The Days of Bliss

Very often, I hear people discuss their childhood and teens with nostalgia. They say they didn’t have as many distractions and were less ‘computerized’ and the world was simple and different from today. I don’t think they had as much fun as I had in my time though but maybe I am wrong. In any case, who can tell? We can only tell what we did with our own time before we passed it on to others in their own time. But I think our time was beyond good. It was bliss! If you think I am bluffing, come along with me for a ride…..

We were half naked and never liked a bath. When forced to, we bathed only our bellies. We ate zom in the afternoon, Tuo zaafi with ‘wogta’ in the evening and leftovers of these in the morning. We chewed the millet roasted, and the groundnuts raw, dry, fresh, roasted or boiled. We ate Bambara beans, sweet and frafra potatoes, and the garden eggs in their season. We fished in the streams and ponds with hooks, nets, and traps. When the stream dries, we hunt the clever long-hopping frogs that hide in the deep sands, tracing them through the signs in the sand in the early morning. We hunted lizards and birds and cooked them in tin cans under the huge fig tree. We swam in the pools and dugouts. We drank straight from dams and ponds and streams unsullied. We dug roots and gathered fruits and leaves.

Read: Village Boy Impressions: How to Help Ghana (And Yourself)

We tethered the goats and sheep in the morning before school and watered them in the afternoon after school. We pastured the cattle and milked them in the morning and in the afternoon when the shepherds gather at the campgrounds with the cattle. We mixed the milk with zom or rubbed it in our palms and licked it and all the dirt there with relish. And when the bulls fought, we sang their praise and shouted their appellations. Then we had to ‘cover their feet’ (that is, to wrestle with the other person whose bull fought your bull). We trained the young bulls to be ridden without a harness and it was a hard job indeed.

We didn't have cell phones. We didn’t have facebook. We played socks ‘football’, stay, hide and seek, agbeli-gbeli, ampe, by-classes and many more. An all-time favourite was always mummy and daddy. This we enacted to the amusement of the real ones. Boys never walked but always raced! We raced with our ‘wheels’ and tin cars and never knew tiredness. We wore oversized shorts and walked barefooted. We trapped birds and we reared them. We also bought and sold them in the market. We built tin cars and elaborately designed bird cages from which the birds sang sweet melodies. We told stories of Asuom and Apiuk under the moonlit night and laughed and sang ourselves to sleep. We ‘cut coat’ to school in the morning because of the harmattan and rubbed in the precious shea butter.

Read: Village Boy Impressions - School Break

We recited the “Awa fayida” and sang “God blessa omeland Gaayina” at ‘parade’ before marching into class every morning. Our favourite marching song was “Waya waya ni kookoo, waya waya ni kookoo, errviry boodi, errviry boodi, bring yor calabus, bring yor calabus, Maame Alhassan kookoo, waya waya ni kookoo!” There were other songs or incantations with strange words and expressions that even today, I do not know the meanings. In class, we sat on low stools carried from home or laid on our bellies and wrote in the sand. We started lessons by reciting our times-table. We were whacked in the head with a ruler if we didn’t recite it well and correctly. Everything was written on the blackboard; examples, notes, class tests, end of term exams and all. At break time, we run and played in the yard or chased a ball of sorts in the pack. We teased the knuckleheads in class and fought each other on the way home after school. At 12:00 noon we went to assembly and closed. We sang “Now the day is over, night is drawing near” with our own words and expressions that came straight from ancient magical spells and incantations. We marched on 6th March and received ‘foroforo’ and toffees.

We didn’t have TV and when it finally came, TV was GTV. And we had to walk quite some distance to watch it from a neighbour’s window or yard. We loved ‘Cartoon Network’ especially Captain Planet, Scooby Doo, Tom and Jerry and the others. We also loved ‘Wuukong/Shiifo’ and later we learnt it was actually titled, ‘Journey to the West’. We liked Maame Dokonor’s ‘By the fireside’ and hated ‘Talking Point’ with real passion. We knew all the commercials by heart and called them adverts! We sang or talked along with them and we filled up a good measure of the words and expressions with our own inventions. When Ghana played football, the whole village turned out to watch and we the little ones squeeze to the front and sat on the bare ground cross-legged.

Read: Village Bog Impressions: Cracking Groundnuts

Girls learnt to grind the grains, to cook, and clean and wash and fetch water from mummy and boys learnt to feed the chickens, and clean the hen-coop, and tether the goats, and weed on the farm from daddy. The girls took the pots and pans to the stream to scrub and never returned until mummy climbed the rooftop to shout and scream or failing in that marched to the stream with a stern face and a cane in hand and chased them home.

We were too shy to mingle with girls at first and would fight with any girl who was called our lover – yes we did! In later years, we mingled more and grabbed their budding breasts when they’re not looking then we took to our heels to escape from the expected slap in the face. We prayed they didn’t report to any adult and if they did, we get the whip and a hot tongue. With the willing ones, we cuddled in secret and wrote them secret love letters. Many were copied from some hopeless pamphlet or written for us by more intelligent boys. This was always done on the blind side of parents, teachers and all adults lest a boy gets whipped and asked to carry stones in school or weed the compound.

We knew the lover girls and boys in school and hated that stubborn girl who scorned our attentions because the Maths or French teacher was playing with her. She sends her homework to him alone in the office or in the corridor and is never caned in front of the class like the rest of the other silly girls. But she also goes to fetch water for the teacher after school whilst all the other ones go to their homes or linger around with naughty boys. Curiously enough, there were also stupid girls who preferred the hopeless boy in the class to the English or the Social Studies teacher and for this, were always in trouble and never got a good remark. Many a helpless boy has endured much abuse for being in the favour of a silly girl who provokes unholy desires in a shameless teacher. But perhaps the boy who suffered most was the one who had the favour of that one girl that the head teacher had his eyes on. Such a boy was the Lucifer of our time and was whipped at will and shamed for any form of transgression, real or imagined, plain or ambiguous, proven or gossip.

Read: Village Boy Impressions - 6th of March

We all studied hard in those days or at least made a conscious effort to do so but all the days are not equal. We were a mixture of light and dark, stupid and bright, clueless and smart, naive and experience and we knew each other well. And there were many weird moments when despite your best efforts, you are made to look really stupid. Such as;

When a bright student tells the teacher that question 4 has a problem and the teacher says its true but you have already answered it and didn’t see anything wrong with the question; or

When another student asks for a graph sheet, but you are finished and did not see any question that required one; or

When the Maths teacher comes in during the end of term exam and says “skip question 6 and I will rectify it later”, but it is the question you answered first and felt really satisfied with your answer too; or 

When you hear your colleagues asking for more paper when you have not even used half of what you were given. You wonder what they are writing; or

When you hear your friends arguing after the exam whether the answer to question 5 was 35.5% or 36% and your answer was Yaa Asantewaa!

But worse of all was when my Social Studies teacher put this question on the class test: “military governments have done more harm than good in Ghana, do you agree?” and my answer was only a big NO! Nothing more, nothing less!

Those were the days of bliss, yes, absolute bliss!