All reviews and analysis of West African Examination literature ,NECO AND JAMB

 

RENAISSANCE REVIEW

 

 

Contents

 

Preface

 

Acknowledgments

 

• Amma Darko…………………………“Faceless”

 

• Bayo Adebowale……………………“Lonely Days”

 

• Patience Swift………………………“The Last Good Man”

 

• Richard Wright………………………“Native Son”

 

• Frank Ogodo Ogbeche……………“Harvest of Corruption”

 

• Dele Charley…………………“The Blood of a Stranger”

 

• Lorraine Hansberry………………“A raisin in the Sun”

 

• Oliver Goldsmith………………“She Stoops to Conquer”

 

• William Shakespeare………………….“Othello”

 

• Gabriel Okara……………………“Piano and Drums”

 

• Birago Diop………………….“Vanity”

 

• Elvis Gbanabom Hallowell…………“The Dining Table”

 

• Alfred Lord Tennyson………………“Crossing the Bar”

 

• George Herbert………………….“The Pulley”

 

• William Blake…………………“The School Boy”

 

• Lenrie Peter…............ “The Panic of Growing Older”

 

• Kofi Awoonor………………….. “The Anvil and the Hammer”

 

• Gbemisola Adeoti…………….. “Ambush”

 

• William Morris……………………. “The Proud King”

 

• Robert Frost………........ “Birches”

 

• William Shakespeare………….. “Shall I compare Thee to a summer’s Day?”

 

References

 

 

 

Preface

 

In preparing this book, I have tried to present that useful information hidden in the various texts of literature. This review has been written for Literature teachers and senior secondary school students. The review painstakingly takes the reader through the technical details of literary appreciation, analyses, summaries, plotlines, setting, characterization, themes and literary devices. This review will however be found useful by O’level examination candidates who are required to pass literature or related art subjects, and by anyone who may have had problems understanding a particular literary text in this review.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                    Uche Chidozie okorie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgments:

 

I thank God for his divine inspiration and direction. I solely and eternally appreciate my mother, Lolo Ogechi Uche for her encouragement and useful tips and my Uncle Daniel Okezie for his efforts towards publishing this review. I also cease this little space to thank all the authors, whose work of art contributed to the progress of this review, books, and recognized and unrecognized internet sources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AMMA DARKO

FACELESS

 

 

Amma Darko, born 1956 is an African novelist. She was born in Kofiridua, Ghana and she grew up in Accra. She studied in Kumasi, where she received her diploma in 1980. Then she worked for the science and technology center in Kumasi, during the eighties, she lived and worked for some time in Germany. She has since returned to Accra.

 

 

Perhaps the most frightening lesson in faceless is the fact that having lost their moral authority over their children, parents like Maa Tsuru are totally paralyzed by fear, the fear of terrors such as Poison… Fofo in her innocence, insists she wants to see Government what she doesn’t know is that Government itself has lost its priorities, its sense of direction, it has become dysfunctional and deaf to the cries of children abandoned.

 

                                          Kofi Anyidoho

                                    Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

                                          January 12, 2003

 

 

SETTING

 

 

This fiction clouds with reality is set on the history of the two famous features of Agbogbloshie, namely, the street girls cum Kayayoos phenomenon, and the daunting squatter enclave carrying on its shoulders the disheartening name of Sodom and Gomorrah in Accra city of Ghana.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PLOT analysis/overview

 

Little or more efforts from the media to galvanize people into action against street children bring shambolic results. Street children phenomenon has become an abandoned issue and condoned feelings. Normal people see it as circumstantial and conventional problem. The uncontrollable phobia in this parental and societal atrocity has shut down with capitalist excuses. Some people have it that hierarchically some children are to run around the streets to scavenge for life, while others live in the glorious state. However, it is not in the case of Amma Darko and her expendable characters. With the characters’ paramount, emotional turmoil and environmental turmour, the author seems to bleach off our stained mindsets about street children.

 

Stories of street children defile and defy their age limit, human right laws and moral etiquette. When you think of the level of molestation, abuses and denial inflict on them by the street lords and Mamas, and the drastic measures these children take in the code name of hustle. We can religiously say that the destroyed and vanquished biblical Sodom and Gomorrah has come back into existence.

The first chapter beams a pictorial light on Fofo. The author realistically brings in meta-pictures, the ugly hemisphere of this young and unprotected girl who spends her night outside on the old cardboard lays out in front of the provision store at the Agbogbloshie market place because it is a Sunday, so that she wakes up at the dawn of Monday.

 

The author compels us to see the moral decadence in the Sodom and Gomorrah of Accra society, when Sunday means nothing but an ordinary day of hustle.

 

“It had nothing to do with Sunday being a churchgoing day” [pp.2]

 

An ancient person from the last century will spit his/her tongue out, if eventually come across Fofo watching adult films her fourteen years required her to stay away from or drinking directly from bottle of akpeteshie , or at best, some slightly milder locally produced gin like Nigerian Kai-Kai. Nevertheless, this is the case of Fofo and the other children.

 

“Ultimately, she would have found herself waking up Monday morning beside one of her age group friends, both of them naked, hazy and disconcerted and oblivious to what time during the night they had stripped off their clothes and what exactly they had done with their nakedness, sucked into life on the streets and reaching out to each new day with an ever-increasing hopelessness, such were the ways they employed to escape their pain.”[pp.1]

 

Disillusionment, these children see the society uninhabitable. A reporter from the private FM stations’ survey makes one’s heart bleeds. A boy and a girl of about Fofo’s age who are making a home on the streets of Accra.

 

The reporter thinks the kids would be craving for material things like shoes and dresses. They never think of material things, only to go home one day to visit their mother and see a look of joy on her face.

 

“I want to be able to sleep besides her. I wish her to tell me she was happy I came to visit her. Whenever I visit her, she doesn’t let me stay long before she asks me politely to leave. She never has a smile for me. She is always in a hurry to see my back” [pp.2]

 

The author compels us to see the emotional denial on the part of their parents and the forceful mature level, harsh reality turns the psyche of these children. They reason beyond their age and psychologically turn adamant critics of their family background and relationship.

 

“Sometimes I cannot help thinking that maybe she never has a smile for me because the man she made me with, that is my father, probably also never had a smile for her.”[pp.2]

 

“One day she said to me, ‘Go you do not belong here? If I don’t belong to where she is, where do I belong? But I know that it is not just that she doesn’t want to see me. She worries about the food that she has. It is never enough.”[pp.2]

 

 

An outlined comparison comes up on the page, the day the little girl feels loved by an old unknown woman.

The girl says “One day a kind woman I met at a centre made me very happy. Before I went there, I knew that by all means she would give me food. But this woman gave me more. She hugged me. I was dirty. I smelled bad. But she hugged me. That night I slept well. I had a good dream. Sometimes I wish to be hugged even if I smell of the streets.”[pp.2]

 

This is what is required of their parents, emotional attachment not denial and rejection. The little girl expresses her heart desire, which comes as a natural instinct from the parents towards their children. The little girl’s speech also lays emphasis on the ‘The battle of Ages’ the old woman on that passage represents an entire generation different from the contemporary age. In their age, child caring and nurture cannot be over-emphasized. The old woman knows what it takes to have the fruit of the womb and to keep it, unlike, the contemporary age where someone can easily pick up a newborn baby along the road or nearby bushes.

 

We think of Naa Yomo, the popular old woman with brown dental gum. When Vickie and Kabria visit Maa Tsuru, the children and animals in the compound pay them no attention, while the few mothers, who are home, choose to mind their own business. However, a croaky voice asks them whom they want. They tell Naa Yomo that they want to see Fofo’s mother. She offers them seat. Clearly, Naa Yomo represents her Age very well, while the other mothers seem to dwell tight in their ruptured and maddening reality.

 

The author notifies the reader of Kabria, the regular wife, mother, worker, and car owner. She has three children Obea, her first child at fifteen, her second child Essie who is nine and the source of different kinds of worry to Kabria. Her last child is Ottu, the only son. Kabria takes the responsibilities of her family, married sixteen years to Adade, her architect husband. In spite of the little money, she earns. She maps out plans, continually counting and recounting the money in her purse with the deepest of frowns and cancelling out items on the household shopping list.

 

Kabria suffers her period of discomfort in silence, praying to God for guidance on how to deal with her now physically maturing daughter. Adade, for his part, retires to bed each night wondering if the time had not come for him to invest in two bulldogs to discourage potential young male whistlers behind the wall.

 

The author compares the two worlds, the street world without parental care and the home world with parental care. The author shows us the disconcerted world and the upheaval, suppression and agony therein and shows us the homely world with unending stress, discomfort and afterward passion parents come across to watch their children grow.

 

Simply, Faceless is the story of young children making a home on the street, with more emphasis on Fofo as the leading character. Amma Darko depicts Fofo’s life in the choked, dilapidated and hellish creek of Sodom and Gomorrah, subjected to the daring life of squalor, abuses, rape, molestation, intimidation, bully and human trafficking by their shattered parents and atrocious street Lords and Mamas.

These children live a life of disguise, stealing, drug abuse, alcoholic. They know poverty by its colour, appearance, length and size.

Fofo encounters Kabria in the market at the point of picking Kabria’s purse. The market people catch her, and Kabria saves her from the hands of serious a man, who volunteers willingly to give Fofo jungle punishment. Kabria works in MUTE, an organization that fights and represents the less privileged and mentally ill persons.

 

She discovers that the dead body found in the market, which makes headline on the media and every corner of the market is Fofo’s sister. She takes Fofo in and sets with her colleagues in the office, Aggie, Vickie and Dina to represent the faceless street children and to bring the killers of Baby T to justice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

 

It is around 2 a.m. and Fofo, though not hugged, smiles in her sleep. It is a dream. In her dream, she lives in a home with a roof. In the home with a roof, there is a toilet. She enters the toilet and does her thing because she feels the urge to attend to nature’s call. In real life is a war because she has to do away with bullies, mostly the older and more seasoned street boys, and their thickset leader, Macho who manage the rubbish dumps.

 

She smiles in her dream when she feels light pressure on her breasts under the weight of a pair of hands that are definitely not the lord’s hands. Slowly she begins her decent from dream to reality. She opens her eyes and sees someone kneeling over her. It is a man. She closes and opens her eyes again. It is the no-nonsense Street lord, Poison of the streets, all right; a man who used to be the leader of the bullies like Macho is now. Fofo let out a cry and one huge muscular hand comes down hard upon her mouth and suppresses the sounds from her throat.

 

The man threatens her life if she refuses his way into her. Poison pushes up her dress and scowls at the sight of her underpants. Fofo surrenders too her instincts. Poison unbuckles his belt. Then an angel watching over Fofo descends and saves her and Fofo bolts away as one pursues by the devil.

In the morning Fofo and Odarley, her friend goes to dump to defecate. Odarley is vigilant of Macho’s presence, she rushes the act and warns Fofo, who squats reluctantly to finish quick before Macho and his boys come. Unexpectedly, a lorry engines revive and all the children on the dump take on their heels. Fofo rushes off and forgets her plastic bag containing all the money she got last week. The baldhead Macho takes the bag and Fofo cries. Fofo thinks of going to see her mother. Odarley asks her whether her mother will help with money but Fofo refutes this insinuation. Fofo tells Odarley that her purpose is not of money, but of Poison who tries to rape her last night. Odarley baffles and questions her claim.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

She is a mother, wife, worker and battered-car owner. no day passes that Kabria does not wonder how come the good lord created a day to be made up of only twenty four hours, because from dawn to dusk, domestic schedules gobble her up; office duties eat her alive, her three children devour her with sometimes realistic and many times very unrealistic demands.

 

Kabria faces the problem of how to control her first and maturing daughter. On the path of Essie, her second daughter, she demands for material things and Ottu her only son who speaks of how special he is to the family being the only male child. Adade always rise from bed each working day at 6 a.m. expects to find his breakfast table ready. Adade reads newspaper whenever he goes for breakfast. The husband and wife always argue about Creamy, the old car.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

Odarley and Fofo visit Fofo’s mother, after some dramatic scene between Odarley and the members of the extended family. Maa Tsuru tells Fofo that her sister Baby T is dead. Baby T works for Mama Broni and when Baby T dies, Poison threatens Mama Broni not to tell Mama Tsuru about her daughter’s death. However, Mama Broni tells Mama Tsuru and Poison comes to Mama Tsuru and threatens to replaces Baby T with Fofo, if she ever seeks to know the cause of her daughter’s death.

 

Fofo asks her mother what happened to Baby T, her mother says Baby T died out of her own fault according to Poison. Fofo digests that and chuckles bitterly. Fofo also learns that her stepfather has just left her mother. Fofo’s mother urges her to go, to leave Accra to any town. Anguish and sorrow make Fofo leaves and Odarley joins her on the way. Fofo acts strange on their way. She claims she has seen poverty, the size, length and breadth. A woman passing by asks Odarley what is wrong with her friend. Fofo insults her for not minding her business. After Fofo exchanges words with the woman, she parts way with her friend.

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

Kabria’s household is up to the neck in its routine Monday morning chaos. Obea switches on the radio and put the dial on Harvest FM. Adade is in the bedroom. He listens to something on another FM station on the bedside radio. Abena, the house help tidies up the kitchen. Harvest FM reviews the morning newspapers. Kofi Annan’s name keeps cropping up on the radio. Kabria wonders how many people in other parts of the world had heard of Ghana before Annan’s appointment as the first black African to head the United Nations.

 

The presenter on Harvest FM, Sylv Po, saves the situation. His strong voice announces a coming discussion on HIV AIDS to be featured on his Good morning Ghana show. Sylv Po’s female studio guest is on and complains about the AIDS prevention campaign. Theb she touches AIDS issue versus the street-children phenomenon.

 

Here Kabria battles with her children, prepares them for school. The guest on the radio talks about pain and hopeless out there on the streets, which many children seek to deal with through drugs, sex and alcoholic drinks. The guest reminds the presenter of a recent survey conducted for a programme, that all girls on the streets are very active sexually, and they learn that for many of them rape was their first sexual experience. Girls as young as seven, many are child prostitutes.

 

Essie barges into Kabria’s concentration, Kabria listens to the radio, and she turns off the radio and tells the children to get their bags into the car. She picks up her bag, takes the car key, and looks at the room mirror, satisfied with her reflection, she leaves the room. She turns towards the girls’ room. She goes in and lifts Obea’s pillow and a pamphlets falls out. The title—Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana hit her in face like hot steam. She turns the first one over. Sexual Health for quality life she asks and her heart races. Ottu yells, complains of the heat in the car and Kabria keeps the exercise book and its contents and leaves.

 

She drives her children to school angrily because of the content she finds in Obea’s bed. After series of events that happen with Creamy on her way to her office. She gets to the office and greets Dina. Dina ignores and glances at her wristwatch. Kabria defends herself and blames Creamy. Dina frowns because Creamy cannot defend itself. Vickie, a co-worker chuckles and teases Kabria. She says that if even Kabria knocks down some groundnut seller’s ware at Makola square, she will definitely find a way to put the blame on Creamy. They all laugh. Dina talks about the meeting she has that morning and the support they are expecting to get from project on mentally ill pregnant women.

 

Aggie, the last of the foursome laments if they can get hold of one such perverse man who sleeps with mentally women.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

Creamy takes Kabria safe and sound to the market. She heads to the garden eggs vendor, stops briefly on the way to get some fresh red and green peppers for Dina. She buys from her vendor and the woman gives her good and selected ones. She turns to leave and the woman warns her not to follow a path route, because a girl died along that short road, a gruesome and peculiar death. People still throng there.

 

Kabria remembers that she heard of it and asks the woman whether the girl is a Kayayoo (Northern Ghanaian girls who come down south to work as porters in the market). The woman replies that some say she is while others say she is a street girl. The woman describes how there is no single hair left on the dead body and the discovery of some white feathers. A white fowl dies secretly the night after. Maybe, it is to appease the girl’s soul. Kabria leaves and disposes the garden eggs in her car and takes the long route to the tomatoes vendor. She buys the tomatoes and her way sees two huge musclar men fight to settle a disagreement over their operational boundaries. A woman passes, spits, and scrambles “Big muscles, tiny brains. Can we normal ones ever understand these street people?” ‘Normal people and Street people’ Kabria wonders. She bumps on other women discussing the mysterious death of the young girl.

 

Kabria asks the women whether they take the body to Korle-Bu for an autopsy. The first woman says she think so. A young boy of fourteen shouts “Agoo…agoo” and passes Kabria. The boy is in great haste to vamoose from the scene. Suddenly, a woman screams, “Get him! Don’t let him go! He’s got somebody’s purse” people check for their purses and unfortunately, Kabria is the only person still searching. They pursue the boy, they catch him and bring back Kabria’s purse. The increasing crowd grows eager to make history of the boy.

 

A hand from nowhere whacks him across the face. The boy wails. He is about Obea’s age. Kabria begs the crowd to leave the boy. The man with the boy refuses. Kabria opens her purse and gives the man some notes. The man takes it and leaves the boy. “Lucky you!” and when no one expects it, the man knocks the boy’s forehead with his knuckle. The boy sobs some more. Auntie Tsoo thanks Kabria. The boy follows Kabria to her car and she tells him to go. He stands and refuses to go and Kabria asks him whether he is hungry, he says yes and Kabria mourns softly.

 

“You tried to steal my purse. I saved you at a cost. And now I should feed you too?”[pp.47]

 

Kabria gives him some note and he stands still without moving.

 

“What again”

Kabria opens her purse, takes out thousand notes and hands it over to him. He snatches. Kabria becomes irritated.

 

“A very expensive thief it is you have turned out to be young man. I, your intended victim who bailed you out, have to feed you too?”

 

Kabria gets into Creamy. She starts it. Creamy refuses to respond. Kabria looks into the driving mirror. The boy is still standing there. He pushes back the cap on his head. Kabria gasp and turns off the ignition. She takes another good look at him. She gets out of the car, because ruggedness, dirt and all, the good-looking face she is staring into is not handsome. It is pretty. The boy is a girl, poses as a boy to steal purses. Moreover, she is Fofo.

 

Kabria tells Fofo that she knows not what to do for her. The little girl replies that she wants to see Government. It appears crazy to Kabria, all she needs is to leave. She tells Fofo that she will come for her tomorrow. She gets into Creamy and she starts the ignition. Creamy whines. She thumps down a foot on the clutch and shift the gear into free. Fofo’s face clouds again. Kabria wonders if Fofo has seen through her lie. She releases the hand brake. Creamy begins to roll down the slope. Fofo gets into stride alongside it and tells Kabria that the dead girl is her sister. Kabria presses the accelerator further down. Creamy sputters and coughs and roll on down.

At the office, Kabria narrates her story to her colleagues and they pay attention with no interruption. They discuss the aftermath of all the events and scenario in the market. Kabria recalls of the morning programme by Harvest FM on AIDS and stree children.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

 

 

The exercise book with its PPAG pamphlets replaces Fofo and everything to do with her in Kabria’s mind. Kabria practices in her head how to ask some uncomfortable questions to Obea. She spots Obea right away when she reaches their school gate. Obea sits under a tree with some classmates. She waits to pick up both Essie and Ottu too. They all go into the car and Kabria asks Obea what she was discussing with her friends. Obea gets angry. “School work mum”

They get home and Kabria heads straight for her room to change. While the children sort themselves, out. Moreover, when she leaves for the kitchen to see to dinner, the children get busy with their homework. Abena washes dishes in the sink. Kabria’s mind begins to play tricks with her, conjures up images of a dead girl who refuses to lie still in her coffin during her burial day. A report once alleged that African woman worked for an average of sixty-seven hours a week as opposed to fifty-five for the African man. Kabria tells Abena that in Cuba, laws enacted to force men to help around the house. Maybe, by the time Abena set up her own dressmaking salon, and get married, her husband will be cooking for her.

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

 

 

Kabria arrives at Agbogloshie around ten O’clock the following morning and parks Creamy at the same place as the previous day. She calls their communication center and reports that Fofo is nowhere there. In addition, she tells them that by the time she gets back to her car and Fofo is still not around she will leave. She gets to her car and Fofo never appears. She goes to the direction of the blue kiosk where the dead body was. Kabria takes in the scene in all its clarity. A crudely dug gutter by the side of the kiosk, which infested with algae, stinks pungently, betrays the litres of urine feed it each day. It adds to the misery of the environment.

 

Kabria enters the kiosk. She recognizes the salon owner from her huge portrait in one corner. The presence of Kabria prompts the salon owner, she says—“you should have come earlier. We are fully booked up for the day. Can you come back tomorrow?”

 

Kabria greets her and tells her that she is not there to plait hair. She tells her that she is from an organization called MUTE and scretches out her job ID card. The woman gets confused. Kabria says she came for the body found behind the woman’s salon last week. The woman alarms. “Sister have I done something to you? Do you know me from somewhere? Have I, maybe, snatched your husband from you?

 

The woman laments and tells Kabria to go and leave her never to return. Kabria tells her lies to gain her trust and the woman feels for her. Stories of how her husband maltreats her and at this stage the woman is also in the same shoe gives Kabria chair to sit. Kabria takes the seat, feels like both Judas Iscariot and Archimedes. The woman does not allow her pose her question again. She launches into her response.

 

“To tell you the truth, my sister, what at all am I even supposed to know?”

 

Kabria breaks into a cold sweat. Is that all, the woman is going to tell her after she has so cold bloodedly massacred Adade’s reputation. All for the sake of some information about a dead girl, whose face she had never even set eyes on. The woman knows nothing but grants Kabria the chance to speak with her senior apprentice on pink blouse. The senior apprentice tells Kabria that when she came to work that day people gathered around the dead body. They discuss whether the girl died there or somewhere else. She tells Kabria that she saw a white fowl lying slaughtered at the spot where the body was. Kabria goes into the kiosk and thanks their Madam. She leaves. She casts a final look at the girls as she leaves the salon and catches them all staring at her and whispering among themselves. She prays fervently to God that by the time she reaches Creamy, Fofo should be waiting by it. She focuses her thoughts on the history of the two famous features of Agbogbloshie, namely, the street girl cum Kayayoos phenomenon, and the daunting squatter enclave carrying on its shoulders the disheartening name of Sodom and Gomorrah.

 

Kabria prays some more and God above smiles upon her, from afar she spots Fofo besides Creamy. Fofo slumps against the car rather awkwardly and her head lowers. She calls her. Fofo ignores the call. Kabria quickens her steps. She calls again and Fofo raises her head. She runs to the communication centre. She calls the office. Vickie picks it up. She orders Vickie to tell Dina that she is bringing the girl to the office.

 

They ride in silence until they are out of the Agbogbloshie area, before Kabria recovers from her initial shock and asks Fofo who did this to you. Her right eye is bloodshed. The lip is cracked. The right side of her face is swollen. Fofo refuses to say who put her on that alarming condition.

 

Kabria asks Fofo whether her dead sister’s case has anything to do with her condition. Fofo denies any death’s case. Kabria reminds her of the one found in the market. Fofo denies giving out such information. Kabria baffles. “Was it not you who told me yesterday that the girl whose body was found behind the blue hairdresser’s kiosk was your sister?”

 

When they get to the office Dina runs mad seeing Fofo’s appearance. They think about informing the police and Fofo tries to escape because they mention police. Vickie blocks the entrance and Fofo wails “No Police”

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

“The pamphlets are under your pillow, mum. I put them there this morning.” The pamphlets are three in all. Something on PPAG’s consultancy works. She smiles at the thought that Obea employs the same tactic she employed to discover them under her pillow. Kabria browses through them. After she gets distraction from Ottu, she returns to the pamphlets. Something catches her attention. ‘Youth to Youth Approach’ ‘Peer to Peer Counselling’ it makes a lot of sense of her. Kids who did not have the benefit of parental guidance could benefit from those who did. Kabria goes deeper on the insight of PPAG and the diversity of their programmes. Ottu calls and Kabria gives up, she pushes the pamphlets under the pillow and rise to the door. She has to check on the food anyway. Ottu follows her to the kitchen. There, she has series of arguments with her three children. She returns to the PPAG pamphlets. She asks Obea who gave her the pamphlets. Obea replies that a friend in school whose mother works with the organization. Kabria summons her children and asks them what they know about street girls. Obea answers that they are the iced water and dog chains sellers at the roadside. She tells them about Fofo, she does not have a home, nobody cares for her, nobody buys her clothes and nobody feeds her.

 

Then let her come and live with us Essie says. Kabria tells them that you do not pick somebody from the streets into your home. There are consequences. At this point Obea quotes John F. Kennedy— the future promise of any nation can be directly measured by the present prospects of its youth” Kabria affirms that the late American President is correct. Before Kabria sleeps that night, she calls Dina to ask how Fofo is doing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

It is one of those MUTE meetings. Dina is at her eloquent best. Dina details the aims and objectives of MUTE. She explains how personally they are involved with Fofo’s situation. She expresses the need to document stories and encounter like the birth area names such as Jericho and Bethlehem in Ashaiman, and the story of the stubborn man, who during the first dredging of the Korle Lagoon till the last minutes refuses to evacuate from old Fadama. Such stories are gradually getting lost because the human minds carrying them are dying and rotting away with their knowledge six feet down in their graves. She says that their involvement with Fofo has brought them to a crossroads. She is in our care and we cannot make her just another documentation case. The girl, who wants something from the government, claims a dead girl at the market place is her sister. Fofo overnight got beat up really bad.fofo talked with Dina at home yesterday. She mentioned some names. However, MUTE does not know where to start.

 

At this point Kabria brings up the issues of PPAG pamphlets and their contents. How it will help the peer and youth out there on the streets. They need to bring these bullies and the killers to book since Fofo keeps mentioning Government and in her little understand she believes that Government have the power to stop or do certain things.

 

MUTE decides to visit the police station and extracts information from them, what they know about the dead girl before confronting Maa Tsuru and Mama Broni. They all agree to the plan. Dina shares the assignment. She orders Kabria and Vickie to go the police and then Fofo’s mother. While she goes to the clinic to see Fofo’s doctor, from there she will pass the house, check on Fofo, and see to some other things too. Aggie stays in the office to updates file; the mentally ill pregnant woman’s and Fofo’s.

 

The police station stands in a very busy area and is a sorry sight. Broken windows, leaky drains, cracked walls and peeling paint greet Vickie and Kabria. The officer behind the outdated front desk listens to the bland expression to their mission and sends them in to the inspector’s office. They meet the inspector and repeat their mission. He listens to them in hostile silence and mutter with the wave of one hand for them to sit down. They thank him. The inspector boom again. He seems to be enjoying making them see how very unwelcome they are. Kabria tells the inspector the aim of their organization. Kabria asks about the dead girl’s body, if any useful information has come across. The inspector replies that bodies are at all kinds of places at all sorts of times. Vickie tells him that they are interested in this particular one. Kabria asks him whether they are still investigating. The police inspector’s face clouds angrily. He obviously is not pleased with their persistence. The inspector barges, sorts who gave them authority to come to the police station. Kabria replies that they came to seek information for their organization. The inspector orders them to turn and he shows them a filing cabinet there, where confidential reports are.

 

They see what it is he wanted them to see. One drawer is bad that it cannot shut close. Another’s handle is missing and the third has a gaping hole where a lock should have been. The inspector tells them about the formal inspector, who stayed in the office before him.

 

“I have been here a fairly long time now, but I met the inspector who was at this post ten years ago, one day. And do you know the first question that he asked me? Whether this cabinet had now been repaired now, the furniture? Did I offer you both chairs when you come? Come! Have you seen my chair? Have you seen my table?”

 

The table is old. It chipped at the edges and covers in scratches. The leather covering of the chair tears up. The police officer orders Vickie to pick up his office phone, Vickie does and the cell phone is dead. By now, they get the message and want to leave. Nevertheless, the inspector is not through with them yet. The inspector takes Kabria and Vickie to an empty yard and asks them what they see. They respond that they see nothing.

 

“Exactly! You saw nothing, no? But what should you have seen? Shouldn’t you have seen something there?”

 

“A vehicle, you have no vehicle?”

 

The inspector’s cynical grin turns to a wry smile. Vickie and Kabria follow and watch him slump down on his miserable chair, behind his chipped table.

 

 

CHAPTER TEN

 

No Ghanaian with money would choose to live in the inner city. If he has to, then only as part of an established extended family household according to the author. Vickie and Kabria with paper directions, wave their way through narrow alleys and dilapidated buildings to locate where Maa Tsuru lives. They see crudely constructed wooden structure, encounter a lone man behind an old table with sign proclaiming him as a watch or shoes repairer. The drains of the area choke with filth and discarded plastic bags. They spot a kenkey house painted a gaudy green. They enter and see two very fat women, one slumps on low stools, busy washing dried cornhusks. Under a shed to the right of the entrance is trading venom with other who is in a brown cloth.

 

Kabria and Vickie interrupt their conversation and announce themselves. Vickie describes the house they are looking for, and the fat woman in brown tells them of Naa Yomo’s house. The woman offers them seat and sends for her six year ago daughter to go and call her elder sister. The fat woman’s elder daughter appears and the fat woman instructs her to take Vickie and Kabria to Naa Yomo’s house. Vickie and Kabria thank them and follow the girl out.

 

The girl shows them the house. Kabria gives her a coin in appreciation. She thanks and walks away. Vickie and Kabria enter the blue house. Most of the doors of its twelve rooms appear closed, but the front of each entrance shields with curtain, which by themselves give clues to the economic status of its occupants. The children and animals in the compound pay them no attention, while the few mothers, who are home, choose to mind their own business. A croaky voice asks them who they want. They turn to the source of the voice and know instantly that they are facing the famous Naa Yomo. They tell Naa Yomo that they want to see Fofo’s mother and the reason why they want to see her. Naa Yomo offers them seats and tells them that Maa Tsuru locks herself up in a room. Vickie and Kabria ask to know why she locks herself up, the old woman finds it difficult to say, but starts telling them that she gave birth to eleven children and have buried five. The old woman thanks God for her husband. A good man, who never say to his child, there is no food, go out onto the street and find some money for food. Vickie and Kabria listen. Naa yomo gives them a truckload of information but it is up to them to sieve out the useful. Kabria asks the old woman about her children. She says they have all moved out. They are all in good employment. Naa Yomo tells them how her children wanted her to leave the area, but she refuses. She tells them of an evil man who visited Maa Tsuru and Maa Tsuru does not want to do anything with the man, for that she locks herself up and people in the house feed her leftovers of their food because in the house they act like one family. Vickie and Kabria plan to leave and hear Maa Tsuru wails. Naa Yomo explains that it is the curse. En route back to the office, Vickie says that Naa Yomo knows so much. Kabria agrees that if the contents in her head can be deciphers with the click of a mouse, she could fill up another George Padmore Library.

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

Dina agitates over Vickie and Kabria inability to meet Maa Tsuru until she hears all they have to say about Naa Yomo. Fofo gets well in Dina’s home. She is not talking much still yet. Aggie suggests Fofo goes to stay with Kabria her saviour maybe she will reveal more information to her. Dina refutes and tells her that Kabria is a mother who has to take care of her family problem first. Dina suggests they should take her to Children-in-Need or Street-Girls-Aid but before they release her, they must be certain she will be safe. Aggie asks Dina about Harvest FM. Dina says that Sylv Po is doing his best that he will be discussing the street children phenomenon again on his GMG show tomorrow. They all plan that Kabria will come to Dina’s house to see if Fofo will gives her more information, so that they can feed Harvest FM for more discussion issues over the air. Kabria agrees to come.

 

On her way, home with her children, she tells them that she will leave them tonight to Dina’s place. The children are surprised; they never experience something of that nature. It is unusual to them, Dad will come back not to meet Mum at home, and Mum is relaxed about it. Kabria laughs. The telephone rings by the time they reach home. It is Dina. Fofo is ready and waits. She longs to see Kabria.

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

The few days under Dina’s secure roof and in MUTE’s absolute care put Fofo through a tremendous transformation. She becomes relaxed. Her face rests. She emits an aura of softness. Kabria visits Fofo in Dina’s house. Kabria asks about her health and Dina says that she is on painkillers, and Afi, Dina’s house help has been pampering her a lot. Kabria asks Fofo if she is ready to talk. She says yes and when Dina seems to leave the room for Kabria and Fofo. Fofo tells Dina to stay. they only excuse Afi. Kabria tells Fofo that they visited her mother. Fofo asks whether they see her brother. Kabria replies that her mother refused to open her door. Dina says that their interest at MUTE lies in knowing why people generally live on the streets, especially in Fofo’s case. Fofo tells them that she started with begging when she dropped out of school. It is the same with Baby T. fofo talks about Baby T. and her philosophy of how to suppresses hunger by taking charge. Moreover, that means finding money for food through any means possible. Fair or foul, begging, stealing, whatever and Fofo learnt the act of pick pocketing from her. She was a very good teacher Baby T. fofo says. Kabria tells Fofo that she denies Baby T. at a particular point in time. Fofo admits and tells them that Baby was her sister. Fofo’s mother sends her to live with Mama Broni. Poison, the bad man attacks her. Fofo tells them that she spends her time on the street the more its attraction lures her, because she lives her life, nobody controls her, she watches any film at the public video center and it is fun. She makes friend and joins gang. She tells them about Odarley her friend, who is still at Sodom and Gomorrah. She tells them how Odarley’s mother sends Odarley out of the house that she is troublesome, that she was stealing her money. Dina and Kabri hear a sound at the door. Dina walks towards the door and fling it open. Afi lands face down on the floor. she is eavesdropping. Afi begs Auntie Dina. Afi tells Dina that she is listening to know whether Fofo will give them all all the information they need, because she has conversed with Fofo and she knows a lot about her. Afi also reminds Dina that she had similar experience. Dina’s initial anger at Afi dissipates. Fofo explains how she gets caught up in the midst and Poison’s boys beat her up. Poison slaps her and warns her not to tell anybody about the dead girl, talk more that she was her sister. Dina thinks that Poison might be the killer of Baby T. He does not want anyone to become interested. If no one is interested in the dead body, nobody will be interested in her killer.

 

Abena is the only one up and waiting when the interaction with Fofo over and Dina takes Kabria home.

 

 

CHAPTER THIRDTEEN

 

The unabated interest of MUTE in Fofo and her late sister, Baby T, leads to Harvest FM’s Sylv Po becoming more engrossed in the saga, after Dina updates him with details of their conversation with Fofo. Sylv Po begins a series on the street child phenomenon and uses Fofo’s story as a case study. His first guest, a Ms. Kamame, whose non-governmental organization had done a study of the phenomenon in Accra few months before, confirms that Fofo’s story is similar to many cases her research team had come across. Kamame explains that the obvious reason for the street child phenomenon is poverty. Other related factors are absentee fathers, ignorance, distorted beliefs and perceptions and most depressing of all, the instances of sheer irresponsibility and misplaced priorities. Unknown to both Sylv Po and Ms. Kamame, their discussion is beginning to cause a stir somewhere. Some interested ears have proceeded to map out desperate plans to avoid detection. After Sylv Po and Ms. Kamame long dialogue, somebody calls apparently impatient to comment. Sylv Po tells the caller to wait until the phone lines are open for calls. The leader of the interested ears issues an order that the attempts to get into the programme should continue.

 

The producer of Sylv Po then turns off the sound of the telephone so that only the signal button light keeps flashing. The caller persists and Sylv Po agrees with his producer to make an exception of the persistent caller and find out what he wants. Kamame delivers her long and interesting research findings and Sylv Po summarizes the programme. The producer opens the phone lines and the caller voices out his pidgin lingua franca about his real story of the dead girl found in the market of Agbogbloshie. The caller says—

 

“the name of the dead is fati. She dies because she does something bad. Something very bad. She get husband in her hometown. Den she ran leave him and come to Accra. She says he too old. He too old? De time she was chopping his money gbla gbla like dat, dat time she sees dat he too old? Now she comes take anoder man. Dat make why she die. She makes taboo.”

 

Sylv Po asks the caller on the phone whether he knows Fati. The caller says the question is not important. Sylv Po tells the caller to say what he thinks is important. The caller says that he is sure the dead girl is Fati. After the caller leaves offline, Slyv Po sighs.

 

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

Book two takes us back to past years. It brings to life the story of Tsuru. Kwei’s mother argues with him. His mother scolds him for impregnating Tsuru, whose dying mother laid a curse before she died. Kwei argues that the curse is not for Tsuru but for her father, who abandoned her mother in her time of distress. Kwei’s mother explains that Tsuru is a descendant of her father; therefore, the curse her mother laid follows her too. Kwei’s mother calls him a boy, but Kwei maintains that he is a man. Kwei is an unemployed Mason; her mother feeds him and sees him as a boy. That he has no job, but has gone and impregnated a girl. His mother has no problem with the pregnancy, after all she will add to the numbers of her grand children before she dies, but must it be a girl with a curse. Kwei’s mother condemns the pregnancy for the curse. Kwei scrambles money together, on his own buys bottle of schnapps, goes over to Maa Tsuru’s family home, and announces he has come to show his face. Three family members accept his drink on the family’s behalf. Kwei’s mother however stops feeding him. Kwei’s family also treats him like a leper. Kwei survives this situation for only few days. He informs Maa Tsuru’s family he has to go and seek for work. With baby on the way, Maa Tsuru sheds tears. Kwei stays away for several months. Nobody hears from him. Maa Tsuru goes hungry. She assists her aunt in her Kenkey business to eat. Kwei arrives. He comes with little money and plenty bodily scars. Rumor has it that Kwei get caught up in bad company that steals building materials from construction sites in Accra’s newly developing settlement areas. Kwei refuses to debunk the rumours. Kwei woos Maa Tsuru back with promises of better things to come for their son. Maa Tsuru continues to live in the family home and Kwei goes back to live with his mother.

 

Maa Tsuru’s aunt reprimands her about Kwei and the full wife services she gives to Kwei without Kwei paying her pride price. She reprimands her too late, Maa Tsuru carries Kwei’s second child. He does any odd job that comes his way that pays some money. Maa Tsuru depends totally on Kwei and Kwei’s care for them all doubled. The unexpected happens. Maa Tsuru is still spending the nights with Kwei. Neither of them takes any precaution. They know it could happen. They assume and hope it would not. Then it does. Maa Tsuru becomes pregnant the third time, while their second son is still crawling.

 

Kwei becomes a changed man overnight. Kwei blames Maa Tsuru for allowing herself conceive the third time. Kwei accuses Maa Tsuru of being a bad luck and he stops Maa Tsuru from coming close to his doorsteps. Maa Tsuru waves her way back to the mercy of her anut, and secretly awaits Kwei’s reconciliation messages. Maa Tsuru visits Kwei unexpectly and sees another woman in his house. Maa Tsuru exchanges words with Melon-bosom. Melon-bosom scolds Maa Tsuru and tells her that she is under a curse. Maa Tsuru returns home in shock. Melon-bosom goes to Kwei and accuses Maa Tsuru of planning to eliminate both of them. Kwei invites Maa Tsuru. Maa Tsuru comes and Kwei locks her inside. He goes to the drinking spot and takes akpeteshie. He comes back and pounces on Maa Tsuru. He pounces on her pregnant body, and Maa Tsuru begins to bleed. Kwei grins. He pulls her up by one arm, holds her by the back of her neck and pushes her out of the house. He goes to Agboo Ayee and tells all the alcoholic takers that they should start calling him Dr. Kwei, because he has singlehandedly and very cost effectively terminates an unwanted pregnancy. Days turn to weeks and to months, Kwei observes to his utmost horror that Maa Tsuru’s pregnancy is growing bigger and at a rapidly fast rate. Kwei thinks the power behind Maa Tsuru and her baby’s survival. He thinks it is the curse. By morning, kwei is gone. He stays away for only a year. Maa Tsuru keeps appearing in his dreams, he alleged, urging him to return home. This time, he does not come with bodily scars. He shows signs of having some decent work to do while away. He buys Maa Tsuru two half pieces of wax prints. Kwei begs for forgiveness and solicit the aunt’s help to woo back Maa Tsuru for good. The aunt forbids Kwei’s request and refuses to place her niece’s hand back kwei. Kwei gives up on that angle and approaches it from the uncle’s with bottle of imported schnapps. He adds some money and promises that he will come back in a few days time to discuss the marriage ceremony.

 

Kwei and Maa Tsuru’s first daughter, but third child, who is born during Kwei’s unceremonious absence has no Kwei’s family name at birth. She goes first by the name Tsuru’s baby, which evolves to Baby Tsuru and then to Baby T. much to the displeasure and heartache of her aunt, Maa Tsuru starts cooking for Kwei again and takes to sleeping over at his place. One morning, Kwei’s mother summons him. She tells him to go and leave Maa Tsuru. She is carrying your fourth child. His mother warns that soon the fifth will come. She advises Kwei to go away instead of bring shame to the family. Kwei’s family condemns fifth number in child bearing. It is a taboo. Two superstitious swords cross paths. A cursed woman mixes with the number five taboo. Maa Tsuru gives birth to their second daughter, their fourth child. Kwei’s family does not honour the baby with a name. She ends up naming her Fofo. By the time, Fofo’s two older brothers each strikes ten; they are running errands at the seaside and the fish market. Baby T and Fofo by then are performing petty chores for family members in exchange for food leftovers and old clothes. Kwei is gone, but his lover and their children remain together.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

Kpakpo comes into Maa Tsuru’s life and Maa Tsuru tells her children to look upon him as their new father. Kpakpo visits Maa Tsuru regularly, when Kpakpo visits, Maa Tsuru cooks for him to eat. Since food is always ready whenever he visits, Kpakpo establishes regular afternoon calls on Maa Tsuru. Kpakpo discloses his desire to share bed with Maa Tsuru and Maa Tsuru feels flattered by it. The following day she goes to market, buys curtain and divides her room into two. The first night with their new father in the room, the boys could not sleep for one second. They are early riser. They leave the house. Maa Tsuru decides not to look for her sons, after all they are grown ups. She notices them toss and turn on their mats the whole night through. They see it all. They are no longer kids let them go. The boys leave with their contribution to the daily household income. Maa Tsuru begins to feel the pinch. She drops a hint to Kpakpo, but he does not get it. Maa Tsuru discovers that Kpakpo is not a factory worker. He lied to her. He used it to get close to her. Truth about Kpakpo’s criminal act reveals and everybody thinks Maa Tsuru will get rid of Kpakpo. She does nothing about.

 

It turns out that she is pregnant with his first child. Kpakpo still has no job. Maa Tsuru continues to do odd jobs now and then. Baby T and Fofo add whatever they make off the streets. Two months from her term, Maa Tsuru goes into premature labour one evening. The midwife detains Maa Tsuru overnight. Baby T and Fofo sleep with their new father Kpakpo. Fofo wakes at midnight and sees Kpakpo tiptoes over to Baby T and taps her in the shoulder. Baby T wakes and Kpakpo beckons her to follow him. She follows him to the other side of the curtain. Fofo’s heart beats fast. Kpakpo takes Baby T’s hand and signals her to remove her dress. Baby T obeys as though in a trance. He savours Baby T’s maturing body hungrily with his eyes. Then he brushes the back of one hand over Baby T’ breasts and draws down her pants. They fall to the floor. Fofo shakes violently. Fofo shuts her eyes tight. She begins to rehearse inside her head how she would go about breaking the news to Onko, their neighbour. In the morning, Baby T claims their new father did nothing to her.

 

Maa Tsuru returns with a baby. The gossip reaches her ears the very minute she lands in the house. She plays deaf to it and resumes life with Kpakpo from where she left off.

 

One morning, Fofo comes and lodges a report to her mother that Baby T sits besides the gutter shivering. Maa Tsuru orders Fofo to call Baby T. Baby T comes in and Maa Tsuru discovers the blood on dress. She asks Baby T what happened to her. In great pain and distress, she calls out Onko. Onko rapes Baby T.

 

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

 

Onko finds it difficult to face Maa Tsuru. Onko claims that Baby T started pushing herself on him. Onko says Baby T always hop on his lap. Maa Tsuru cries. Onko begs and sounds repentant. He claims Devil pushed him to do that. He gives Maa Tsuru money to console her. He assures Maa Tsuru that he will pay for Baby T’s treatment. Maa Tsuru smiles and takes the money, untie her cloth around her waist, places the wad of notes in one corner of it.

 

For over three weeks, Onko sets trap for Baby T. A day came, Onko asks Baby T into his room to collect money to buy food for both of them. He unexpectedly locks the door and pushes an unsuspecting and too trusting Baby T onto his bed, pins her down, forces a handkerchief inside her mouth and tears off her pants. Three times, he does it, and leaves her bleeding on his bed. He threatens her not to tell anyone. He claims he knows what Kpakpo did to her and will report her to her Mum, if she tells anyone. Baby T comes and reports what happened to Maa Tsuru. Maa Tsuru will reply and tells her not to mind Onko. One day Maa Tsuru visits Onko workshop and warns him about Baby T. Onko openly tells Maa Tsuru that he loves Baby T. by the time Onko comes back from work. Baby T leaves out.

 

Kpakpo tells Maa Tsuru about Mama Abidjan, his relative who used to work as a prostitute in the Ivory Coast, eventually graduating to become a Madam, she is now a repented retiree who is into recruiting young girls for work in chop bars and household. Kpakpo claims that Mama Abidjan knows his relationship with Baby T therefore will find a good placement for her. Therefore, Mama Abidjan holds a conference with Maami Broni, who agrees to take on Baby T. Mama Abidjan, communicates this to Kpakpo who then informs Maa Tsuru. Maa Tsuru talks to Baby T, who subsequently packs her things ready and leaves with Maami Broni who comes and picks her up from the house to her new unknown life. Several weeks later, Maa Tsuru tries to find out where her daughter works. She asks Kpakpo and Kpakpo assures to find out. Maa Tsuru repeats the question three days later; Kpakpo claims he did not meet Mama Abidjan. Maa Tsuru allows one week to elapses. She does not press Kpakpo for an answer any longer. She does not know where Maami Broni lives but she knows where Mama Abidjan lives. She pays Mama Abidjan a surprise visit one early morning. Mama Abidjan does not take kindly to the unexpected visit. Mama Abidjan claims she is not the one who forced her to give her daughter out, she yells and bangs her door. Maa Tsuru threatens to involve the police if she refuses to tell her where her daughter is. Mama Abidjan promises to find where Baby T works and gives her the address. The following day Maa Tsuru waits anxiously for Mama Abidjan. Maami Broni turns up. Then she tells Maa Tsuru to go to her room and look through her window, she will see Baby T’s employer. Maa Tsuru does and shakes like a leaf. Maami Broni also tells her that the employer is also looking out for her younger daughter Fofo. Maami Broni snorts that if Maa Tsuru gives him problem about Baby T again. She will not even see Fofo her younger daughter. Maami Broni talks about the Envelopes they give out to people, whom daughter work with them. Maa Tsuru notices that Kpakpo intercepts the envelope, no wonder he came with chop money the other day. Maami Broni comes to symbolize the arrival of an envelope containing money, whenever she shows up in the house. The envelope always brings smile to Kpakpo’s face and a wince to Maa Tsuru’s, who nevertheless never turns it down.

 

Maami Broni’s presence in the house for once does not translate into an envelope containing money. It is to break the news of the body behind the blue Rasta hairdressing kiosk at Agbogbloshie. Before this news, Kpakpo left three days ago.

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

Kabria feels justified to be upset with Creamy. There is always something about Creamy to be upset with. Today, it is behaving like everything else but a car. It is literally crawling. Creamy stops dead right there in its tracks. It is in the middle of the roundabout. Tears of embarrassment well up in Kabria’s eyes. A policeman comes up and checks Kabria’s Creamy, advises her on the car. Minutes later, Creamy responds to life. When Kabria gets to the office lately, she meets only Dina. Dina tells her that she has dispatches Aggie and Vickie to the mortuary.

 

Aggie reports she knows someone there who could have access to Baby T’s post Mortem results. They suspect Poison, but suspicion is not enough to nail him. Kabria laments how Creamy disappointed her on the way. They think about convincing Fofo to follow them to the Mortuary.

 

Aggie and Vickie sit in a room next to the morgue, juggle with the intricacies of death. Aggie acquaints with a male nurse and spells out their mission. The male nurse could not hide his bemusement. He wonders what on earth brought Aggie and Vickie to come all the way just for the sake of a street girl corpse. Aggie explains that the corpse connects to one of their case files. She requests for a copy of the autopsy report. Moreover, the male nurse replies that they have rules governing all the files in the hospital. However, he chooses to help Aggie for any reason that brought two fine women like them. He flips through Baby T’s report. She died from a fatal head injury he says. There was bleeding on the left of her brain, he adds. The report indicates that she dealt with severe slaps. It is suggestive of a male hand.

While Aggie and Vickie, at the mortuary sorting out the puzzling pieces of Baby T’s death, Kabria pays Naa Yomo a brief visit. Maa Tsuru’s hands tremble so badly in her room. She sets her baby down on the floor beside the older one and listens again. Naa Yomo knocks and tells Maa Tsuru to open up her door. Maa Tsuru opens up a little bit and peeps and sees Naa Yomo. Maa Tsuru opens the door wider to let her in. Naa Yomo refuses the invitation. She leans instead on her walking stick and gruntle. Naa Yomo simply deems it her responsibility to check every one because she is the oldest member of the household. Maa Tsuru comes out and walks across to Naa Yomo shortly after. Naa Yomo tells her how members of the household see her as a leper. She always refuses to come out from her room. Naa Yomo tells Maa Tsuru, that a woman visited and her name is Kabria. She is from the organization that has been caring for Fofo. They want to know the whole true story. She will be back with a man from a radio station who has been working with them. They are people with good sense. They will come with Fofo. I assured them that this time you would open your door to them. Maa Tsuru agrees.

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

Sylv Po arrives at MUTE to pick up Kabria and Fofo, carries a recorder and a microphone. He drives a metallic blue VW Golf, sleek and fully air-conditioned. Sylv Po asks Kabria about her car. He hears they drive the same car, but frowns when he discovers Kabria drives old Beetle. They plan how to visit Sodom and Gomorrah. Sylv Po suggests they park their car somewhere and take a walk. Kabria brings to his notice about people of Sodom and Gomorrah’s sensitivity. They know whenever strangers visit their place. Fofo prefers a foot walk, maybe she will get to see Odarley. They pack the car and head toward the enclave through the Konkomba yam Market. Sylv Po is surprised, he sees no low class prostitute much talked about, and everybody is relative quiets. Fofo tells him that life begins at night in that territory. When the rest of Accra is sleeping, that is when Sodom and Gomorrah and its real inhabitants wake up. Fofo explains life in her old territory.

 

They pass by tabletop mini marts, barbering and hairdressing salons, tailors and dressmaking shops. A video centre that by all indications, specialized in adult film, proudly proclaims on their signpost. They get to Fofo’s former wooden shack. The door is ajar Fofo enters alone. A girl of about fifteen is asleep on a piece of cloth on the floor. A baby of about six months is scrambling all over her in obvious search for food or attention or both. Fofo wakes her and asks her for Odarley. She tells Fofo that Odarley rents here in the night. She goes back to sleep. Fofo tells them that the girl works at night. She is a daytime tenant.

 

Maa Tsuru waits for them in the doorway. She leads them quickly into the room. Before then they go and greet Naa Yomo. She is pleased at what she sees of Fofo. The children playing in the compound stop and stare. So too do their mothers. Inside the room, Maa Tsuru makes to embrace Fofo. Fofo goes rigid. Maa Tsuru’s face falls. She withdraws slowly from her daughter. There is pain in her eyes. She tells Kabria and Sylv Po to sit and they take the two available seats. Maa Tsuru tells them that Naa Yomo told her everything and she is willing to open up her heart in the presence of those two people who are strangers. Maa Tsuru talks, Sylv Po records.

 

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

Something gnaws at Kabria when she starts Creamy with Obea, Essie and Ottu in the back. The handprint on Fofo’s cheeks the day following their first encounter at the market when she found Fofo beaten up. The pathologist’s report states similar handprints on Baby T’s cheeks. She steps on the clutch. Kabria goes straight to the Kitchen without changing when they get home. Abena comes late with the garden eggs stew. Her Madam sends her to the market yet again, she explains.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY

 

The fast mail service man knocks on MUTE’s front door with a smile, announces the mail with a smile, hands out the messenger’s receipt book to be signed by Dina with a smile, places the parcel in Dina’s hands with a smile, and turns and walks away to his motorbike with a smile. Dina calls out to the others, to come and see a strange parcel they have received. They imagine, maybe people are appreciating their involvement into the situation of street girls with gift. Dina unwrap the parcel. Kabria twitches her nose, follows by Vickie who sniffs in her immediate surrounding air with great suspicion. As for Aggie, she twitches, sniffs, twitches again. Dina shrieks and darts off to the toilet where she drops the offending parcel right into the water closet where literally, it rightly belongs. For the next thirty minutes, the three watch in anguish. Dina watches her hands in an unending effort as though to rid it of the blood. She washes with soap. She rinse the hands twice in a disinfectant solution, decides the scent of the disinfectant reminds her of the scent of the parcel. She pours ample WC cleaning gel into her palms and resumes the wriggling act for another five to ten minutes. She calls Sylv Po. She tells him that they received a shit parcel. Sylv Po replies that they also received an odd call at the station.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

 

Poison runs away from home at the age of eight to hit the streets. He is an extremely shy boy, very soft spoken and covers from head to toe in scars gained from several years of lashes with a man’s leather belt at the stepfather’s hands. Poison lands in bad company on the streets. He masters in car tape-deck thefts. The more he steals, and gets away with, the more confident he becomes. The more confident he grows, the more he feels in control of the streets. After three years of car stealing, Poison becomes bore with tape-deck theft. He desires change. He ends up perching with a girl six years his senior. He becomes her messenger and runs errands for her supervisor too. An errand for the supervisor often involves going to one of his girls with a load of warnings and threats, to instils fear in the girl, and get her to part willingly and immediately with the supervisor’s share of her previous night’s earnings. Poison masters the intricacies of pimping enough to have a go at it on his own. He makes mark and a name on the streets already. Then he embarks on an aggressive recruitment of girls to own.

 

He seats on a bench on the veranda of his abode, surrounds by members of his gang when Kabria and Sylv Po come before him. To Poison, MUTE is the cause of most of his headaches about the increasing public interest in Baby T’s death. They bring it to the attention of the media through Sylv Po, and the shit parcel is a message to them not to meddle in other people’s business. He exudes jungle power and smiles like the confident controller of the streets that he is. Kabria shudders at the intermittent stares he fixes on her. Sylv Po does most of the talking and while he talks Poison never interrupts him once. Finally, when he speaks, it is to say simply “I did not kill Baby T. I left her alive”

 

The meeting with Poison goes through a little coercion, a touch of blackmail, and a bit deceit. Dina contacts the Agency that hired out Afi to her and inquires about the woman from whom they saved Afi before she could be sold into prostitution. The Agency feels reluctant to co-operate. The Agency’s problem is that it would not undermine the confidence of their sources should they co-operate with MUTE and Harvest FM. The Agency promptly does a U-turn and agrees to co-operate. They put their sources to work. A message reaches Poison that a consignment is coming. In Poison’s world, it means fresh young girls recruited from poor villages under a similar pretext as Afi had suffered. The woman bringing the consignment tells Poison she will come with her partner. At the scheduled meeting, Kabria shows up with Sylv Po. They do not hide their true identity and Poison is truly awed by their interest in Baby T.

 

Sylv Po tells Poison that if truly he is not the killer of Baby T then he should join hand with them to fish out the killer, because everybody points Poison as the killer. Poison admits that he beat Baby T up, but he did not kill her. Sylv Po asks for Maami Broni and Poison orders his Lieutenant to give the directions to her place. Sylv Po confers briefly with Kabria, then excuses himself and calls Dina on his cell phone. Poison grows nervous watching all this. Poison booms, that he is a businessman and it is not possible for him to kill one of his girls. Kabria, who has been silent observer, stares Poison direct in the face for the first time. She believes him. It is common sense. It is instinct. Sylv Po asks Poison if he is aware of the three anonymous calls to Harvest FM. Poison does not respond. Sylv Po talks about the caller who claimed that the dead girl was Fati who deserved to die because she jilted her old husband. Poison glares at Sylv Po and rises abruptly, catches even his gang members off ground. Kabria shakes visibly. Sylv Po stands his ground and stares Poison right back in the eyes. The fleeting tension doubles the weight of the surrounding air. Then suddenly, Poison chuckles and roars into laughter. The gang joins in. poison admits that he ordered the first two calls to the station. He says he is a businessman and needs no disturbance.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 

“So who killed her?” Dina poses. Kabria narrates the discomfort she felt sitting there with Poison and his gang. It is a meeting of MUTE’s four with Fofo, to decide on her rehabilitation. Dina went for Maami Broni and did not find her the previous day. Dina directs they leave Maami Broni issue hanging and go on to tackle Fofo. Fofo says she does not have money. Dina assures her of MUTE’s support. Dina convinces Fofo to leave the streets and her old friends. Fofo feels nostalgia. Dina tells her about school and Fofo refuses to go back to school. Dina suggests learning the trade and Fofo is not enthused. The organization offers dressmaking, hairdressing, catering and beads making Dina explains and tells Fofo to choose one. Fofo chooses catering. Dina moves on to the next point. She talks about Fofo’s health and the test the organization will conduct on her. Fofo shrieks hysterically and Kabria calms her down. A knock on the door cuts Dina’s discussion short.

 

It is the office day watchman; he announces the presence of a girl who wants to see Fofo. Dina calls Fofo and goes out together with her to meet whoever the girl is. The others come to stand on the veranda to watch. Fofo recognizes her friend from a distance and break into a run. Odarley runs to meet her halfway. They embrace size each other up. Dina prods Fofo to invite her friend inside. Odarley disagrees and Fofo tells her they are nice people. Odarley tells Fofo that Naa Yomo sends her. Dina asks Odarley for the second time to come inside. She shakes her head. Odarley holds Fofo by one hand and put her lips to Fofo’s ears. She tells her that Onko is dead. Fofo’s eyes widen. Odarley tells Fofo that Onko committed suicide. He hanged himself on a tree. It happens not far from his workshop and he is in a pair of light blue shorts, the colour of the skies. He leaves no note. The police come for his body, and then visit his workshop. Then they go and inform Naa Yomo about it.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

Vickie for instance, shudders at the sight of the strange animal skulls and bones covered in blood. Sylv Po neither understand nor like one bit, the idea of being command to walk backwards after he grins at a rather funny looking wooden stature. He thinks they need to vamoose from the shrine but he goes to the Jujuman to find out about Onko’s consultative visit prior to his death. Not to mention that their fact-finding call on the Jujuman has cost them the equivalent of two bottles of schnapps and two fowls, in cash, converted at the Jujuman’s so to say, rate of exchange and his special mode of estimated MUTE and Harvest FM’s bill. The Jujuman does not, even if for the sake of sheer politeness attempt to hide that he knows clip and clear the reasons for Onko’s business woes. He gives Onko what Onko rather unreasonably, but sadly, truly wanted, after listening carefully to Onko’s narration of what Onko claimed to be the cause of his business woes, which is that the girl he defiles, is the daughter of a cursed woman. The Jujuman prescribes his requirements to diffuse what he immediately diagnosed to be a mix up of Onko’s good blood with that of Baby T’s polluted and cursed blood. The Jujuman’s such impossible item is Baby T’s pubic hair. The Jujuman underestimates Onko’s determination and miscalculates.

 

He thinks that Onko’s biggest headache would be Baby T’s pubic hair. It is not. It is the fowl that should be a half-caste. Sylv Po asks the Jujuman whether Onko finds the half-caste fowl. He replies yes. The Jujuman also talks about the red fat woman. She requires a fowl. To appease the girl’s spirit that is haunting her. It is Maami Broni. She buys it and slaughters it at where the girl dies, behind a blue Rasta hairdressing kiosk at Agbogbloshie.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

 

It pummels Maami Broni’s guilt to zero. If Baby T liked sex as was being alleged and was already doing it anyway with men old enough to be her father, for free, then why not put her in the business and make it profitable for everyone. Maami Broni, like Mama Abidjan is an old graduate of Ivory Coast’s red light district. It is no secret that the trade is cruel to age and uncompromising to wrinkles. She starts to employ girls, first from dishes washing to men’s rooms. Maami Broni and Poison goes back a long time. A good number of girls have pass through her hands under Poison’s protection. Many girls are now free. Maami Broni knows her job well. Baby T is sweeping the room when Maami Broni enters and tells Baby T that Mr. F wants to come in her. Baby T gathers the dirt in an obscure corner and places the broom beside it neatly. It is the first time Maami Broni gives Baby T a hand-me down. Moreover, by the time Mr. F finishes with Baby T. Baby T cries so much that Maami Broni let her go the next twenty-four hours without another back-pass. She is a seasoned Madam, but she is first woman with femmine urges. Yet, though she may have desired to let Baby T off, the decision is no longer hers. Poison is the boss. Only he could let Baby T go.

 

Maami Broni helps in the only way she knows how. She introduces Baby T to the devil’s weed. It helps. Baby T begins to use it regularly; carrying out her duty with several men night and day becomes bearable. The men like her. She is pretty and young. Everything is going fine… until Onko consults a Jujuman to help pull his business out of its slumber. once the first headache with the pure white home bred fowl has been conveniently solved by the Jujuman, the next one rears its ugly head. How the hell is he going to get a strand of Baby T’s pubic hair?

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 

The Agboo Ayee drinking spot kiosk by a freak coincidence is of the same blue colour as the Rasta hairdresser’s kiosk at Agbogbloshie. For the past almost three weeks, its first customer of the day is Kpakpo. He is also the last man to leave. Kpakpo sleeps right beside the gutter behind the kiosk. Onko meets Kpakpo and buys him tots. Kpakpo takes ten tots but Onko refuses to take any drop. Onko launches his plan. Onko orders Kpakpo to take him to Poison. Kpakpo refuses and claims Poison’s den is a den of death. Onko begs him and orders more tots for Kpakpo. Kpakpo tells Onko that he cannot take him there but can afford to show him the way. Kpakpo tells him about Mama Abidjan and the way to convince her to take him to Poison.

 

Mama Abidjan scowls at the sight of Onko. Onko keeps faith with Kpakpo’s advice. He stretches out the wad of notes. Mama Abidjan’s eyes move to and remain transfix on it. Then she glances sharply at Onko in the face and returns the gaze to the cash. Mama Abidjan asks him what for. He says she should recommend him to poison. He expresses his desire that he wants Baby T.

 

Baby T’s reaction at the sight of Onko, churns Maami Broni’s heart. She conceals it because Poison is present. Baby T mourns and it gets to Poison nerves. He makes another offer to Onko to take a look at other girl and make a selection there. Onko refuses, rather pays more money for Baby T, and under Poison’s eagle greedy eyes, he agrees. He orders Baby T to give Onko pleasure or faces his wrath. Baby T hesitates and Poison lands her the first slap. Poison’s face goes bland. Maami Broni always cries at the sight of that. Strange old thought goes through Poison’s mind to manifest them in that facial transformation. He stares blandly at Baby T; he slowly unbuckles his leather belt and draw it out through the trousers hooks… Baby T feels the first lash. She huddles in the corner when Maami Broni and Onko enter the room. Her thin blouse stocks to her body with her tears. Maami Broni turns and walks out of the room. She leaves Onko in there with Baby T and locks the door from outside and take a seat beside the door. When Onko finishes with Baby T, he would tap for the door to be opened.

 

The tap sounds a little too early and a bit too frantic. Onko gives up, she thinks. She opens the door. Onko steps out as Maami Broni has expected. He beckons her in. Baby T lies with a split head on the concrete floor. A bizarre image comes to Maami Broni’s mind. It is the image of shattered stone oozing blood. A stone strikes against steel. Baby T is dead.

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

The weight of Baby T’s spirit on her mind, Onko’s suicide, and Sylv Po’s persistent pleas on air, all pushes Maami Broni out from her hideout to Harvest Fm. Fofo reports to the organization to begin her rehabilitation. Maami Broni makes further revelations. It is Poison who orders that the gang dumps Baby T’s body behind the Rasta kiosk at Agbogbloshie in the night. The facial mutilations are to confuse identification. It is Maami Broni who called to rebuff the Fati’s story. Kabria wakes up in the middle of the night sweating profusely. She has been toying with the idea of whether the time has not really come for her to finally, truly get rid of Creamy and maybe coax Adade to top up whatever she would get for Creamy to enable her buy a second hand ‘Dae woo Tico’

 

 

 

 

 

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

 

The most striking feature of the Faceless is its technique and dynamic mechanism of employment and deployment of characters— MUTE members and Harvest FM, Sylv Po. They serve as detectives, they investigate, provide intelligent information to unravel the mystery and scattered puzzle over Baby T’s death. Darko also uses Ms. Kamame’s coherent research to show the causes of the street children phenomenon possibly. This technique renders police officers and their skills impotent and void. In addition, throw more light on the poor infrastructure possessed by the Accra Police and government’s negligence towards the needs of the police force. Through Agent Kabria, Vickie, Dina, Aggie and Sylv Po, the author reveals the major characters; factors involve in the street children phenomenon and pin-points the grassroots causes of rape, bully, human trafficking, mysterious death and robbery. The author uses third person pronoun narrative.

 

LANGUAGE

The language used by Darko’s characters and by the narrator is polished, simple and easy to grasp. Except the persistent caller on Sylv Po’s radio programme, who uses Pidgin English to express himself. Pidgin as a means of communication is mostly found among the uneducated and illiterate, common people, who can be easily seen in places like Sodom and Gomorrah.

 

STYLE

The author uses the documentary style to document the life of street children, and shows pictorial evidences of their suffering and tribulations. We see these documentaries clearly in MUTE’s files, Ms. Kamame’s research work and Harvest FM radio program.

 

 

CHARACTERIZATION

 

FOFO

 

Fofo, who deals with abandonment and makes a home on the street, is the fourth child and second daughter of Maa Tsuru. Fofo is the by-product that sends Kwei’s into exile. Fourteen-year-old Fofo is a street child, like many children, who live in an area called Sodom and Gomorrah in Accra, Ghana. She estranged from her family. She voluntarily leaves home.

 

 

BABY T

 

The much-discussed Baby T is Kwei and Maa Tsuru’s first daughter, but third child, Maa Tsuru born her during Kwei’s unceremonious absence. She is not honoured with a kwei family name at birth. She goes first by the name Tsuru’s baby; which evolve to Baby Tsuru. She deals with molestation and prostitution in the satanic hands of Poison and Maami Broni. She is the one found dead behind the Rasta kiosk at Agbogloshie market. Her death opens the strict investigation by members of the MUTE.

 

 

MAA TSURU

 

Maa Tsuru is the product of a single parent and the aftermath of an unfulfilled marriage and abject poverty. She is the wife of Kwei and later to Kpakpo. She gives birth to four children to Kwei and two to Kpakpo. She lives by the mercy of the leftovers from the members of the house. She is popularly known in the neighborhood as a cursed woman. Men run away from her, that is why she easily falls for any man who cares to come close to her.

 

KABRIA

 

The mother of three children, wife, worker and battered-car owner, married sixteen years to Adade, her architect husband. She passionately loves her job with MUTE, a non-governmental organization that is basically into documentation and information build up. Literary, she is Fofo’s Angel. She encounters Fofo in Agbogbloshie market.

 

DINA

 

Dina is a graduate of the University of Ghana. Her marriage to her campus boyfriend shortly after her graduation ends in divorce after four turbulent years of childlessness. Finding herself with no child and no husband and plenty of time, she recollects information by talking to people and into the field to research comes the idea and the birth of the idea for MUTE. She is the boss of MUTE.

 

SYLV PO

 

Sylv Po is the presenter on Harvest FM incharge of ‘Good Morning Ghana show’ Sylv Po establishes the atsmophere for experts to deliver talks on prevention of AIDS versus the street children phenomenon. He boosts the investigation of Baby T by proving media assistance to the members of MUTE.

 

 

 

VICKIE & AGGIE

 

They play vital and major role in the story line, assisting in looking out for information. They work in MUTE along side Kabria and Dina, with their official roles.

 

MAAMI BRONI

 

Maami Broni is an old graduate of Ivory Coast’s red light district. A middle-aged woman, she knows the trade’s tricks, all the acrobatics and styles of the act. Maami Broni returns from Abidjan in Ivory Coast or Agege in Nigeria and sets up camp, where she gives out young girl to men. She is Baby T’s madam and a strong syndicate to Poison.

 

POISON

 

Poison is a young boy of eight who runs away from home and hits the streets. He is extremely shy boy, very soft spoken. His stepfather enjoys lashing him with belt. Poison land in bad company on the streets. He masters car tape-deck thefts. He gains ground on the street and changes his desire. Poison masters the intricacies of pimping and he starts on aggressive recruitment of girls. He is Baby T’s employer and the king of the streets.

 

ONKO

 

He is the son of one of Naa Yomo’s cousins; and he is a kind man. He is one of the few better off people in the compound house. He owns a colour television that is in excellent condition and a big cassette tape recorder, which is an original made in Japan. He is not married. But he has two sons with two different women. Fofo complains to him after Kpakpo lay with Baby T. and Onko lures Baby T and rapes her. When Onko business fumbles, a Jujuman instructs for Baby T pubic hair, to make his business boom again. Onko kills Baby T in the quest to collect her pubic hair.

 

NAA YOMO

 

The oldest woman in the compound house, she knows the story of everybody that lived and lives in the house. She can attest to marriages, the proper ones and the co-habitations. She is the daughter of one of those twelve sons of the honourable man who built the compound house. She gives vital information to Kabria and Vickie when they visit. Her children have moved out. They are all in good employment.

 

ADADE

 

An architect, Kabria’s husband, who always rise from bed each working day at 6 a.m never one minute earlier which is a whole hour after Kabria. He never comes to the breakfast table without a newspaper in his hand. After work, Adade normally meet friends at a drinking spot to socialize over bottles of beer. Adade has a brand new Toyota Corona and makes jest of his wife’s battered car.

 

OBEA

 

Kabria and Adade’s first child, she is fifteen. Obea throws both Kabria and Adade in to absolute turmoil. There she is, one minute their little girl, next moment protesting any reference to her as their little girl.

 

ESSIE

 

Second child to Kabria and Adade, Essie is born at midnight. Nine years on, She demands for material things. Kabri worries over this.

 

OTTU

 

Ottu is Kabria and Adade’s only and third son. Ottu speaks of how special he is to the family being the only male child.

 

ODARLEY

 

Fofo’s friend, who also makes home on the street. Odarley’s mother sends her out of home. Her mother thinks that Odarley is troublesome and accuses her of stealing her money at home.

 

KWEI

 

Kwei is the father to Baby T, fofo and Maa Tsuru’s other two boys. Kwei runs away to avoid getting Maa Tsuru pregnant for the fifth time, which is a great taboo in his family to give birth to five children.

 

 

 

 

KPAKPO

 

Kpakpo is Maa Tsuru’s second husband. Kpakpo is the man who survives through dubious means. He would demand rent advance from a prospective tenant with a view to rent out his one room at his family house in Central Accra to the person when the cash lands safe and sound in his hand, pop, comes his “Tenancy Agreementr” unwritten. He is the first man to abuse Baby T sexually. When Baby T dies, he flees.

 

 

 

THEMES

 

FACELESS

 

The title of the novel makes its greatest theme of all time. The author critically renders a social, economical, psychological and political commentary on the faceless, the non-entities, the condemned to rot in the wrathful hands of streets, people who live life at night, the ghostly human, the no nomenclatures, the unrepresented, marginalized, forgotten, people in the alarming hell of Sodom and Gomorrah. Through the efforts of MUTE and Harvest Fm, hope surfaces. Light comes down into the pit of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moreover, somebody with Fofo’s identity realizes that she is important to the society. Dumped and thrown away corpse like Baby T gets justice done on her abused soul.

 

UNFULFILLED MARRIAGE

 

This is the rebellious mother and originator of broken families. The aftermath brings single parenting. Eighty percent of all the children in the streets have no father. They depend on their incapacitated and distorted mothers, who cannot provide enough for them. Kwei is such a father. He abandons Maa Tsuru and runs away, leaves behind his four children, and Kpakpo adds to Maa Tsuru’s running misery. Poison is also a product of broken family, his stepfather’s act of wickedness pushes him away from home.

 

POVERTY

 

Poverty, personified in many ways, is one of the punisher of souls in the novel. It surfaces on the path of fathers and mothers, who could not feed their children, therefore send them to the streets. Kwei is an unemployed Mason, his mother feeds him. Maa Tsuru assists her aunt in her kenkey business and when her aunt dies, she lives on the mercy of neighbours’ leftover foods. Kpakpo has no job and he goes out only to drink akpeteshie. We see Maa Tsuru dividing their one room with a curtain, and the children always hear their parents sharing bed at night. Maa Tsuru closes her mouth and sits on her daughter’s rape case, because Onko offers her some wad of notes. Maa Tsuru sends her daughter out into slavery and when she inquires to know her daughter’s state, the employer shuns her with an envelope. A crudely dug gutter, which is infested with algae in Sodom and Gomorrah, children with tattered brown underpants with the diseased red hair and a protruding stomach. Thin legs as dried sticks or their bodies ravage by rashes and noses that seem never to stop running. These things personify poverty.

 

 

SLAVERY

 

One of the human right violation, the streets’ lords and mamas recruit girls and trade them into prostitution. Sex starving men abuse and beat these young girls. They turn and force them into a disconcerted world, and derail them physically and psychological. These girls face their harsh and worse reality and live like animals.

 

 

DENIAL

 

[physical and emotional] the children on the streets can never remember the last time, their parents smile at them, embrace, encourage or console them in their moment of distress. Rather, their parents see them as problem and heavy laden. They seem to send them away to lessen their work or parental load. On the part of the normal people, they see the streets children as urchins and disturbances that they need to do away with.

 

 

MOTIF

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

 

Absentee fathers, Ignorance, Distorted beliefs and perception, Sheer Irresponsibility, Rape, Brutality, Abuses and Misplaced Priorities

 

 

SYMBOLS

 

Creamy—represents the economical struggle of a normal working class person in Accra society,

 

Sodom and Gomorrah—like the biblical one allegorically represents defy city of sins.

 

Naa Yomo—symbolizes ancient way of life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BAYO ADEBOWALE

 

LONELY DAYS

 

Novelist, poet, short story writer, librarian, community leader, literary scholar, senior principal lecturer in English and former Deputy Rector, The polytechnic, Ibadan Dr. Bayo Adebowale is also the founder/Director of the African Heritage Research Library (AHRL) Adeyipo village, Ibadan, Nigeria—the first rural community based African studies research library in the whole continent of Africa.

 

 

 

SETTING

 

Set in the rustic rural village of Kufi in Ibadan Southwestern of Nigeria. Dr. Bayo’s research library locates at Adeyipo, a neighbouring village to Kufi in the novel. This shows geographical accuracy and existence of this small village.

 

 

 

PLOT analysis/overview

 

Lonely Days by Bayo Adebowale proves to be a research and deep-rooted critical examination of deteriorated circumstances of those typical African widows. On the dedication page, he mentions twenty-one valiant widows of Adeyipo village… women whose days are lonely, they weep sore at night, with none to comfort. He has inter and intra-personal relationship with these widows. He knows them by name. It shows more concern and reality towards the story. This is more than a fictional work. This is real.

 

Just like the Greek tragedies that use Chorus to introduce the reader to the unknown world, he/she is about to experience. Bayo uses a poem. The poem is like a lonely voice singing out mournfully from the wilderness. It attracts passer-by ears with its kind of moody and sieved words. It pierces into the reader’s mind, changes feelings. It leaves one with no option than to unravel the mysteries behind its call.

Poetic Bayo opens the atmosphere of the novel with a tuneful and flavoural aura piece of poetry.

The persona of the poem tells us her condition for fourteen and four full moons, stereotypical ways in which African folks count their years before the introduction of clock. The appearance of moon and its size helps them to record date. She becomes very sad and in melancholy mood regrets the death of her loved one. The figure of speech in line 5, 6 and 7 prompt us to see how sorrowful she becomes “as her courage melts into thin air like the empty promises of her husband’s next of kin…”

 

Nine full moons ago, a shooting star zoom. The people of Kufi hear the go-away bird hoots a sad mournful tune on the Iroko. The meaning of all these are very clear to Yaremi. Ajumobi dies. Yaremi ponders heavily because she knows the humiliation and reproaches she will receive from the people of Kufi.

 

“Ajumobi did not die an abominable death. No! He lived like a man and died like a man.” Yaremi is thankful

 

Yet, the villagers must associate the death with something evil from the wife. As superstition may have it, all eyes follow every footstep she takes with hostile closeness. And all ears listen, ready to catch her every word in a set-trap.

 

“These are lonely days indeed. Yaremi feels thoroughly abandoned like a stone at the bottom of a lake.”

 

Now alone in the world, Yaremi prepares heaps and raises crops, all by herself- labours hour after hour, under the sweltering heat. Here comes Woye her little grandchild who stays with her.

Embedded with African beliefs and folklores, Bayo gathers all the lives of African literature together into one artistry piece. He gives us varieties of sorts through story, songs and epic practices.

 

The author drives our ride down to the Road of Life, where we spot the three widows. Due to the nature of this road, carved and left for widows. They always mutter their inner thoughts into the oblivion of solitude and loss of dignity and of status.

 

“Our hairs are matted and unkempt, no necklace and no earrings. The world looks at our elongated necks and chucks. We are the subjugated people of the world with no hope and no serenity.”

 

Each one of the widows narrates their savaged experience. They begin to console themselves with words of self-pity and self- assurance at last.

 

“When everything is over and we cast off these black garments, we will dance again”

 

Yaremi herself sees things for herself. She sees a human form rises up from the smoke in the kitchen, smiles at her, then floats away the next second, nebulously like a cloud. Yaremi misses her husband’s occasional outbursts and shouts, his orders screamed out in his characteristic manly way.

 

Yaremi gradually manoeuvres her way into a position of reckoning in village affairs, spreading her influence and asserting her personality in pleasant, subtle ways. But such a development never goes well with the men of Kufi. They always feel insulted. And so, most of the village men in Kufi resent Yaremi for her self-conceit and loath her for what always come out of her mouth, by way resistance of them. Times without number, Yaremi tells the men what they hate to hear.

 

The like of Ayanwale, Olonade and Lanwa, for instance, have several times try to impress Yaremi with sweet talk and stories of their wonderful achievement. Yaremi rebuffs them finally. Yaremi wonders if she is not gradually becoming a man, strange as that is, her gait becomes restive. Her voice now is authoritative and sharp.

 

What she contends with and endure are all beyond the woman- the heat, the worries, the pressures from men, the distress and the agony of loneliness. Time ripens for Yaremi to choose a new husband, time for her to cast off the robes of widowhood according to the demands of tradition. Yaremi refuses to select any of the new suitors, a resistance demonstration of her love for Ajumobi. Segi comes back into Kufi and unannounced pledge and support for Mama.

 

“No! No second marriage for Mama! At what age and at what period of life?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

Nine full moons ago, a shooting star zoom. The people of Kufi hear the go-away bird hoots a sad mournful tune on the Iroko. The meaning of all these are very clear to Yaremi. Ajumobi dies. He goes to join his maker. He goes to heaven. One by one, the mourners leave, leaving Yaremi to sulk the anguish of a private sorrow, secretly, follows the extended family mockery on her. Yaremi’s two daughters, who used to keep her company, have been given away in marriage. Segi marries Wande, the nimble-footed palm wine tapper from Olode, while Wura marries Apon, the blacksmith.

Yaremi’s only son, Alani is an expert furniture carpenter who now lives in Ibadan- far away from his mother. Now alone in the world, Yaremi prepares heaps and raises crops, all by herself- labours hour after hour. She cuts the bushes around the family compound and appeal to the village men, especially to Uncle Dayo’s assistance.

 

Yameri shouts to Woye, her little grandchild, who stays with her. Yaremi complains that Woye is a lazy boy, the leader of the lazy boys in the village. She threatens to crack the whip down in terrific speed and Woye pleads. At work, Woye sings.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

Yaremi has a kitchen, where she spends a great deal of her time washing plates, boiling water, frying meat, arranging things. Yaremi’s kitchen is the traditional home of the engulfing smoke where vegetables are diligently chop and cassava flour meticulously sieved. At evening times, the thuds used to raise yamful cacophonic squeaks, which would resound all through Kufi and its neighbouring villages.

Yaremi turns her mouth to the wind and sings a song ligten the burden of cooking. Women of Kufi are powerful singers. Songs to them are a means of expressing consent and dissent, a means of intimidating rivals and vexing opponents. Yaremi’s song is the song of the flaming errand boy of the kitchen, spreads its one thousand red tongues round the anus of the black clay pot. Yaremi stirs her corn dough, thwacks the okra soup simmering in the clay pot on fire with her slender ladle. Morning meal is well on its way to give new strength and hope to her and little Woye.

Yaremi looks almost untounched by age, tall, with a slight elegant stoop and an alert gait. She laughs to scorn the lazy maidens lumbering under heavy loads of fuel wood several times.

 

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

The narrow river road at Kufi upon which the high foliage sprinkles drops of sunlight is the widow’s road. This lonely road slopes right in front of the old St. Andrew’s Church building. The road thenceforth meanders through stony pavements and crooked laterite. It is slippery and lacerated with gulley. Here on this road, widows are free to raise their voices like birds. It is their habit to sing improvised songs of sorrow. They shed tears for the same purpose and laugh hollow laughter. Three widows before Yaremi trudge this road and discuss the issues of interest. They talk how dirty their hairs are. How they possess no necklace and earrings. How, the world looks at them and wicked gossips that trail their movement. The widows hear a beat from a neighbouring village. They console themselves with words of pity and self-assurance. One of the widows condemns their attire. One by one the three widows return to their various houses in the village with their water jars.

 

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

Yaremi never thought of joining the league of village widows. Yaremi sits alone at the back of her house, presses a threaded needle on an old quilt. She finishes the last stitch on the quilt with an intricate knot and smiles as she remembers the old adage—one stitch in time. Yaremi scoops a hole in the ground to bury the discarded husks of palm kernels, which cracks the previous day. The joy of work shows on her face. She does five different works together. Works to Yaremi has become medicine against loneliness and frustration.

Yaremi tells Woye stories of her childhood to fight away boredom. Woye is always excited to hear stories of the brave children of his grandmother’s village during the good old days. Yaremi tells Woye how little children used to spend long periods gazing in wonder at the enigmatic rainbow arc in the sky. She tells Woye how kids lick their dripping noses with their tongues and eat with both hands unwashed. Woye enthralls.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

Woye is in a very good mood. His grandmother watches him at play, with keen interest, smiles radiantly. Woya engages himself in hundred activities all at once without the slightest trace of fatigue. He begins to kick orange football on bare ground and dribbles his playmates round and round. He spins his old bicycle wheel at top speed. Yaremi muses. He plays and chases the chick home from the feeding ground with a palm frond. A hawk hovers in the sky and tears down fiercely. Woye watches the hawk swoops down in acrobatic aerial maneuvering. It captures a prey and Woye runs in great fear and calls his grandmother to protect him. Yaremi dresses up the stump of an old tree right in front of the house, like a man. She gives the step two outstretched arms, one leg, and an unusually long neck, then an oversize cap to make it appear like some kind of sullen-looking monster. The people of Kufi are ever suspicious of all feathered creatures, hawks especially. They are suspicious of the round-faced owl with the big eye, neighing in the cool night wind. Yaremi’s name is always linked with the subject of human beings transforming into feathered creatures.

 

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

All through night and day, past events keep on tugging at Yaremi’s mind. Her sleeping room remains calm in the dead of the night. Yaremi opens her eyes and begins to count the wooden rafters one after the other. The light in the room finally goes off; Yaremi lays quietly on her bed listening, with closed eyes, to the echoes of her memory, turns repeatedly in her mind. Yaremi becomes the beginning and the end of all issues in her own private little world. Her liberty is intact. Nobody governs her anymore on anything. She retires to bed when she likes and needs no hurry again to return to the village from the brook. Yaremi is now completely on her own and she is so unhappy about it. She very much wants to feel loved again, to feel supported, protected and looked after. Everything at home serves to keep Ajumobi’s memory alive: the sitting room, the sleeping room, the garden, and the backyard. Ajumobi never hurries while loading his gun in preparation for nighttime expeditions. Ajumobi sits alone with both legs stretched out on the ground at the back of the house tending his gun. He slips out of the compound quietly and the next thing to hear is the sound of his gun booming in the distance. Yaremi closes her eyes briefly and imagines her man standing up from the grinding stone, holding his cutlass up to the rays of the sun. Everything keeps on remaining Yaremi of her man. His name touches a deep chord in her. Ajumobi’s heavy familiar voice re-echoes in Yaremi ears. She sees his face as clearly as the image on a crystal ball. Here is Ajumobi’s hunting dog pushes its warm muzzle against Yaremi’s legs, hopes for a loving pat. Here now are the house rats, having a field day with nobody to check their advances. Ajumobi is always in absolute control of his household. Yaremi remembers the loud voice of her husband.

 

Yaremi and the other village women used to chuckle as they listen to their boastful husbands. And they always wonder why men are so superb, and so magnificent, so splendid and so audacious to be able to embark on all those impossibilities of life and perfectly achieve them. She remembers Ajumobi promises.

 

 

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 

Yaremi squats on a bamboo slat in front of the house, idly watches passers-by, and absent-mindedly listens to the incoherent evening sounds of the village. She stares at the sky and sees it pulsating with countless blinking lights. She sees the moon spreads its soft lavish beam like a new mat over Kufi. Moonlit night in Kufi is a time bats fly low and the barking of village dogs pursuing the cats grow more and fainter in distance. The children of Kufi are always excited. Various unbridled thoughts begin to assail Yaremi as she sits watching the moon. She sees the curve, the disc, the cliff, the cater, and the empty heart of the moon. She makes nothing out this… her husband is still the issue. He remains the issue for a long time to come. Yaremi’s eyes well up in tears as she rummages through the sweet and sour of the life she goes through with this man- her husband. In Kufi, wife beating is common. It provides outlet for husbands’ sense of powerlessness and frustration, in the face of grinding poverty. Yaremi sees things for herself. She sees a human form rises up from behind the smoke in the kitchen, smiles at her, then floats away the next second, nebulously like a cloud. Yaremi misses her husband’s occasional outbursts and shouts, his orders. Yaremi tries to put her long flow of remembered images behind. She fights desperately to replace despair and frustration with hope and self-assurance. Early the following morning, she retires into her dyeing yard. Market day is three days away and there is so much work to do. She places the indigo cakes inside a small pot, underneath another pot that is perforated, containing ash. Yaremi sprawls dejectedly as she lies on her bamboo bed. This is a very cold night, the time all other lucky women of Kufi village enjoy the company of their husbands. A sudden sensation surges through Yaremi’s veins, warms her body up and she laughs. Her bamboo bed cracks. She remembers her man. How things used to proceed between them on cold night. She feels a presence and a familiar breathing. She immediately launches into fresh spate of rapturous reminiscences… yaremi ends her rapturous reminiscences with a frown on her face. She wakes up. Men of Kufi try to take advantage of Yaremi and Yaremi is not for chap display. Yaremi several times tells the hustling men of Kufi village.

 

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

One wooden tray might not be enough to contain all Yaremi intends to carry to the market. She reaches for an old one and washes with soda soap. She packs the taffeta cloths in neat pleats on the two trays. She gets for Woye a smaller one, which she knows not heavy for the little boy. It is their habit to stop briefly at Fadina village, which is about halfway between Kufi and Oyedeji. At the market, their customers are always waiting to receive them and to purchase what they considered the best of taffeta cloths. Yaremi calculates each market day, what her overall gain will amount to. The three trays contain forty taffeta rolls. Yaremi smiles, but this time around she resolves she is not going to sell taffeta to village customers on credit. She learns her lesson. On the wall of her room are small chalk marks, indicate the amount she has outstanding with her debtors. She has debtors spread over a number of villages in the district. They come to solicit for credit purchase of taffeta begging Yaremi. But once they get what they want, that is all. They vamoose and reappear another day only to begin to appeal afresh to Yaremi for a rescheduling of debt-payment giving two hundred new reasons why they have defaulted. The debtors’ three market days spill over to four and to five market days. Fresh reasons advance by them to press for new repayment days. Some of the debtors could be shamelessly desperate. There is not much gain when customers purchase taffeta on credit. For some time, the little boy is sick. It is high fever. And several times in the night, he sleep-walks, calls out loud the name of his Mama, expresses the wish to return to her in Olode village.

Innumerable Images of gloom oppress Woye in dreams, in the past few days. He sees shadows everywhere and hears echoes in midnight hallucinations. Woye used to remember the details of his dreams. Yaremi lays Woye on an old mat and drapes a thick Kijipa over him. She warms his hands on a clay mug of hot water.

 

Woye’s legs dither weakly. His feet seem to have gain extra weight. He is racked by bouts of coughs and is sweating profusely. A stitch stabs his ribs. But the little boy must not die. Yaremi very well knows this. The whole of Kufi will be on her if Woye dies. Each time Yaremi notices a change, suggestive of sickness in Woye, she always is naturally worried and ready to do anything in this world to please the little boy.

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

The women of the village rise to their daily round of labour and toil. They are workaholic. They are never time-conscious. They rise with the sun and sleep with the moon. It is not clear to most women of Kufi, which is the best choice of life—life of polygamous rivalry, under absolute control of the man, or that of monogamous equality with the man. A good number of the village women secretly envied Yaremi for her acquired liberty and freedom, and for what she actually is—a comfortable woman, courageously copes with the challenges and disappointments of life—and so generous to everybody. Yaremi donates bowls of cassava-flour and perches of locust beans to her colleagues in the village.

Yaremi gradually manoeuvres her way into a position of reckoning in village affairs, spreads her influence and asserts her personality in pleasant subtle ways. But such a development never goes well with the men of Kufi. They always feel insulted. Most of the village men in Kufi resent Yaremi for her self-conceit and loath her for what always come out of her mouth by way of resistance of them. Yaremi tells the men what they hate to hear. To the men, this is one woman, who should be dealt with decisively. But there are few of them in the village who find Yaremi irresistible. Ayanwale tries to impress Yaremi with sweet talk and stories of his wonderful earthly achievements in the entertainment world. Olonade is the second man; he dazzles Yaremi with his exploits in the art of creative venture. Lanwa is the third man to engage Yaremi in a play of courtship and affection.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TEN

 

Yaremi wonders if she is not gradually becoming a man. Her gait becomes restive. Her voice is authoritative and sharp. Woye always watches his grandmother curiously- with confusion in his mind. Grandma is becoming more and more impatient and short-tempered. Her hands are hard, arid, and dry like the tanned Kano leather in the sun. She holds the hand of another woman of the village in a friendly embrace on the crooked footpath leading out to the stream, the woman screams in pain. One day at the ebu, Yaremi poises in a manly way, like a hunter getting ready to load the gun for a nighttime expedition. Lately, Yaremi swears oaths and shout epithets, like a man, on identified wife snatchers of the village. She yells on the self-acclaimed village entertainer. She pours out women’s scorn and touts to Olona. She tells Lanwa to stop preaching the sermon of old people’s custom and tradition to her. Times without number Ajumobi speaks to Yaremi in dreams with soft words, serenading her like music. To Yaremi, Ajumobi is always nearby and within earshot- like somebody behind a closed door eavesdropping in the next room. Time is ripe now for Yaremi to choose a new cap to wear. Time now for her to casts off the robes of widowhood and settle down finally with a new husband, according to the demands of tradition.

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

ROGBA, the village flute player presses the slim neck of his lips and an entrapped air inflated the elastic skin of his lft and right cheeks. The last cap-picking ceremony takes place ten years back, when three widows of the village- Fayoyin, Dedewe and Radeke choose new men to replace their dead husbands. But today’s ceremony carries with it a noticeable pomp. The crowd is ready; the village chanters brace up; the flute man is on the alert. Everything goes like clockwork at the village square. The Elders nod their heads in satisfaction… Dedewe, Fayoyin and Radeke sit among the crowd and mumble prayers for their young colleague. They know how difficult it is going to be, closing an old familiar chapter of life and opening a new unknown chapter. They visited Yaremi at home the previous night and counsel her, pledge their solidarity and support. A long wooden bench is placed under the tree shade with three traditional caps displayed on it. Yaremi for a length of time stands listening and watches undecided as to what should be done. She takes unsure steps towards the wooden bench where the three caps are displayed. Yaremi turns round and bows to the elders who sit speechless and overwhelmed. She grimaces at the three widows and leaves everybody under the tree gazing in petrified stupidity. The angry murmur of the crowd follows her; vibrate like the discordant note of a distant music. Yaremi refuses to pick any cap.

 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

 

A body of water settles inside Yaremi’s eyes like a lake, it rolls down her cheeks in rivulets and breaks off into tributaries. These are tears of anxiety and fear. This is a time of tension and period of uncertainty. Yaremi’s popularity begins to wane because of her sustained rigidity. She appears to be fast losing favour with everybody. The people begin to avoid normal interactions with her. Villagers are reluctant now to exchange pleasantries. It is now men’s habit to mumble words of displeasure to depress her. She conceives the notion to pack out of Kufi and takes refuge with a friend in the distant village of Lamuyan. She also considers the option of relocating, to live, in turns, with her three children at Olode, Apon and Ibadan. Yaremi is sure she will triumph in the end over the forces of evil. It becomes Yaremi’s habit to tend her husband’s grave. Yaremi knows it is better to pack out of Kufi than to wait to face humiliations from villagers and degradation from suitors.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THIRDTEEN

 

Yaremi is not sure for how long she will be able to hold out more and retain her uncompromising mien, in the face of mounting village opposition. She is deeply saddened by her own rocklike inflexibility. A week after the cap-picking incident, Segi breezes into Kufi, unannounced, pledges unflinching support and cooperation for Mama. Of all of Yaremi’s children, Segi is the most outspoken and the most daring. As first-born, Yaremi and Segi have always been one of love, mutual trust and friendship. Yaremi occasions in the years past shares confindential moments with Segi. Mother and child consider the issues for several hours and at last vote solidly against a second marriage. Woye spends hours sorting cast-offs and checks out bottle lids from discarded old handbags. He is happy to see the ghostly gaze of his own wobbling figure popping back at him as he looks into the clear water inside Mama’s big calabash bowl. The curiosities of pre-school age are now creeping steadily into Woye’s daily programmes and activities. He blows the whistle Segi brings for him. Early the following morning, Segi is ready to return to her husband’s village at Olode. Her brief visit to Mama comes to an end. Woye stands by his mother, clutches at her garment, so that she will not escape and leaves him behind in Kufi. A determined expression becomes visible in Woye’s eyes, as he begins loading his luggage. It is obvious that the little boy secretly longs for his parents’ home at Olode and badly wants to be enrolled in school. All through, Granny sits speechless, stares in silence. She is deeply impressed by Woye’s demonstration of intelligence but very confused at the little boy’s sudden decision to leave absent-minded, Granny takes up a needle and begins to stitch the loose lining on an old taffeta buba.

 

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

Timely appearance of her son, Alani, Yaremi almost concludes plans to pack out of Kufi. The sudden exit of Woye is to her like the loss of a vital part of the human body. Yaremi’s only son has been completely enmeshed in the intricate trappings of the metropolis, where people nurse empty hopes and succumbe to vain cosmopolitan delights. His father’s friend, Uncle Deyo, thoroughly displeases with his appearance, describes him as a ‘freak’. He is scolded for keeping away from his father’s properties, for his carefree attitude towards the legacy left behind by Ajumobi, and is nagged for his unwillingness to identify with his mother in her present predicaments. The road to Ajumobi’s farm is a narrow crooked track beneath a row of tall palm trees, stretches out into an open forest. Uncle Deyo leads the way. Alani tumbles reluctantly after, with the slow, ungraceful gait of a city man. They go past a farmland, obviously uncultivated for several years, which become a formless mass of brown jungle. They shade their eyes from the fierce glare of the mid-day sun and gaze out in silence over the expanse of land in front. Uncle Deyo shows Alani his father’s land. For Alani and his father’ friend, it has been a long day ramble on the farm. Back in the village, Alani calls his mother aside to talk to, delves into long preamble on his eventful life in town. Yaremi waits patiently for her son to come finally to the main issue, mumbles a quick, silent prayer under her breath. Alani begins to put on his dress and to prepare his traveling bag. His mother watches him, unbelieving. He brings out two loaves of bread, a tin of corned beef and large size custard and gives them all to his mother. He tucks some amount of money inside the old woman’s palm, promises he will not be long in coming back to give her more money. Yaremi immediately goes into a swoon! The shock of Alani’s strange reactions is too much for her to bear. The village Elders compounds her problem the following day when they announce a number of punitive measures on the issues at stake. Yaremi contravenes traditional widowhood injunctions and is to be punished accordingly. The villagers instruct to ostracise her and avoid her like a leper. Her husband’s property is to be immediately confisticated. She is to begin packing her things now, in preparation for the exile, which they resolve to impose on her. Her heart thumps hard with deep-seated resentment of everything: the culture, the village elders, and the suitors. Everything! Everybody! She throws off the ipele, which circles her neck. Her eyes dim with tears of accumulated injustice, and a strange outlandish smile plays on her jaded lips.

 

 

 

 

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

Written in third person point of view, Bayo sometimes allows the characters to express themselves through the act of dialogue. Aesthetically, each character represents a stereotypical African folk figure, with distinct behaviour and agrarian pattern of life.

 

LANGUAGE

The language of the text is refined and right on its context. Native words and names in the text are italicized for reader’s understanding.

 

STYLE

The style is traditionally rich and culture-based with folk practices embedded in form of songs, folktales, proverbs, chants, touts and art.

 

 

 

 

CHARACTERIZATION

 

YAREMI

 

The main protagonist of the story is the wife of deceased Ajumobi, mother to Wande, Wura, and Alani and grandmother to Woye. She is the latest widow in Kufi. An industrious and hardworking woman, she prepares heaps and raises crops crops. Yaremi’s main job is dying taffeta cloths in indigo solution at her yard to secure ready cash. She faces humiliation and battles loneliness in the novel after her husband dies.

 

AJUMOBI

 

Yaremi’s deceased husband, who has never been in a hurry while loads his gun, in preparation for night time expeditions. He slips out of the compound quietly and next thing to hear is the sound of his gun. Ajumobi is a boastful hunter. He rules the animal world. With razor sharp eyes, he catches movements of all creatures nibbling in the forest of Kufi.

 

THREE WIDOWS

 

DEDEWE

 

One of the three widows, she used to cry all night brooding over the humiliation she suffers at the hands of her husband’s relatives. When her husband dies, they sit her down alone by the side of her husband corpse, which lies on a wooden slab in the inner apartment of a dark room and ask her to confess her sins.

 

FAYOYIN

 

The second widow, they give her libation to lick when her husband dies. They hold it firmly to her lips, to purge her of all the sins they insist she committed. They sprinkle cold water on her head, to soften the texture of her hair. A barber is summoned who quickly set to business. In the course of prolonged weeping, Fayoyin loses her voice.

 

RADEKE

 

The last of the three widows, Radeke husband dies, she kneels before the dead body and strings of dirges run out of her dry throat. Radeke sings the widow’s traditional song of innocence and lamentation. They curse her; they think Radeke is the killer of her husband.

 

 

WOYE

 

Yaremi’s grandchild, son to Segi, he is Yaremi’s companion. Woye engages himself in a hundred activities all at once, without the slightest trace of fatigue. He kicks orange football on bare ground and dribbles his playmates round and round. He spins his old bicycle wheel at top speed along the village lanes. During work time Yaremi used to shouts in the heat and excitement of work. She calls Woye the leader of lazy boys.

 

 

AYANWALE

 

The self-acclaimed village entertainer, a very successful traditional drummer, he talks to his drum every minute and whose drum talks back to him every second. He tries to impress Yaremi with sweet talk and stories. He is the first new suitor.

 

 

OLONADE

 

 

The village wood carver, he carves the image of Vengeance Divinity at the village gate. He tries his luck, dazzles Yaremi with his exploits in the art of creative venture.

 

 

LANWA

 

Lanwa is the third man to engage Yaremi in a play of courtship and affection. He is Ajumobi’s half brother. He is the village farmer with mighty hoe and the giant cutlass. He preaches the sermon of old custom and tradition, the story of kinsman and cousin and half-brother connection with late husband.

 

 

 

SEGI

 

Yaremi’s first daughter given away in marriage to Wande the nimble-footed palm wine tapper from Olode, he climbs the tallest trees in the forest to bring down the freshest wine with the highest cost.

 

 

WURA

 

Wura, Yaremi’s second daughter given to the blacksmith at Apon that owns a granite anvil and two bellows of baked clay- the ‘Iron Man’as they call him, with the fiery furnace. Wura’s husband is nicknamed Sokoti, the blacksmith of heaven.

 

 

ALANI

 

Yaremi’s only son, Alani is an expert furniture carpenter. He lives in Ibadan- far away from his mother. In town, Alani becomes more than just a carpenter. He becomes urbanized, as a result of his long stay.

 

 

 

 

 

THEMES

 

 

Cruel Custom and Tradition

 

The act of wickedness, belittlement, maltreatment, ridicule and crucifixion in form of custom and tradition displays clearly in the widows’ arbitrary black garments, accusations of murder and humiliation. They force Dedewe to sit down alone by the side of her husband corpse and they ask her to confess her sins. They accuse her of jealousy and sin of adultery, defamation and disparagement. The villagers bring Fayoyin and barb her hairs off with sharp blade. In this custom and tradition, women suffer the most and bare the cross for their husband’s early or untimely death, whether they know the cause of their husband death or not. Whatever the women do, attract attention from the villagers, who see them as witch and jinxed human beings.

 

 

 

WINDOWHOOD

 

We cannot ignore the fact that this work of art is a critical examination of deteriorating lives of widows in African communities. The struggles and tribulation the widows receive. Widowhood in African sense is a light hell for women in general. Humiliation, accusation, oppression and depression loom high from the villagers and male counterparts, who should comfort them in their moment of strife. Some men see it as a loose opportunity to satisfy their unquenchable sexual drive; they always come around to molest these widows. Some see it as a free opportunity to inherit the deceased properties and wealth while the last of them see it as cheap means of adding more to their collection of wives. We see segregation and dejection, the whole villagers desert the slippery and sloppy path fir the widows to follow, and nobody cares for them whether they live or have something to eat.

 

 

LONELINESS AND SOLITUDE

 

Throughout the whole text, we feel the absence of Ajumobi in Yaremi’s life. Yaremi’s days are full of unending, somber, and gloomy and desolation- Nobody to talk to her, help her on the farm, help in house activities, show compassion and warms her bed for her. She raises heaps and crops all by herself. Yaremi misses her husband’s occasional outbursts and shouts; his orders screamed out in his characteristic manly way. Yaremi sprawls dejectedly as she lies on her bamboo bed, a very cold night- the time all other lucky women of Kufi village enjoy the company of their husbands. Yaremi’s two daughters, who used to keep her company, have been given away in marriage.

 

 

 

SUPERSTITION

 

Superstition serves as a foundation on which the folks build their lives. They believe that there are supernatural forces and elements in control of their world. Nothing happens without those supernatural elements behind it. The night Ajumobi dies, a shooting star zoom down the empty sky in a long line of fire and go-away bird hoots sad mournful tune on the bough of an Iroko. The folks believe that those events have connection with Ajumobi’s death and at a later time in the novel, the villagers associate Yaremi to that evil flying bird.

The birds are all like transformed witches to the people. They believe that any reaction from a dying man means something good or bad in reality. For, the fact that Yaremi’s husband gives her that last minute parting stare- quick, penetrating and meaningful- means there is an expression of hurt and disappointment in Ajumobi’s dying black eyes. During Ajumobi and Yaremi’s courtship, the people of Adeyipo and Kufi keep close watch on Yaremi and conclude that a marriage with a hunter will lead to bring forth animal babies.

 

 

HARDWORK

 

The entire male in Kufi apart from some few male chauvinists will like to marry a hardworking and industrious woman like Yaremi. Work is music to Yaremi. She spreads out taffeta with laughing eyes and allows the joy of work to radiate on her countenance, singing merrily. Together with Woye, she pounds furiously and drenches in perspiration. It is work, work and work- a workaholic. The will to survive is there; put determination into her bones and vigour. She begins to accustom herself to the hard fact that she really is a widow. She laughs to scorn the lazy maidens lumbering under heavy loads of fuel wood. Yaremi is so generous to everybody, at various times she donates bowls of cassava-flour and perches of locust beans to her colleagues in the village and gives out measures of dry corn and cramps of tobacco powder. She gradually maneuvers her way into a position of reckoning in village affairs.

 

 

Motif

 

Male chauvinism, Survival, Resilience and Determination, Humiliation, Desperation, Despair, Frustration

 

Figures of speech

 

Metaphor {pp.63,77}, Simile {pp.76,77} , Personification {pp.15,60}, Hyperbole

 

LITERARY DEVICES

 

Symbolism, Folktales {pp.61}, Folksongs {pp.8}, Touts {pp.102}, Tease, Proverb, Riddle, Folk Practices {pp.32}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PATIENCE SWIFT

THE LAST GOOD MAN

 

Patience swift is the pseudonym of an author who lives in Cornwall. This is her first novel.

 

 

 

SETTING

 

Cornish Coastline, charming, is a place of attraction for holidaymakers, tourist and boatmen, a small village with a seaside beach, where people spend time with their family and friends.

 

 

 

 

PLOT analysis/overview

 

Love brings responsibility for one another, and the characters of this novel run away from such. The last Good Man portrays the illusory, difficult and spoiled lives of Sam and Isobel. Disillusionment, reckless life style and drunkenness control Sam and Isobel down to the point of realization and change in their lives. They think that isolating themselves from the world and getting rid of old abysmal memories of irrational living will help them. However, one barely escapes the responsibility of life. Isobel fights her mother. She runs away with a boy, who later dumps her. She does odd jobs, works in shop, dole, sits in parks and reads. Sometimes makes love with the sculptor, whose wife normally goes out. On the other hand, Sam, whose only contribution is to work and fight and brawl on building sites and lies stupid with drink in the gutter after an argument with a whore— ‘And so poor Sam had drifted away from people and quietly lived amongst the elements of the world and forget about love.’

 

Yet again Sam tastes love at its sweetness and goodness with Isobel and realizes the joy of companionship with the little girl. Sadly, the new bred love comes to an abrupt and frustrated end. What a tragic existence for both lovers, they die wastefully.

 

This is the story of Sam, who lives at the seaside in the house built by his great-grand father in the late nineteenth century. Over the years away on the building sites when he learns his trade, he learns too about his fellow man and he learns to look at an angle always so that he could go quietly about his work and not attract attention. Sam separates himself from the reality, the normal and usual things of the world. That is one of the reasons; he does not wish to leave the seaside. For although most men are wary of his size and his huge arms and muscled neck which could carry double the weight of bricks on his massive shoulders than any other man. Still, they would goad the great giant when they feel brave in a pack and would stare at him with sneering ugly faces. Sam launches himself furiously at his tormentors and it takes five of them eventually to kick him to the floor and he covers his face with his hands as they kick him until their own exhaustion make them stop.

 

Likewise, Isobel, who is never certain of any idea and her mother always chastise her for it. It makes her hesitant as an adult, doubtful of expressing views when she knows that she has no real feeling for them either way. Isobel is too kind and too compassionate. People find her unorthodox and difficult to comprehend. Randomness forms her life.

 

Sam and Isobel are set of persons that pay less attention to the complexities and arguments of life—in chapter three, of the novel Sam asks the little girl.

 

‘You don’t talk maybe, that’s all right. I talk all the time, but the house here, he doesn’t talk. Some talk anyway, it doesn’t mean anything. Cat doesn’t talk. Talk’s not so special. What’s talk anyway? Talk doesn’t make the porridge, talk doesn’t fix wall at the back of the house’[pp. 47]

 

Sam loses contact with his fellow villagers and does not wish to establish any relationship with them. When he saves the little girl at the seaside, he looks at the girl and thinks that she must belong to someone, although there is no sign of any activity out in the big bay, no lifeboats searching for survivors of a stricken ship, no helicopters overheard. He feels uncomfortable walking into the village with the little girl and she might recognize some or she would be recognized. But he would try; perhaps everything would be done quietly.

In chapter four, we see Isobel, she finds it exciting to think about making love to someone and she makes love with whoever it is out of kindness rather than passion. She thinks she owes it to them. The only thing that concerns her is how she imagines her mother would view it. The older woman disapproves and warns her of the consequences that would inevitably result.

 

‘You think life’s exciting. You think it’s about enjoyment. You think it’s about just doing whatever you want. It’s not. It’s about duty. It’s about responsibility.’ Isobel is still only half way through her A-level course at the local school when for no particular reason she takes off with a boy she has been seeing at nighttime down by the lighthouse on the headland. [pp. 52]

 

Sam sees himself from afar as others might see him and he does not like it. This is what he becomes over the years and it is this lack of self-consciousness, this lack of any awareness, which forms the foundation of his life. His value, his worth exists only in relation to the things about him with which he interacts—the kitchen, the rocks and the bench. He forgets how he might appear to other people. The last person he cares about of course is his mother with whom he lives here at the house for the last year of his life.

 

This is a pure story of the isolated lives. They do not want anybody to intrude into their affairs and privacy. At last Sam gets a sense of companionship, when the little girl occupies herself with some task of her own in Sam’s cottage, rearranges the knives and forks, spoons in the cutlery drawer. She turns a helpmate to Sam. After Isobel visits her dead mother’s house, she wakes up with a strange sense of optimism, a feeling unusual for her that life could present clear possibilities and real options.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

There is commotion on the seaside bay. There is someone dying out in the bay. He is being watch by the crowd on the beach. His kiddies are safe. The man, a tourist it seems, has been swept out by the rip tide trying to reach his two children; his children are in a boat. Sam is a massive man; he stands four and five inches taller than the crowd around him. His words are inappropriate. Sam’s words are not right. The children in the boat will survive; the waves are not huge, and as long as they stay in the boat. But their father is swimming, and he is frantically, hysterically smashing arms and legs into the wave, trying to fight the force of the rip.

 

Sam sees it before. He has been caught in rips himself and knows that they are not dangerous if you show them respect. Just swim gently, let the rip take you, keep quiet. In half an hour, forty minutes, you will be half a mile away, in stiller water and you could swim slowly to the shore along way from the village by then. Never fight it. Sam says. He smiles. “Fancy trying to fight an ocean! A man and he try to fight an ocean! Well, he can try,” but he never seen anyone last more than twenty minutes. He walks past the end of the crowd. Sam helps a small boy set up his bicycle. He picks up his bags and continues to walk. Slowly and calmly climbs out of the village. The noise of the surf on the beach grows quieter in the hot sunshine as he climbs higher and higher up the long hill and out in the middle of the bay the man feels the last strength in his arms disappears into the violent water and he gulps one final. He drowns.

 

Stands on the seafront, Isobel watches the man dies. The crowd mourns. A man yells and asks the lifeboat is so late. Isobel feels very tired suddenly and she realizes she is still clutching the handle of her suitcase. She lets go and sits down on the rim of the case. The noise seems greater now- the crying, the talking, the beating of the surf, and the wail of an ambulance. She feels heat again. Isobel sits like that for a minute or two. She opens her eyes and lifts up her head. She sees lifeboat circling and the crew looking down into the sea. She is going to the hotel, when she sees crowd gathers. It is a normal instinct. She has seen people die before, now here, again in the village where she grows up. It is not how she had imagined returning home after ten years.

 

Sam reaches the top of the hill. He places his bags beside one of the stone seat supports and sits down. He fears about physical decline. He reminds himself that he is still strong. He looks down the steep hill he has just walked up, over the roofs and the streets. He sees one long white building set into the cliffs on the other side of the village. This is the hotel where most of the holidaymakers stay. In the winter, it is mostly empty but in August, there are all the signs of occupation. Sam gazes across the line of the horizon to the western headland. He likes this position. He enjoys the seat. He stands and picks up his two bags again and walks along the rough coast path that takes him away from the road and into the headland. The lifeguard’s radio back to shore that they have seen the drowned man.

There is more sobbing and the man beside Isobel renews his choking cry, his wife pats him absent-mindedly on the shoulder as he weeps. Isobel stands up and moves on up to the hotel. She wears jeans, a cotton shirt and her skin is brown from session at the sunbed back in the city. She returns to where she lived as a child. She barely recognizes the shops and the café with its tables scattered outside on the pavement. She turns the corner to begin the climb up the slope towards the hotel and she sees a young man older than her. She asks the man about a bookshop, she asks the boy whether he owns a bookshop. The boy frown and she changes the talk to the drowning scenario. The boy asks her whether she wants to buy a book. She walks on, pulls her clattering suitcase. When she was at school in the village, twenty year ago, she worked on Saturdays for the old man who owned the shop, arranging the books on the shelves.

 

Isobel knows the intensity of her feelings when she worked in that shop. While the old man dazes in the backroom, she sits beside the till at the counter in the bookish silence with the dust particles twisting in the shafts of sunlight coming through the dirty windows. She read and read. Her parents thought it a good thing that she earns herself pocket money, but they never ask her about the books. She climbs the short slope to the hotel. She reaches the top and thinks about Heloise. She read Heloise in that shop. Isobel goes into the hotel, intense in her heart’s emotions.

 

From the hill, the narrow stony path begins to descend again. Sam sees his house now fifty yards away. A house with whitewashed stonewall around it, Sam’s great-grandfather built it. He has been an entrepreneurial man who carries stone, mortar, lead, copper pipes and glass over the brow of the headland from the village to build house on the cliffs.

 

Sam reaches the house and lays his bags down on the concrete yard. He talks to his house. He points to the cloud. He turns back to the house, opens up the heavy wooden front door and carries his bags into the low ceiling kitchen. He unpacks the few items he needs to buy regularly, milk, butter, cheese into the fridge. He never needs much more than this. All his vegetables he grows himself in a big patch to the west side of the house. He grows tomatoes and cucumbers outside in a glass and lead hot house.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO