February 5, 2008
ACCRA
I’ve been getting in touch with a few contacts pertinent both to medicine and to my novel, “Wife of the Gods”. Fortunately I have made connections with some alumni of my secondary school, Accra Academy. One of them, Dr. Osei (for privacy considerations, some names in this section have been changed) had told me he can get me together with a detective from CID. This is important because the protagonist in my novel is a detective in Ghana’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID)
Dr. Osei met me Monday morning and we drove off, not in a Benz or BMW, but in an American style Toyota truck with the air-conditioner full blast. Dr. Osei was amused when I told him that in the States I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid and am in principle anti-SUV. “You’re probably a member of GreenPeace too,” he quipped.
We went off to the Cantonments Police Station where we were to meet the CID detective, but he wasn’t in and he wasn’t answering his mobile either. We found another detective though, eating a rather delicious-looking meal of chicken and rice (I was pretty hungry at the time) and he chatted with me for a bit. I wanted to go to CID Headquarters, which was not very far away, and the detective suggested we try speak to the Deputy Director General, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr. Yeboah. When we got to CID, we gave the receptionist the message that two doctors were here to see Mr. Yeboah, and then we sat and waited for a while. The CID building is a tan-colored building stained by the years and the elements. It begs for a paint job. Stairs run up the side of the building, which is some seven stories high, and along the center as well. I thought we were in for a wait and a half, because you do that a lot in Ghana, but it wasn’t very long until we were ushered into Yeboah’s cavernous and very nicely air-conditioned office, whereas most areas in CID are not so.
Yeboah is a good-looking, soft-spoken man with a sincere affect and engaging smile. He’s also extremely busy. I felt a little like the drug reps who come to my office when I’m trying to see patients. Now the shoe was on the other foot and I was “bugging” Mr. Yeboah. Nevertheless he was very gracious as I assailed him with questions about the police system and how it might apply to “Wife of the Gods” and the murder that takes place therein. I must say, I learned a lot. I had been hoping I might be able to shadow a CID detective but Yeboah vetoed that for liability reasons, and he did it with a nice smile and a twinkle in his eye.
That was all for Monday, but the next day, I met with Edmond V. of International Needs, Ghana (ING). For years, this organization has concerned itself with the plight of a group of women called TROKOSI, which means “wives/slaves of the gods” (some debate on this: could be “child in service of the divinities”). Practiced in isolated areas of Ghana’s Volta Region on the eastern border of the country, it is a custom in which a girl or young woman is “given” to a fetish priest at a shrine in order to atone for a crime committed by a family member even generations ago. The girl enters into servitude of the priest for as long as he feels he has use for her. Some of the women grow old and die at the shrine. Going back to the family is practically impossible. Opponents say it is nothing short of slavery, the fetish priests strongly deny it. It is technically against the law in Ghana, but to my knowledge no one has yet been prosecuted for it. This practice forms the background against which a murder takes place in my novel, hence the name “Wife of the Gods.”
Edmond V. told me he would arrange for me to meet Patience W., who has studied this phenomenon extensively for ING. I was hoping it could have been this week, but today is Friday and it hasn’t happened, so we are looking at next week. I get the feeling that arranging this is going to be tricky, if it happens at all.
So it has been a partially successful week. Seeds were sown, but nothing has sprung up yet.