want to apologise sincerely they wake you very early in the morning. I made my chaps go early in the morning, and it worked.”
Someone in France had asked him whether it wasn’t the uniform that kept him in power. He had said it wasn’t the uniform; it was the quality of integrity.
He was talking about the rights of the people when Mrs. Rawlings came in and in a nice clear voice said, “Lunch.”
We looked at her, but Rawlings went on talking about the difference between power and moral authority. Mrs. Rawlings said with some firmness that we should move, and we did, moving first into a corridor, and then into the splendid dining room where the table could seat fourteen. It was laid with fine bone china. The food was Chinese and Ghanaian: yams and meat and goat stew, with some fish. It was an absolute feast. There were no place settings. Mrs. Rawlings made me sit next to her. Everybody else had to fend for himself. John Mitchell, the Trinidad consul, silent all the while, came at last into his own. He couldn’t conceal his pleasure at seeing the meat stew and the steaming yams. But Rawlings outdid him in pleasure and zest.
We talked about names. Mrs. Rawlings said she had been given an Ashanti name by her father—she was, in fact, an Ashanti princess—and that had caused a certain amount of trouble when, in the fifth class, she had to be confirmed as a Christian. She was asked by her Sunday school teacher about her Christian name. She had no idea what the teacher meant. The teacher persevered: was she Esther, Veronica, Mary, Ruth? She said she had only the name she had. The teacher said she was to stay out of the class until she could show her baptism certificate; she could not be confirmed otherwise.
She telephoned her father. He was enraged. The very next day he came from Kumasi and took her to the headmaster of Achimota. He had the baptism certificate but refused to show it. He said his daughter was baptised with an African name and was going to be confirmed with that name. The headmaster agreed.
Someone at the table asked how Rawlings and his wife had met.
She said they had been childhood sweethearts. Rawlings, full of food at this stage, and now reaching for a dish of Chinese noodles, said, “Nonsense. It took me nine years just to hold your hand. She was an Ashanti princess. While I was from the ghetto.” He looked up. “A nobody.”
“Well,” she said, “you did come to wash our car.”
He laughed, and the moment passed.
CHAPTER 4
The Forest King
HOUPHOUËT BOIGNY had been the enduring president of the Ivory Coast, loved by the French, adored by his people: a man so enduring he could be called a king.
Richmond had heard a marvellous story from his aunt about the way Houphouët had prepared himself for his life of power. Houphouët, in this story, had had a consultation with a great shaman or witchdoctor. Following the advice of this remarkable man, Houphouët had had himself cut into little pieces, and these pieces had been boiled together with some magical herbs in a cooking pot. In that cooking pot at a critical moment the Houphouët pieces had come together and turned into a powerful snake that had to be wrestled to the ground by a trusted helper. The snake had then turned into Houphouët again. The story had a reliable witness: the trusted and powerful helper who had wrestled the snake to the ground. She was Richmond’s aunt, and had been Nkrumah’s cook, no less: Nkrumah the first president of independent Ghana, and one of the great men of modern Africa.
What Richmond had told me would have been told—in various versions—to tens of thousands in the country. It was not disrespectful, as might have been thought; it was by such supernatural or magical tales that the ruler’s myth was kept alive among his people.
It was a tale for believers. I was not a believer. I fell at the first hurdle. In this fairytale the cutting up of the great man was too easy. He was like a worm, soft and uniform in texture; he could be sliced. No bones or muscle or delicate organs met the knife; there was no blinding spurt of blood. Richmond (who had a Danish ancestor) didn’t look for that kind of detail. What was important for Richmond was that the witchdoctor’s prescription had worked. Everywhere in Africa