THE MYSTERY OF THE GAME

When mom said we were visiting home, it was a welcome distraction from the humdrum of city life. My first excitement stemmed from the expectation of seeing my extended family again, especially, my grandmas.

The journey wasn’t any out of the ordinary because this route was one I’ve taken frequently in recent times. The knot appeared in my abdomen when we crossed the Adomi Bridge into Volta territory. As we passed through Mafi, Tafi, Kolon, Kwati, Have, Logba, all the way to Hohoe, the knot of anticipation just kept tightening and tightening. The first jolt I had that we were nearing home was when we got to Hohoe and had to take a bus from a designated Lolobi station. When we boarded the vehicle bound for Lolobi, everyone in that bus was speaking Siwu. No Twi, no Ewe, no English, just Siwu. Over there in the city, you could go for years without hearing anyone speak this beautiful language. In almost fifteen years that I’d been away, I can’t say I’ve met up to ten people who speak it apart from my family.

My name is Audrey. I come from Lolobi Kumasi, and no, it is nowhere in the Ashanti region. Later on, I will tell you how the name came to be. Academia puts my people among a group called Guans in Ghana. I speak Siwu as my mother tongue and I grew up trying to explain my dialect is not French. I recently outgrew my defensive arguments as to why and how I don’t speak Ewe. I have outgrown them but maybe if you dig a little deeper you would still find them there beneath the surface, I don’t know. One thing I admire about my upbringing and for which I am proud is that my parents always made me feel like our dialect was the one golden dialect anywhere. It didn’t hurt that we could still have our privacy smack in the middle of a crowd. With the compound housing system so common in most of these big towns, it was a distinguishing feature if you didn’t speak the language of the masses most times. Outside and at school, I spoke Twi just like any other kid but when I got home, I was supposed to leave all my Twi and English at the door. It was an unspoken rule. I am living proof that a kid can master multiple languages at the same time so there is absolutely no reason to limit one’s kid to just English all the time.

As we made that last 15min. drive from Hohoe into Lolobi, I remembered it through the eyes of a child. This stretch of land that never lacked forests. This piece of land used to give off sounds like the rush of a flowing river. It used to creep me out as a kid, how dense the place could be. There were also many a ghost stories told of this place. But today, as we drove through, the rich forest sounds were missing, I couldn’t hear any river flowing even if it was. Civilization has caught up with this little town. The road was still untarred but civilization was definitely the sound you heard. A sawmill has sprouted up somewhere en route and vehicles were on the road most of the time now. A ghost would be smart not to use this road anymore lest it be hit by a car.

Our first contact with Lolobi was with Ashiambi. Lolobi is made up of three towns; Ashiambi, Kumasi and Huyeasem. Kumasi happens to be the capital of these towns and it sat in between Ashiambi and Huyeasem.

History has it that, once upon the conquering era of the Ashantis (Mashande), they ventured into Lolobi. It is said that the Ashanti warriors had with them a maiden dressed in ojobo (a slip of cloth tied around a woman’s waist to cover her womanhood, much like how Dipo girls of the Krobos are dressed). The maiden carried on her head a large gourd and walked a few feet in front of the troupe. When Lolobi heard that the Mashande were coming to attack, its warriors hid at the outskirts of the town in hopes of ambushing them. When they saw the troupes of their enemies, one of our warriors, Zoglo, aimed at the girl and fired at the gourd she was carrying. From this, one could infer that my people were a superstitious lot and they still are. The shot broke the gourd and some kind of bird very much like a vulture flew out. From that moment, the Mashande warriors became disoriented and Lolobi was able to seal their victory. Zoglo still remains a hero to this day. The name Kumasi was added to Lolobi to remind us of our victory that day and to serve as a sort of taunt to the foe we defeated. That is how Lolobi Kumasi was born. Grandma told me that story and ever since she did, I’ve been itching to tell it to anyone who asks me whether my Lolobi Kumasi is in the Ashanti region. Surprisingly, no one has asked me since I got the answer that would shut them up; they just give you blank faces with big question marks on them. So I am writing this down for posterity’s sake. Later on, some of the townspeople resettled to form Ashiambi and Huyeasem but that is a story for another time.

We alighted at Kumasi and made our way home. It was the time of day when the town seemed empty because most people had gone to their farms. Mom seemed to think that was a good thing, claiming we would have few people we have to stop and visit with before we got home. The town stretched out before me but it wasn’t the one I remembered. So much has changed. There were definitely more houses but a lot of the old ones too were gone. The language though, was the same.

There was something about walking through the sounds of the language that first welcomed you to earth. To walk into a shop and say; “la a’ ira” instead of “metor  ade3” or “I’m buying something”, one could imagine. The first time I did after we got back, tears stung my eyes.

Lolobi, the community that first hugged me. To see the faces of the grandmas whose names have changed ever since you nicknamed them as a toddler? I can bet not even Princess Diana felt this special at a point when she was. To walk the streets of Ashiambi or Huyeasem and say you are going to Kumasi without anyone asking questions about ‘which’ Kumasi you are referring to. In this town, you are the odd one out when you speak Twi. In this town, there is no cockamamie argument about making Twi a national language. In this town, you better know how to speak Siwu very well because it is viewed a glitch in your upbringing if you can’t. No matter how sophisticated I think I have become, the sense of belonging I feel among this minority cannot be ignored.