BY THE FIRESIDE-Murder In The Village
Posted by AfricanTrumpet Admin | Posted in Education,
In this edition of By The Fireside, the author recounts a cold blooded murder which almost destroyed the calm and serene nature of Jachie; a town in the Ashanti region of Ghana where he grew up.
The quest for quality education had brought us back from Antobam, a village in the Western region of Ghana to Jachie; the hometown of my parents. Jachie was a mid size town with a population of about 1000, which was emerging from its village stature since being founded in the late 1700s. Jachie was a quiet and peaceful village: social miscreants were rare to find. At palm wine joints, some men would exchange unsavory words when the palm wine drink made them tipsy or drunk. The palm tree had multifaceted uses: Its branches were used in the weaving of baskets; its fronts were used for roofing of sheds, while its fruits were utilized for soup and oil. Whenever the palm tree grew taller it was hard to harvest its fruits. This was the best time for tapping its wine potential; the job of which fell on "palm wine tappers". In the first few weeks of wine tapping, the wine drawn from the palm tree was very sweet with very little alcoholic content. This was a delicacy for women and children. After a few days however, the wine became more fermented increasing substantially its alcoholic content; at which time palm wine became a preserve of the men of the town. At Jachie and other outlying towns and villages women who drank were generally looked down upon. Therefore it was not strange that palm wine joints mostly had male audiences.
For the most part, the people of Jachie went about their lives peacefully. Women pre-occupied themselves with cultivation of food crops while men who left the town went to distant places to seek their fortune in cocoa cultivation. My grandparent, Danyansa (literary translated "I depend on my wisdom") built the adobe house in an area popular known as Maakrom; the north eastern part of the town. My grandma told us about this area one evening, while sitting by the fireside that it derived its name from the fact that mostly women household heads settled here. In the evenings the area was the quietest place in the town unless when there was the full moon and the skies were clear. During these times, children played in the alleys and on the main street. Apart from contending with bullies like "boiboi," a young man who delighted in verbal abuse, childhood in Jachie was enjoyable. Boiboi's stock of trade was the assignment of derisive nicknames based on look or behavior. Every man or young man at Jachie had been given such nicknames by "boiboi" and his band of bullies. Apart from these irritations life was serene and beautiful until a tragedy hit. Everything however changed suddenly when Adwoa, a middle aged woman was murdered in cold blood on one cold harmattan morning while harvesting plantain at a farm about five miles away from the town. Depending upon who you were Adwoa could be characterized as friendly, irritating or amusing.
I wondered out loud, why people could be so cruel after the news of her murder spread through the entire village. She had gone to the farm early in the morning to harvest some plantain when he was fatally butchered by what appeared to be a gang of men ticked off by the uncharacteristically vocal nature of Adowa. Rumors began to spread about who could have possibly committed this heinous crime. In few days, the suspects were arrested and arraigned before a magistrate court in the nearby city of Kumasi. No one caught a glimpse of the suspects as they were whisked away to the city at the dusk of dawn. With no modern communication tools like radio, information was passed on from person to person.
The farming season had just begun and women had to form a posse to look out for each other, console one another and potentially ward off any possible attack. While most men in the village focused on cash crop farming in distant places, the women cultivated food crops like cassava, cocoyam and plantain. The women farmers supported one another by producing "yodel like" sounds, the response to which meant the person you were inquiring of was safe and sound.
.The hustle and bustle which accompanied the onset of the farming season appeared to be suddenly grinding to a halt. It was during the month of February when the forest was cleared of its flora and fauna to make way for planting. With farmers practicing bush-fallowing, they allowed the land to fallow for many years; sometimes for over ten years before being cultivated again. By the time lands were cultivated again, it had regained its entire rich nutrient, sparing the farmers the need to apply any artificially manufactured fertilizers.
The murder caused a major panic among the people of Jachie. Farm laborers were hard to find as most people were scared to go to the farms. Why are people so cruel? What did this woman do to be killed? How would we go through the cold harmattan months without her humor? There were many questions but very few answers.
