© RANDOM DESPATCHES
Milestone 16
Just as the protagonist of this book is, in his nation, I feel estranged to not have read this book because it is one of the books which seems like “everyone” but I have read it. I have encountered it since pre-teenage, it was a selected read for some of my friends in their schools (secondary), but I never got to read it until now.
Ayi Kwei Armah is a Ghanian. The book, first published in 1968, is set in his country. It follows the story of a man living in a society where 'only two types of men took refuge in honesty—the cowards and the fools' (pg. 51). The man fits into both categories, on varied accounts highlighted in the narrative. Both identities he bore not by his own telling of himself but based on what the society describes him. He is not tolerated for choosing honesty and diligence, not even in his home. He is a fool because he 'cannot live life the way it is lived by all around him' (pg. 108).
Sir Armah dealt with the content judiciously. He must have made a painstaking effort to produce such a detailed and exhaustive piece on the subject of corruption, as a plague shadowing African nations with Ghana as the case study. He leaves no detail out of the portrait of the corruption, including negligence of duty as a factor, by telling of how the man (the unnamed protagonist) was swept off his feet by mucor on the street.
The pressure to give in to corruption was not limited to the train station where he worked, but was obtainable in his home, and everywhere else in the nation. It appears the man and his friend, Teacher, are the only two found with a clean conscience in the entirety of the country. Quite an estrangement.
The journey which lasted 8 hours and 11 minutes through this book commenced at Udubrae Art Gallery. The art gallery is located just beside the Tin Mining Exhibition Hall in the Jos Museum Compound. It is open to artists who need a workspace and readers alike, at no cost. All you are required to have access to is to register on entry. It was such a nice moment reading there, as I had good imagination of what the train station described in the book was like given that one of the old trains in Nigeria's history lay idle on its track just after the gallery premises. That train, a restaurant and a bar. How fascinating!
Towards the end of the 183 pages, our hero finds some respite. His wife was finally able to celebrate her husband for not going the path of his old friend, a statesman, who suddenly could not stand the light of revelation, not even if clad in a brilliant white shirt and black bow-tie. The problem, however, is that the light which caused the corrupt men to flee into hiding is not so bright as to cast out every shadow. The inscription on the bus which sped past the man, on his return to his heaviness, tells it more succinctly: "THE BEAUTIFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN".
Yes, hope wells up for a "future goodness" in especially African nations as regards stamping out corruption, ineptitude and negligence of duty. Yet, 'the future goodness may come eventually, but before then where were the things in the present which would prepare the way for it?' (pg. 160).
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