Dreams and Realities by Patrick

 

 

This is a story said at the time when the British controlled both the internal and external affairs of the Gold Coast.

 

Kwame Andrews was born to a doctor who came with the oppressors to the Gold Coast. His father, Dr. Evans Andrews, met his mother in the consulting room. She was a young woman of twenty-five with dark olive skin and left her long hair unbraided, which was unusual, because almost all the local girls braided their hair. She came in feeling feverish, with a throbbing headache although she was shivering like a hen plucked out of an ice cold water. The doctor treated the girl, sent her home and advised her to come back for a check-up although he knew she would be right as rain.

 

A week passed but the girl didn’t show up. The doctor grew restless; should he track her down? No, that wouldn’t do any good walking through black men with his white skin. He had a good relationship with the people, yes, but he didn’t want to take the chance of taking someone else’s punishment. A week and some three days after the girl showed up in his office, the girl walked in again, this time not ‘feeling feverish, with a throbbing headache but shivering like a hen plucked out of an ice cold water.’ She came offering her thanks to the doctor for treating her. Her appreciation was indeed evident in the green plantain, the earth coloured cassava and the assorted vegetables on the tray she brought although the nurses did not allow it inside. She allowed her little brother to stay with the items while she came in to see Dr. Evans. The doctor wasted no time then and told her of how he expected her return and laid his cards on the table by telling her to consider a relationship with him.

 

Before Dr. Evans allowed her to speak, he asked her name. Esi was her name, with no surname. The doctor wasn’t surprised in the least, for he hadn’t met any of the locals, except the elites, who knew his or her surname. Esi thought hard and long, as she sat across the white man, who was definitely a specimen of a man. Wasn’t his kind said to take the local girls, impregnate them, leave them to fend for themselves and move on to their next victim? Was he an exception? How was Esi supposed to know that? Nevertheless, she voiced these thoughts aloud. The doctor had to call in a translator because the conversation went on for hours. Good that the doctor had finished for the day, right? In the end, Esi agreed to have a relationship with Dr. Evans as the translator left.

 

Later on, as the relationship blossomed, the doctor employed the services of the translator and learned the local language to the best of his ability. He took great care of Esi and taught her the basics of the English language and Mathematics. Before long, the two became the talk of the town as Esi was spotted in the hospital almost every day when Dr. Evans had finished for the day. Esi’s parents were an understanding couple for were they themselves not of different descents; the father a Ga and the mother an Ashanti? They only hoped that the doctor would not churn out to be one of these imbeciles who went about impregnating and abandoning their own seed.

 

The doctor, with the help of Esi, sought the items he will require for marriage, bought them and presented them formally to Esi’s parents, asking for their daughter’s hand. The couple accepted the items and handed their daughter to the doctor, following the approval by Esi herself, as custom demanded. Esi moved to stay with the doctor and became his wife. Everybody was shocked, yes, and prayed that their marriage would last for Esi was such a good girl that no one sought her humiliation. In addition to be a housewife, Esi attended to small wounds with her first aid kit which her husband provided her and taught her the use of each single instrument. The ones that were above her expertise, she referred immediately to the hospital. A couple of years later, Esi delivered a healthy baby boy with his father’s silky dark hair and her mother’s dark ‘though not that prominent in the boy’ skin.

 

The boy was christened Kwame Andrews, bearing his maternal grandfather’s name. He grew in stature and wisdom and was the apple of not only his parents’ eye but also that of the community. He was sent to school and showed great academic intellect. Though adept in both the local and the English language, Kwame was a very shy and quiet boy. He graduated from the secondary level of education and went on to read Law at the tertiary even though he read General Science in secondary school. His parents advised him to study Medicine and become a doctor like his father for they knew his oratory skills were not anything near extraordinary. But Kwame supposed his father just wanted to him to follow in his footsteps. He was allowed to choose his fate, wasn’t he?

 

He was called to the Bar and became Lawyer Kwame Andrews. He stayed in the city a while and represented a great deal of people, all of which he never won. He lost his credibility and no one ventured near his office even to ask of what kind of activity he had going on there. Kwame was fed up with the city either way and took a bus home. His parents welcomed him and so did the community he grew up in. He began practising his profession in the town and soon his fame of failure spread like a wildfire even to the neighbouring towns. Then came the gossips of the town. ‘He can never be brilliant can his father’, ‘He’s got his mother’s dumbness’, ‘They say he can’t even talk to the judge for a full three minutes without fidgeting or forgetting what it was he himself was saying’! His father died from the grief it caused him and left a fortune to his wife and son.

 

Kwame mourned his father but went back to the court afterwards. He lost as usual and they had emerged out of the courthouse when the men brought in a man who had been bitten by a poisonous snake in the bush a few metres away. Luckily, his mother made him carry a vial from which an antidote can be prepared. Of course, he knew everything about a doctor’s job, his father made sure of that. He prepared the antidote and administered it in time to save the man’s life. Everyone gathered around him, congratulated him and patted him on the back. Kwame couldn’t sleep that night and resolved to honour his father. He went back to tertiary with his father’s money and studied for his doctorate.

 

He returned to his mother and manned the post his father previously occupied. He realised that though it may be true that the path of our dreams lie different from that our parents envision for us, but they may also be right!