As I follow the missionary thread started by Oga Kwabena Akurang-Parry - the name Kwabena echoes that of another great man, the only one who lectured with a smile on his face: Professor Kwabena Nketia and thoughts about him re-turn me to the Black Star nation. I wonder, did Francis Bebey smile in the same way?
The impact of the African–American presence in Ghana cannot be underestimated – from W.E. B Dubois through Satchmo, Malcolm X and James Brown, to Stevie Wonder. It's a long story, about six personal chapters. In the late sixties, early seventies of the last century, hundreds of African-Americans made it to Ghana each year, in quest of their roots. It was also Black Power times. In 1968 I also travelled by road in a Renault car with some friends from Freetown, through Liberia and Ivory Coast to Accra, the Golden City, and saw the so called National Liberation circle in downtown Accra, for myself - returned by air...
In 1970 at a point where Ayi Kwei Armah's "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" was still being celebrated I remember having a long conversation with one of my African-American neighbours in Ghana, Cyprian Lamar Rowe about the relative merits of Chinua Achebe and the new kid on the block, Ayi Kwei Armah. Cyprian, as unctuous as ever "the body is an aesthetic instrument "etc to reflect his very colourful clothing – the colours of the Ghanaian flag, the dashiki, it was the era of the Afro too – Cyprian elevated Chinua Achebe (now with his ancestors in the eternal beyond) far above Aye Kwei Armah who at that point had only written the Beautyful Ones and "Fragments" - in short, his main point was that Achebe opened his eyes to traditional Africa - and of course that too is to be celebrated but thought that Armah - a returnee (biographical heresy there) was viewing his society almost like a stranger, a "Westerner". Some of Armah's later work has put paid to that. One thing that Achebe and Armah have in common is their critique of missionary activity - and here Armah is even more awesome than Achebe, particularly in his venom against missionary Islam in his novel "The Healers"
Ayi Kwei Armah --- On His Work
O. S. Ogede: The question of identity in Ayi Kwei Armah's "Why Are We So Blest?"
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