A GLIMPSE INTO A COMING BOOK: THE LAST HEADMASTER...gregory ofei obuobi

A GLIMPSE INTO A COMING NOVEL: THE LAST HEADMASTER (FALSEHOOD) BY GREGORY OFEI OBUOBI

(Literature)

   CHAPTER ONE

Aboagye comes to call, “Mr. Bekoe Barimah, your people are seated. They want to see you.” Totuo Bekoe Barimah trails the school messenger to Ajavon’s office.

Ototuo Bekoe Barimah had hurried through the first two part-time lessons scheduled for him by his Asian pupils in their cozy homes. He had done the two hours teaching English language to the Ghana International School pupils he taught part-time. The pupils had come home three days before the Easter break. They would sit primed before their desks ready at 05: 00 A.M., waiting to listen to his civilized, productive voice that instructs. Their parents would get them schooled by the best teacher of English language they ever knew. So great and rare the premium these Asians put on education. Ototuo Bekoe Barimah would not fail anyone this much eager for pursuing knowledge. His normal, regular hours for his pupils in Chemu Senior High School would start at 11:25 A.M. for today, Friday. He had done the necessary markings of the assignments he had set his regular students. Today, he would discuss the topical errors to which the pupils were prone, given their ethnic background and association with the Tema Harbor City environment, and do a lot of explaining on writing an effective paragraph for a descriptive narrative. It was late morning, but rather too early for him to be in the school. Time: 09:25 A. M. He was about two hours early, a period he could most expeditiously em.ploy reading James Clavell and doing some research on a topic he was writing for his BA English (Hons) teacher, Miss Henderson’s assignments to him. Lucy Barbara Ajavon can never get me to waste useful time. He entered the headmistress’s office.

Ajavon was on her feet behind her desk, perturbation and anxiety writ large on her steely cast of pygmy form. She was all determination for the pursuit of her misdeed: Solid evil! Eunice Quansah had taken a seat in a comfortable, cushioned armed chair positioned by the entrance to Ajavon’s office directly on the south. With her obnoxious left hand directing, denigrating, Eunice Quansah, the assistant headmistress, pointed to a wobbly pupil’s chair positioned before the headmistress’s executive desk and an upholstered brown chair. The rickety pupil’s wobbly chair sat one foot from the armed chair, next to the headmistress’s desk. Eunice Quansah turned to face a small square created to serve a purpose. To this square all the other occupants, sitting smug in their various upholstered chairs, turned.

Totuo Bekoe Barimah Yaw was angry the moment he saw the people and the atmosphere Ajavon and her deputy had fashioned, creating the impression they mattered and wielded some power of sort. Bekoe Barimah became livid. Were these nincompoops trying to create the impression they had a proven criminal in a snare, a criminal caught red-handed in some abysmally traitorous offense? These certainly have an ax to grind with me. Bekoe Barimah was beside himself with ire, burning beyond cooling. He turned to look. Dr. Adu sat most relaxed in his upholstered armed chair close to the south wall; he was long past his retirement age. He measured beyond seventy, and certainly did not wear the health he paraded. On his left was the roughened coarse figure of a thug, from all indications, no better than an Ashaiman wee-pusher. He looked country rough and uncouth, even by his clothing and the cast of his roguish face. He was sixty-nine. The country fisherman thug scowled threateningly from his corner in Totuo Bekoe Barimah’s direction, his eyes sneering at the shoes on Bekoe’s feet. Opposite these two stalwart pillars of the Ajavon-Quansah gangster team, against the entrance to the criminal office was Mr. Francis Nortey, TMA retired of the TMA education office. Mr. Nortey claimed he had read English language for a first degree Legon Ghana University had bestowed on him. He was a Legon BA (Hons) English language graduate. Now Mr. Francis Nortey was seventy years and eight months old. He looked close to senile and scruffy by his accents. He lisped and spluttered spitting profusely every word he spoke. Directly on Mr. Nortey’s left was Eunice Quansah, Bsc.(Cape Coast Univeristy) oafish and obstreperous. She was fifty-nine years of age, and divorced for a childbearing infidelity. She had had her second daughter, she named ABOTARE with a duping intent, by her cousin while her husband was away in Kenya. The rumour was making the rounds, most wildly.

“Would you sit down, Mr. Bekoe?” Eunice Quansah spake, spitting out her words with venom. “This is the standing board committee of Chemu Senior High School. Mr. Francis Nortey is in charge of Tema Municipal Assembly second cycle education affairs. Dr Adu is the general manager of GOIL. Mr. Mensah is the proprietor of Leonardo da Vinci Junior High School. He is here representing the parents of the school on this standing committee of the Chemu Senior High School Board of Governors.”

“Did you bring your certificates?” Mr. Mensah brashly spat in accents reminiscent of the Korle-gono fishermen fraternity.

Instantly Totuo Bekoe Barimah felt pushed to walk out on Ajavon Barbara Lucy and her academic probing Inquisition Squad. This is most insulting. Who the blighted hell is Lucy Barbara Ajavon, who now finds herself running the affairs of Chemu Senior High School? Who is this illiterate, little educated Nzema woman attempting to indicate she is academically? What does Ajavon know of education? Who is Eunice Quansah, who vies viciously with Lucy Barbara Ajavon for love attentions Totuo Bekoe Barimah coldly begrudges them? How academic is Eunice Quansah who failed abysmally in all her attempts at the examinations Cape Coast University set for her? How many of the tests set by her teachers in her plants and herbs study did Eunice Quansah ever pass creditably? Did Barbara Lucy Ajavon ever pass a single test in the Chemistry papers the teachers set for her batch? And this fisherman knave that claims he owns a Leonardo da Vinci JHS in Tema new Town? Who the bloody heck are these people? What the heck does Ajavon think she is? A gang of illiterate gutter scoundrels called to examine Totuo Bekoe Barimah’s academic credentials? Trying to act superior?

Ajavon?

Quansah?

By whose mandate? On what authority? What is their purpose? Who and what endows these knaves the air they posture here?

Dr. Adu, Ph.D.?

Ph.D. in what? From what university?

“Will you tell us how you came into the teaching service?” asked Dr Adu, his eyes going over pages of a file he had in his hands. Dr. Adu’s hubris was beyond description. Does he own the education ministry of this country? Bekoe Barimah turned to look at Dr. Adu. Dr. Adu’s eyes would not be lifted off the pages of the file. He spoke on, giving his professional profile: “I started teaching an elementary school, after my elementary school examinations. Then I went to a training college. Afterwards I sat the ‘O’ level GCE examinations and then came to teach again in a primary school. I studied for the ‘A’ levels and then went to do science in the university. I did science. I have passed through all the facets of education. I did my Ph.D. in oil in Poland.”

This man is a rogue. The university that conferred an honorary bogus doctorate degree on Kwame Nkrumah?

Poland! Bekoe Barimah Totuo Kwasi quoted to himself, his anger growing against this team of rogue gangsters. University of Crackow!

He told them, “I applied direct to the Ministry of Education as soon as I entered Ghana after my continuing B.Phil. degree, asking for a school to teach English language in awhile. The Ministry sent me a letter to apply direct to any school in the country that needed a teacher to handle English language teaching. I had graduated Philosophy magna cum laude in the university. I should not stop at this level. I should continue to study for higher degrees in the subject even as I pursued my passion in the study of English language and other science subjects. English language Honors and Journalism would whet my writing skills. I nursed a passion for them. I entered the teaching service on the Ministry of Education’s recommendation. I applied formally and was formally accepted. While at this, let me inform you I studied at School of Journalism and Television, Frilsham, Berkshire, England, and scored the highest marks ever awarded by that Institute in Journalism, World Literature, Short Stories Writing and Public Relations to any student. My major interest, pointedly, my passion, is in disseminating most effectively the necessary stories the world needs to know by what I know from my academic pursuits. For my ‘A’ levels I read Latin, History and English, plus the Special Paper others would call The General Paper.

“Your ‘A’ level results slip show you did the classics – Greek!” Dr. Adu, the chemistry scientist cut in, most innocently illiterate. He can’t even read the recorded Latin grade? He chooses to call a non-existent Greek? Adu sees Greek for Latin? What are they here about for?

“I have just indicated I read Latin, History and Literature in English!” Totuo Barimah Bekoe blurted out, all contemptuous of Mr Adu’s ignorance and illiteracy and willful error. Purposely, Bekoe Barimah Ototuo refused to mention Oxford University some of whose marked scripts for his BA English(Hons) assignments he had embodied in the documents he had submitted to the gutter scoundrel team to examine. Totuo Barimah Bekoe was roiling with unquenchable ire at the posturings Ajavon’s and Quansah’s illiterate, ignorant rogue team – the maggots Inquisition Squad - staged. Or were trying to stage. He was beside himself with rage.

TRADEMARK: S I B S T E R

TABS: LITERATURE/ GREGORY OFEI OBUOBI/EDUCATION/ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

AUTHOR COPYRIGHT? gregory ofei obuobi July 28, 2018. tema.

For THE SIBSTERFILE JOURNAL - a news and culture magazine.