the absence of God, as some scientists will have you believe”.

I have never heard any convincing refutation of that argument since I heard it more than fifty years ago And the idea is the same as the one that takes account of the most abstruse explanation of the existence of the Universe, namely, the Big Bang. Granted that the Big Bang created the Universe and that the Universe is still expanding min space-time, which, according to Einstein, is curved. But where did the matter that originated the Big Bang come from, in the first place? If the Big Bang was self-causing, with matter having started off as a quark or some particle that was even smaller, then why can't God too be self-causing? And what about dark matter? Why can dark matter, which apparently fills about 90% of the Universe, exist without being seen, and yet God cannot exist without being seen? In order not to be maddened by such complex issues, one must retain an open mind, I think, and wonder and wonder and wonder. .

The funny thing is that the notion floated by Kwasi Kckcc was an even more powerful religious message than I had been subjected to at Asiakwa Presbyterian, where we had been taught to chew Biblical verses and hymns by heart, but not to

use our reason to think about God. One of my hopes had been that at “government school” would emancipate me from religion. Yet Kwasi Kckcc had used reason to make a very valid religious point to me.Wasn’t that ironical?

It wasn’t Kwasi Kckccc alone who administered the cane to us with great abandon. If we escaped his cane at assembly time, we would find the “principal teacher” Mr Dadzie, waiting for us when we went for “Singing” lessons at the end of the morning, just before breaking off for lunch. Teaching songs with cane in hand? Yes! How could music be taught with force? Mr Dadzie did it.

His singing lessons were very difficult to endure, for they occupied the last half an hour or so before the end of the morning session, and at that time, e end of the morning, we were all dying to go home and find something to eat. Most of us came to school without breakfast, so, by then, also, most of the pupils had developed bad breath! Gathering together the pupils of four classes (roughly 180 altogether) and bundling them into one classroom meant that a huge amount of smelly, hot air was inevitably exuded. And, of course, because our digestive systems were crying out for something to chew on, quite a few

pupils broke wind!
Now, many tried, with an almost superhuman effort, to repress the sound. What they could not do was to prevent

the smell from pouring out of that poured out of their rear-ends! There would be a ruckus, as the suspects were

jeered at by those in their immediate vicinity. That meant a lot of pupils were called to the front and whipped.

But it was worth it, I think. I get a peculiar feeling of fond nostalgia when some of the hymns taught to us by Mr Dadzie from the Methodist Hymn Book -- the works of the Wesley Brothers in particular -- are played on the radio. Songs like

My God how wonderful thou art;
The Lord's My Shepherd;
Now the day is over;
and Praise to the Lord the Almighty The King of Creation....

I am also entranced and get goose pimples all over whenever I hear Kwasi Kckcc's favourite prayer with which to send us home at the end of the day:

"Lighten our darkness
We beseech thee oh Lord,
And by thy great mercy,
Defend us from all dangers and perils
Of this night,
In the name of thy only Son,
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN!