I Must Have Been Born With A Piece Of Charcoal In My Hand!

When I think of the number of things I regret never having done in my life, one of the first that comes to mind is never having sat my mother down and apologised to for the trouble I caused to her when I was an infant.

I remember, in particular, writing all over her kitchen floor with a piece of charcoal! Well, kitchens and charcoal go together, don’t they? In the sense that charcoal is produced when firewood turns black when it is burnt in a hearth in the kitchen?

Well, that may be so, but my mother didn’t think that figures written with charcoal belonged in her kitchen. You see, she used to go to particular spots on riverbanks and laboriously dig up

soft, red clay, called “nkyoma”, and bring it home to plaster it all over her kitchen floor. She was so meticulous in doing this that if you looked hard at the kitchen floor after the clay had dried, you would see someone resembling yourself on the floor!

My practice was to wait, until after she had finished polishing the floor, and then use a piece of charcoal to write all over kitchen.

“3x5=15”; (I would write) or “Shokolokobangoshay” ( a word we found in our Oxford English Reader, which we believed was the “longest word in the world!”)

The reason why I defaced her kitchen floor so much was that I was intoxicated with the power of literacy when I first went to school. When I was enrolled into Class One, I had already been blessed by circumstances to be able to read. This was because an older, half-brother of mine, was already in Standard Three (that is six classes ahead of me!). Also, one of my father’s nephews was even further up on the educational tree – he was in senior school -- Standard Five!

We all played together, ate together and told tall tales to one another, and as the youngest member of the gang, I was everyone’s "fag". It was I who was alwaysI sent to deliver verbal messages to their girl-frieds; or to buy kenkey and fish for them when they wanted to “diversify” their diet away from the “fufuo” and “ampesie” that was our normal fare.

In return for being their errand boy, I got access to all the knowledge they hid in their books.

I had a secret way of whistling to each of them when I needed to see them alone; I heard all their stories from school first hand; and I smuggled their vocabulary into my own head by stealing it from their “Notebooks”.

There were penalties to pay for some of my sharp practices:to be sute; for instance, I once came across some peculiar “vocabs” which the Standard Three class-teacher had just taught my brother’s class. These included a quaint idiomatic English expression that took my fancy, namely, “ I am all aches and pains” (for the Twi expression: ”Me ho nyinaa ye me ya!”. Normally one would have literally rendered that in English as "All my body is paining me"!)

The boastful brat that I was, I foolishly showed off before my brothers’ classmates, when they came to visit him and were testing one another by asking questions whose answers they had just been taught in school.

Without an invitation, I boldly asked, “What is the meaning of “I am all akis (sic) and pains?”

Instinctively, one of them corrected me by pronouncing “aches” the right way. But then, they all rounded on me and asked, “How did you get to know that expression?”

They looked at my brother, who guiltily reached out to strike me!

I ran off, not quite understanding why they should be so angry. Was there any such thing as “secret knowledge” taught in a school?

Apparently, there was – it turned out thst whenever their teacher taught them something that he regarded

as peculiarly clever, or something that "only he" knew in the entire school, he forbade them from spreading it to the pupils of other teachers! By doing that, he demonstrated that “some teachers were superior to lother teachers!” He wanted his pupils to be able to boast that “As for our teacher, he is brainy oh!” and look down upon those whose teachers were not that brilliant. School politics in a past age,

what?
I had innocently enrolled myself into an “occult” class by reading my brother’s ‘Notes’! Had I not made myself scarce – in a lralther quickish manner – I would have been punished with several slaps on the crown of my head!

Thereafter, my mother’s kitchen floor became the only safe haven where I could write down any secret knowledge I found. I next chewed it by heart.

My mother complained and complained, but I didn’t stop writing on her kitchen floor. I wonder whether she ever connected my professional writing with what I did then? (I mean, I became a Journalist at the youngish age of 19!) Did she ever catch on that perhaps what I used to do on her kitchen floor had sonething to do with my strong desire to communicate what I Knew to other people?.

Anyway, I am sure she may have vaguely guessed that that my habit of practising how to write -- on her kitchen floor-- empowered me to write my way into full journalistic employment later. which enabled me to help educate her children:

eight siblings, all of whom have made it by obtaining qualifications that are now helping them to earn a decent living for themselves and their offspring.

See what a piece of charcoal can do?
Anyway, my unasked for advice to everyone is: encourage your children to do what their hearts really desire.what really desire.

For had my mother decided to cure me of my “naughty” habit of writing on her kitchen floor, by subecting me to the practice known as “TUA” (giving me a hot-pepper enema in the anus!) would I have persisted in writing? I doubt that very much!