THE HARMATTAN WAS COMING IN. Yaw could see dust sweeping up from the hard clay and being carried all the way to his classroom window on the second floor of the school in Takoradi where he had been teaching for the last ten years. He wondered how bad the winds would be this year. When he was five, still living in Edweso, the winds were so strong that they snapped tree trunks. The dust was so thick that when he held out his fingers, they disappeared before him.
Yaw shuffled his papers. He had come to his classroom on the weekend before the start of the second term to think, perhaps write. He stared at the title of his book, Let the Africans Own Africa. He had written two hundred pages and thrown out nearly as many. Now even the title offended him. He put it away, knowing that if he didn’t he would do something rash. Open his window, maybe, let the winds carry the pages away.
“What you need is a wife, Mr. Agyekum. Not that silly book.”
Yaw was eating dinner at Edward Boahen’s house for the sixth night that week. On Sunday, he would eat there for the seventh. Edward’s wife liked to complain that she was married to two men, but Yaw complimented her cooking so often that he knew she would continue to welcome him.
“Why do I need a wife when I have you?” Yaw asked.
“Eh, careful now,” Edward said, pausing his steady food-shoveling for the first time since his wife put his bowl in front of him.
Edward was the maths teacher at the same Roman Catholic school in Takoradi where Yaw taught history. The two had met at Achimota School in Accra, and Yaw cherished their friendship more than he cherished most things.
“Independence is coming,” Yaw said, and Mrs. Boahen sighed one of her deep-chested sighs.
“If it’s coming, let it come. I am tired of hearing you talk about it,” she said. “What good is independence to you if you don’t have someone to cook your dinner!” She rushed off into the small stone house to collect more water for them, and Yaw laughed. He could picture the caption they would put under her name in the revolutionist papers: “Typical Gold Coast woman, more concerned with dinner than with freedom.”
“What you should be doing is saving your money to go to England or America for more schooling. You can’t lead a revolution from behind your teacher’s desk,” Edward said.
“I’m too old to go to America now. Too old for revolution, too. Besides, if we go to the white man for school, we will just learn the way the white man wants us to learn. We will come back and build the country the white man wants us to build. One that continues to serve them. We will never be free.”
Edward shook his head. “You are too rigid, Yaw. We have to start somewhere.”
“So let us start with ourselves.” This was what his book was about, but he didn’t say anything more, for he already knew the argument that would come from it. Both men had been born around the time the Asante were absorbed into the British Colony. Both had fathers who had fought in the various wars for freedom. They wanted the same things, but had different ideas of how to get them. The truth was, Yaw didn’t think he could lead a revolution from anywhere. No one would read his book, even if he did finish it.
Mrs. Boahen came back with a large bowl of water, and the two men began to rinse their hands in it.
“Mr. Agyekum, I know a nice girl. She is still in her childbearing years so there is no need to worry—”
“I should be going,” Yaw said, cutting her off. He knew it was rude. After all, Mrs. Boahen was not wrong. It was not her place to cook for him, but he didn’t feel that it was her place to lecture him either. He shook hands with Edward, and with Mrs. Boahen too, then made his way back to his own small house on the school grounds.
As he walked the mile length of the school grounds, he saw the young boys playing football. They were agile boys, in full control of their bodies. They had a boldness to their movements that Yaw had never possessed when he was their age. He stood and watched them for a moment, and soon the ball came flying toward him. He caught it, and was grateful for that small bit of athleticism.
They waved at him, and sent a new student over to fetch the ball. The boy walked up, smiling at first, but as he got closer, the smile fell from his face and a look of fear replaced it. He stood in front of Yaw, saying nothing.
“Do you want your ball?” Yaw asked, and the boy nodded quickly, staring still.
Yaw threw the ball at him, more forcefully than he meant to, and the young boy caught it and ran.
“What’s wrong with his face?” Yaw heard him ask as he approached the others, but before they could answer, Yaw was already walking away.
—
It was Yaw’s tenth year of teaching at the school. Every year was the same. The new crop of schoolboys would begin to flower the school grounds, their hair freshly cut, their school uniforms freshly pressed. They would bring with them their timetables, their books, what little money their parents or villages had been able to collect for them. They would ask each other whom they had for this or that subject, and when one said Mr. Agyekum, another would tell the story that his elder brother or cousin had heard about the history teacher.
On the first day of the second term, Yaw watched the new students amble in. They were always well-behaved children, these boys, having been handpicked for their brightness or their wealth in order to attend school, learn the white man’s book. In the walkways, on the way to his classroom, they would be so boisterous that it was possible to imagine them as they must have been in their villages, wrestling and singing and dancing before they knew what a book was, before their families knew that a book was a thing a child could want—need, even. Then, once they reached the classroom, once the textbooks were placed on their small wooden desks, they would grow quiet, spellbound. They were so quiet on that first day that Yaw could hear the baby birds on his window ledge, begging to be fed.
“What does the board say?” Yaw asked. He taught Form 1 students, fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds mostly, who had already learned to read and write in English in their lower-level classes. When Yaw had first gotten the post, he had argued with the headmaster that he should be able to teach in the boys’ regional tongues, but the headmaster had laughed at him. Yaw knew it was a foolish hope. There were too many languages to even try.
Yaw watched them. He could always tell which boy would raise his hand first by the way he pushed forward in his seat and moved his eyes from left to right to see if anyone else would challenge his desire to speak first. This time, a very small boy named Peter raised his hand.
“It says, ‘History is Storytelling,’?” Peter answered. He smiled, the pent-up excitement releasing.
“?‘History is Storytelling,’?” Yaw repeated. He walked down the aisles between the rows of seats, making sure to look each boy in the eye. Once he finished walking and stood in the back of the room, where the boys would have to crane their necks in order to see him, he asked, “Who would like to tell the story of how I got my scar?”
The students began to squirm, their limbs growing limp and wobbly. They looked at each other, coughed, looked away.
“Don’t be shy,” Yaw said, smiling now, nodding encouragingly. “Peter?” he asked. The boy, who only seconds before had been so happy to speak, began to plead with his eyes. The first day with a new class was always Yaw’s favorite.
“Mr. Agyekum, sah?” Peter said.
“What story have you heard? About my scar?” Yaw asked, smiling still, hoping, now, to ease some of the child’s growing fear.
Peter cleared his throat and looked at the ground. “They say you were born of fire,” he started. “That this is why you are so smart. Because you were lit by fire.”
“Anyone else?”