Dr. Kofi Dankyi Beeko
1 June 2011
opinion
It was a cold night in December in London, England, and the year was 1967. What kept me glued to the party was that on that 31st night, a good number of my schoolmates from Ghana, who had arrived in the various European cities (thanks to numerous scholarship schemes having “boiled” out of Dr. Nkrumah’s grace, and craze for education), had promised to be present. A grand meeting, therefore, and you could even not forget the party per se!
The hall was not sufficiently heated, and worse still, there was only one toilet at the basement of a pre-world-war-II house. I am not sure you would miss it, if you had witnessed it then. Just as I was dithering in my mind, a Nigerian friend, who had loosely said he might join the gathering, “dropped in.”
He told us of a dilemma that evening, when after having suffered a treat at the office (he was asked to come to work earlier than usual that day, because, there was some load of work his company did not want to carry into the New Year). There was a new girl responsible for supplying hot tea or coffee to the workers at the work place. The company paid the bill.
The Nigerian requested “coffee” when the lady asked him, and she wore a broad smile on top! Moments later, the same girl came back inquiringly, “Sir, did you want your coffee black or white?” The irritated Nigerian young man yelled back at the innocent English girl, “so tell me, young lady, colour-bar in coffee too?” Imagine how his anger made his question sound. We are far from another Christmas, having just had one only five months ago.
But, just get ready to share with me, what I just went through a couple of days ago on colour matter. Looking for a publishing house to print some science-material, I stumbled into a basement-firm in a place called Adum in Oseikrom. I was sure I had landed in the same premises, because, two years previously, I had been there for, or perhaps, with the same intention.
The difference between this time and two years ago (let me tell you, because your guess might be wrong), was that the place looked more dilapidated this time around, but at the same time, much, much busier than before. The gentleman that I dealt with on my previous encounters was no longer with the establishment (a phenomenon, not so unusual in our Republic). It did not surprise me, therefore.
An enthusiastic young man sprang up upon my entering the room, which was the last out of four rooms that you would need to enter to start your business. Let me spare you the rigmarole we traversed to reach anywhere. But, in the end, looking at the quality of what had just dropped out of their printer, I was “rude enough” to inquire whether they had a LASER-PRINTER. As if I truly had committed a blunder, the young man yelled back, even if somewhat not very rudely, “A LASER-PRINTER, you asked?”
turning in his direction, and smiling, I said, “Yes, you heard me right, A LASER PRINTER.” “Sir”, turning around again a little bit, “you must meet the owner.” “Why can’t you tell him yourself?” Insistently, I kept on not leaving him alone.
What he did not want to accept at all, when I dared, “In Germany, a printing business the size of yours would have such a printer that I am talking about.
“Hmmm”, he continued, “You are talking of a white man.” It seemed he was prepared to lecture me. “You know, a white man does everything differently and better!” He did not want to accept there could be another opinion. “I was in Paris last year,” he continued. “Do you think you can compare Kumasi to Paris?” Of course not, I said, “Not in any aspect at all, could you compare the two cities.
“But, young man”, I threw it back at him as a question, “can you imagine, one day, Kumasi could become “a Paris” of Africa?” He did not think so, AT ALL. When I tried to call his attention to the fact that Kumasi used to be called “The Garden City,” and that at the time, Kumasi was the most attractive city in Ghana,” he initially said he didn’t believe it.
He later revised it by saying, “it has been said a lot of white people lived in Kumasi then.” That is no longer the case. Our discussion got more interesting, but of a “sadder tinge”, when the 35-year old man with a Degree in Land Economy acquired at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), affirmed that Europe, for example, is nice and prosperous because, “white people dwell there.”
How about America? A number of the dozen young men, who, each in his own way contributed to the debate, had travelled away from Ghana at some stage before. Only one hadn’t been to a university. “How about America?” They were unanimous in their belief that in America, the places predominantly domiciled by African-Americans are not as nice, not as clean, and business not as booming. Why is that so? Opinions differed. A couple thought, “It’s because, we black people are not law-abiding.”
When that was rebuffed with the argument that in America all must obey the law, some disagreed. A young man whose sister lives permanently in BRONX contributed to the discussion this way: “My sister says after the police have visited summonses aplenty, and there is no improvement, they give up.”
I could not challenge her. Many resounded the notion that “it was wrong for Nkrumah to have let the Whites go that early.” So, what is in that saga that progress is in the “Whites?” The debate just won’t go away? There is some pervasive argument that for example if a community has a population advantage of say, 63% whites and 37% blacks (e.g. Brazil), they progress better, and faster. Another scenario is 80% blacks and 20% whites and others. That is bad news, and an example is Nigeria.
A 28-year old among the group I met, asked me why if (God forbid), our Head of State got ill, we would prefer to send him away to a place where medicine is practiced mostly by white people. He seemed to know his facts, and would challenge anybody to prove him wrong, if in South Africa most doctors are not white.
He would swear, the Ace Nelson Mandela is seen by white doctors. (I am not sure of that). The debate could continue endlessly. But, truly, I have had my mind bugged ever since I entered a community to train in the healing profession, and I was not the last by way of order of merit among 160 young men and women across the entire globe.
That I was by no means always at the bottom of the class, as a black man, did not seem to convince the boys I met just last week that black can be superb too. It is, for example, true that since the end of World War II (it would be too complicated to take it any further than that), Africa, or areas populated by black-skinned humans, are the ones that have thrived least?
Then the argument springs out faster than from a rocket, the Middle East has oil! Nigeria has oil too!! Besides Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and lately, Vietnam, don’t have oil. We are oppressed by the whites, and the boys knew (I don’t know from where) that both George Bush Jr. and Obama were quick to visit Ghana, because of the oil. They want to control it, they insisted.
Where we had reached, we had to call for a pause to debate this untiring issue another time. American Presidents fly in just to control our oil. Well, nobody is looking for the scape goat. But, the most advanced countries in the world truly don’t live on oil business. In other words, there are alternatives.
(To be continued…!)
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