It was Francis Aggrey, transformed from the fugitive of a few years ago. He was bare-chested and powerful, a cloth worn over his shoulder like a toga. In an outstretched hand, he was holding a fly whisk, the tip pointing triumphantly at the sky: an image of a great chief. My father was the first prime minister of Bamana.
6
This was what my mother had hidden from me, buried in this box and locked away. It was not a secret I could have kept in my childhood. I was too hard-pressed on every side to not draw out this trump when I was called a wog or a nigger, to not shout back, “My father’s a prime minister.”
And who would have believed me? Who had heard of Bamana anyway?
Kofi Adjei Prime Minister Bamana I typed into Google. I’d never searched for Francis Aggrey’s name on the Internet before. By the time the technology was available, I no longer thought about him much. Kofi’s Wikipedia entry was long.
Kofi Adjei was the first president of Bamana, serving from 1984 to 2008.
The dates didn’t match the newspaper articles, although the man in the picture could be him: clean-shaven, elderly, with a tuft of mustache on his upper lip. He was more weathered than the young Francis Aggrey but it was a good likeness.
Kofi Adjei was born in Segu in 1944 to Clara and Peter Aggrey. Adjei was christened Francis Kofi Adjei Aggrey but changed his name to Kofi Adjei when he began the liberation struggle.
It was him. Much of the biography was now familiar. I had a grandfather who died when Francis Aggrey was young. My grandmother was a businesswoman. There was a sentence for the missionary schooling at CMS Segu; a paragraph for his time at UCL. I knew of his friendship with Ras Menelik. There was no mention of Thomas Phiri.
In later life, Adjei reflected on the racial prejudice he received from landlords in London.
That was all there was in possible reference to the Bains.
Adjei was sworn in as the country’s first prime minister in June 1978. After a constitutional change in 1984, he became the first president of Bamana. In 2008, after thirty years in office, Adjei stepped down.
Thirty years in office was too long. I did not know much about African politics, but to remain for three decades in power would surely make him some sort of dictator.
There was an African family: Elizabeth, his wife, a nurse who smuggled bandages and penicillin during the liberation struggle; Afua, Kweku, Kwabena, and Benita Adjei, my half siblings. It seemed presumptuous to claim them as such. To find out at forty-eight that my father was alive and a six-hour flight away. I felt giddy, like I had stood up too fast after sitting down for hours.
I am going to church with Katherine. She rang to ask me this morning if I wanted to come and I had no plausible excuse. I did not want to sit at home brooding over my discoveries about Francis Aggrey, and church seemed as good a diversion as any. When I was younger, I had faith, a flickering thing that came on in times of great need.
When my bell buzzed at 11:45, I was ready by the door in boots and gloves, a sweater and a coat. In the daylight I saw the wrinkles around her eyes and the brown spots on her hands. She was greyer in the sun, and gaunter. Her jeans could be a size smaller. The fabric sagged around her knees like loose skin.
“I’m so glad you’re coming.”
She walked like a runner, bouncing and trotting. Fog streamed from my mouth and I grew warm under my layers.
“So, how’s the search going? Have you found anything new about your father?”
“Not really,” I said.
I don’t mean to make a secret of my discovery, but I am not yet ready to share, not even with this kind stranger.
“That’s surprising. It’s almost impossible to hide with the Internet these days. Have you tried Facebook?”
“Not yet.”
“You should. Even my mum’s on it and she’s in her seventies.”
It was a stone church with stained-glass windows and a tended cemetery bereft of flowers. Inside was modern and warm: padded chairs instead of the long, bony pews I remembered from childhood. The cross hanging behind the altar was made of lightbulbs: art installation rather than sacred object. The flagstones were covered in rugs.
“Modern.”
“Yes, our vicar used to be an artist.”
Katherine knew a lot of people.
“This is my neighbor Anna,” she said, introducing me to each one. I was a prize. A possible new convert. Everyone was in jeans and trainers and hoodies, except a few elderly women holding fast in twinsets and pearls. I was surprised by their youth, their slim vigor. They hugged Katherine and smiled widely when they grasped my hand.