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01.09.2010 Feature Article

'Deluge at Nkawkaw'

'Deluge at Nkawkaw'
01.09.2010 LISTEN

Once I asked a young lady at Adum (down-town Kumasi), whether she had ever been to Nkawkaw.  She said, no! I stood aback a little bit, but then I was able, quickly, to absorb the shock. This was all because, I thought she was being cheeky.

Cheeky, because, after Kumasi on the 'highway' to Accra, I thought it was common knowledge that the next big town, 66 miles away, by Ghanaian standards, was Nkawkaw, and not Konongo, half-way along the road from Kumasi.

As it turned out, the young lady I was in contact with had never been to Accra, so it stood to reason that, 'she had never been to Nkawkaw, and she lives in Kumasi?' I found myself asking a young man who stood nearby, and somehow, even if 'half-minded', was listening to the 'verbal wrangle' between the pretty young lady and me, not previously known to each other.

That day, I had to shamefully settle down within me, the baseless assumption that people living in Kumasi travel to Accra, and the other way round, and in the process, get to know Nkawkaw. There no other direct way to Accra from Kumasi.

Even in the years gone by, when the train service too was an option, you had to traverse Nkawkaw. That being the case, it dawned on me that it might not be a bad idea at all to tell my readers a little bit about this town in Kwahu, called Nkawkaw.

It lies one hundred miles on the so-called 'highway' from Accra to Kumasi, and in  the Eastern Region, in  Kwahu (the 'Jewish' part of  our Republic), the place famous for Easter celebrations, and crowned recently with 'show-jumping.'

If your journey should start from Kumasi towards Accra, then exactly 66 miles from Fante Newtown in Kumasi (perhaps some would prefer the Neoplan Station, since the STC has obviously lost luster lately).  Nkawkaw is the biggest township in the Kwahu district. It is about the size of Koforidua, and I would hate to sound boastful by saying commercial activities are said to be more bustling there than in Koforidua.

It has been designated a district in its own rights, since the Kufuor administration, with a CDE. The name is Nkaw-kaw, and if you would be interested in knowing how it came by that name, it's like this: Until the railway track was stretched, brought by the British by reason of Geography, Geology, and convenience, Nkawkaw was a small village at the very base of the Kwahu Scarp, and administratively under the chieftaincies of Obomeng, and Atibie.

You have to climb, or drive up the hill to see the two townships being talked about. Commercial activities at Nkawkaw and surroundings were farming and surface mining.

The presence of gold dust led to the rest of the Kwahus calling the people of Obomeng and Atibie (Mpraeso hereby included), who had direct access to the Gold-dust, 'Bra-mpofo.' The meaning was controversial for a long time in the past, but not anymore. Around Nkawkaw is presently evidence of the gold-mining activities of yesteryears. The railway track arrived on its way from Accra to Kumasi, and further down to meet a similar construction from Sekondi-Takoradi

Nkawkaw became a township and grew faster than a magician could have conjured.  Unfortunately, like the construction of many other townships in our country, the landscape, and the presence of streams and rivers, seemed not to have been important futuristically then.

The 'bigger stream' is called Nkawkaw. Two versions exist as to why it was thus called.  One version says the soil was (is) red at Nkawkaw, and the Twi word 'kokoo', meaning red, got corrupted into 'Nkawkaw.'

Another version was that the Ashantis, after they had met only frustrations in chasing their former brethren who escaped from them after falling out with them, advised their SIBSHIP not to go to 'Kwahu.' So, 'nko Kwahu', -stay away from Kwahu became, NKAWKAW.

So, stay with anyone of the two versions that satisfies you best.  But, in addition to the stream (it was a river when we were kids six decades ago), there is another sizeable stream, only slightly smaller than Nkawkaw by comparison. At the point where they are widest apart, Nkawkaw should be just about four kilometres away from the other stream.  The initial township, which was constructed with the railway-induced boom, got wedged between the two 'small rivers', Nkawkaw and Trado.  The colonial masters widened the banks of both streams, and constructed 'a concrete structure' which housed a steam engine that pumped water further down into an Aluminum-reservoir at the railway station, to supply the steam engines, plenty of which passed through Nkawkaw daily, to and from Accra.

Even then, there were signs of danger of flooding anytime it railed heavily. This forced the direction of expansion of the town outside 'the valley' which housed the initial township. There was the notion that 'mud-fish' dropped from heaven each time it rained. Following heavy downpours of rain, huge specimens of mud-fish were found almost everywhere at Nkawkaw. This was a source of supply of fish for some families for several days, or weeks.

This type of fish is known by zoologists, to be capable of hibernating in muddy environments for months, even up to a year and beyond.  With uncharted post-raining water running wild, they would be washed out of their hide-outs and down the streams until they might reach a river, where they would grow to reach sizes that would frighten even some adults. This phenomenon has been observed by Nkawkaw dwellers for about a century now.

The size of the township as well as its population have quadrupled since the first train arrived from Accra around the period that the Crown Prince of Austria, Ferdinand, was assassinated, and World War I broke out. We know that to have been 1914.

No more canalizations have been added to what the British colonial administration constructed to service the railway system. At the time, it served very well, the transportation of passengers, food-stuff, cocoa and timber to the ports of Accra, and Sekondi/Takoradi.

Bauxite-mining, which flourished for a while at Nkawkaw around the same period, must have derived good service from the railway connection.

Nkawkaw, like all other cities and sizeable townships in the Republic, have been 'allowed' to choke themselves in their own self-generated garbage. Nkawkaw houses a  Catholic-Church run hospital (a district hospital), which 'absorbs the shock' of the many accidents resulting from articulatored-trucks and private four-wheel vehicles, which, together with TICO mini vehicles, give the impression of  'disorder in motion', rather than the traffic of a civilized  21st Century highway, which until the by-pass may be completed (and it isn't clear, if even heaven knows when), all the mangle of  vehicles, most of which have been put together with 'home-second-hand spare-parts', Nkawkaw is no longer the township that anybody remembers, who grew up there.

On the 16th of July 2010, torrential rains hit the township the way it has done since the early days of the township life. The remnants of the basins of Trado and Nkawkaw seem not enough to contain the amount of water, now even less so than in the township's youthful days.

Where disaster struck biggest is said to have been at the newly constructed lorry-park, which you reach first if you were arriving from Accra. Right there, the level of water had reached waist-high.

An inundated electric cable had the surrounding water electrified, electrocuting four carpenters attempting to salvage their commodities. Tens of thousands lost their belongings, and for several days they had to seek sleeping abodes with relations living up the hill in the townships aforementioned.

It doesn't seem the threat is as high as that of God's deluge, where Noah featured. But, our townships should be looked at again. Sure!

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