An Ancestral Spoke in the Family Wheel

Here is a story for adults. Enjoy!

Ama Serwaa and her three children slid out of the Mercedes 120 Super saloon car with the color as dark as their clothes. Chests heaving, they slogged to sit down in the sofa under the flapping canopy stretched across the shut off street. They and some close relatives have returned to the bereaved home at Fante New Town after the burial service of Osei Poku--Ama’s husband--at the St. Peter’s Catholic Cathedral that Friday afternoon in 1983. For emotional reasons tradition forbids such people from accompanying the corpse to the graveyard. Mourners and sympathisers, themselves fighting back tears, struggled hard to avoid their tear-filled swollen eyes. African Christian funeral songs blaring from four giant loudspeakers offered the only consolation.

The sun was descending onto the horizon when the others, including wiry-built Kofi Boateng, Ama’s nephew-in-law, returned from the Tafo Cemetery situated in a forest north of Kumasi. Over and finished, Ama thought. She dropped her head into her medium-size palms and shaking it from side to side, sobbed. Someone patted her on her broad back.

“I’m taking over my uncle’s properties now,” Kofi Boateng announced to his relatives sitting around Ama. “So Ama and her children should evacuate the house today.” Then he disappeared into the house.

 Ama’s head shot up. Gasps of astonishment escaped from some throats. Her children squalled. The relatives stared at each other. “This isn’t how it goes,” Opanin Kwadwo, the family head, whispereed in a disgusted tone.

A lump rose into Ama’s long throat. Among the Ashantis although tradition allowed a cousin to inherit his uncle’s property, she had expected—as it was in vogue in those days--that there would be a family meeting to decide the sharing of the

deceased’s belongings. She regretted Osei’s dying without leaving a will which could have protected them.

The shock which followed Kofi’s announcement was only broken seconds later as people came from their stupor, and murmuring, jerked themselves from their wooden folding chairs which scraped on the pebbly bitumen. Then they stomped off in a huff.

What did she hear? Yaa thought as she fully came to hersef and stilled herself from trembling. She has witnessed this scene once and she has often heard about it but never did she imagine that it would happen to her one day. Yet, here she was experiencing it personally. Hollowness entered her brain; still she could hear some wild howling in there. Her vision blurred and she felt herself floating (or was she hurtling down an abyss?) and then she felt as if she was on a lift which had come to a sudden joltless halt. She bit her lower lip, feeling the tears welling up and suppressed them. She’d rather fight back than cry.

Indeed Kofi Boateng wasn’t rich like Osei Poku but he had graduated from the university and held a well paid job as staff manager in a State construction company. He didn’t have a house of his own but he lived in a company bungalow. For these reasons it never occurred to Ama Serwaa that he would one day appropriate their store, two cocoa farms, a seven-ton Bedford truck, the Mercedes Benz car, a home, two plots of land, and then order them to move out of their home.

“Only a tractor can drag us out of here,” Ama retorted to him in the house, the lump in her throat threatening to suffocate her.                                                

“Wait and see,” Kofi Boateng threatened and stormed away. He returned minutes later accompanied by surly-looking policemen. The few remaining bemused

mourners scattered from under the canopy.  Ama refused to obey the police order to move out. They dragged her and her property outside. Neighbors came to soothe her and cursed Kofi Boateng and the police whom they accused of bribery.

            In bed that night in her uncle Yaw Sarpong’s --a retired principal of a Borstal Institute--house at Ashanti New Town, the royal district east of Kumasi, Ama, like her children, couldn’t stop whimpering. Not even her uncle’s assurance that he would get his daughter’s lawyer to handle their case helped much. Uncle Yaw’s daughter had had to battle her family-in-law in court to keep the inheritance her husband bequeathed her two years ago. She would do the same too, Yaa vowed as the present meshed into the past and she recalled her union with Osei and her struggles with him.

            Osei Poku ran a small cutlass shop in the bustling Kumasi Central Market. She sold vegetables in a stall nearby. Anytime Osei bought condiments from her she would tease him about being afraid to get married. He’d say he was waiting for her. She’d laugh because it was all a joke.

            Then one weekend he asked her to cook for him. He took her out and they began to date. He was so nice and generous that she began to like him. Then one day he proposed and she accepted.

            Seeing how the farmers who bought cutlasses from him prospered and encouraged by her stories of how profitable farming was, Osei diversified into cocoa farming. Then his business grew into trading and transport. All that time no family member assisted him. Not even when he fell sick recently did any of them care much,

apart from scattered visits to the hospital. Ama Serwaa sighed deeply. This was the height of injustice and she wouldn’t allow it. Kofi wasn’t worth even a needle of Osei’s, she thought.

            Osei, why did you leave so soon and in such a mess? she lamented often that night, throwing herself into bursts of sorrow. Yet she resolved to fight for her rights before her children returned to school in less than three months time since she alone would be bearing the costs now.

It seemed like eternity for day to break.

“I want to go and see Opanin Kwadwo at Daban,” Ama told Uncle Yaw.

“What for?” Uncle Yaw said. “He didn’t act when Kofi seized the property. A lawyer is best for you.”

Ama sighed. She didn’t want to create any feuds. “He didn’t side with Kofi,” she said. “I want this problem settled amicably.”

Uncle Yaw’s thick eyelids arched upwards. “Kofi didn’t think of you but you’re concerned about him.” He shook his head. “Women do fiends like him a favor,” UncleYaw said. “Okay,-” He shrugged. “-let’s see if it works.”

Ama headed for Kejetia lorry park and boarded a truck. Being used to the leather seat of their saloon car, the wooden one of the Bedford scorched her wide buttocks. It even seared right into her very soul. Such a truck of theirs now belonged to Kofi Boateng. Belonged? No, she’d wrench it back from  him. A heave lifted her chest and she drowned her tears in her dark handkerchief.

Soon they rumbled through the business district of Adum where she worked in the shop Kofi seized. Ama Serwaa sighed and swore to take it back too. Soon they

were cruising down the road leaving the commercial centre and then plunged into the humid woods which led to Daban, a hamlet outside the southwestern suburbs of Kumasi.

Daban was perched on a hillcrown to the right of the laterite road, which curled left into the dense forest. Ama Serwaa crept up to a rectangular, whitewashed, mud cottage. From homes, threads of woodsmoke curled into the dew-hung morning air which blanketed the tops of trees.

She entered the central courtyard of Opanin Kwadwo’s house to the acrid smell of the damp old walls, pungent woodsmoke, and the aroma of the green plantains and garden eggs sputtering in a blackened pot. Opanin Kwadwo’s wife announced her husband had gone hunting. Ama settled on a stool and they conversed civilly.

Soon Opanin Kwadwo returned, clutching a musket. From a bloody sack on his broad square shoulder he handed his wife a grasscutter and a squirrel and nodded Ama into his living room.

“I’m here because of this problem of inheritance,” Ama began.

“Don’t talk too much,” Opanin Kwadwo said. “I was going to send someone to you. Kofi is already summoned. We’ll meet tomorrow afternoon at Bantama.”

The next day Ama, accompanied by her children and Uncle Yaw, headed for the meeting in the suburb northwest of Kumasi. The crowded Austin minibus passed north of the central market and made a quarter circle around the Kumasi zoo. Soon

they were beside the Cultural Center. Ama sighed. In the early years of their marriage she and her husband used to relish the weekly cultural spectacle of drumming,

dancing, and choral music there. A few meters away came the central hospital; pain clutched at her heart and a cold feeling washed over her as images of her husband’s protracted illness, death, and her sacking came flooding back to her.

On the rising land to the left stood the mortuary, a bleak, rectangular building tucked away from the hospital where she had spent harrowing months with her husband dying from complications of diabetes and hypertension. And now a greedy man wanted to deprive her of her right. They can do this to others, but not me, daughter of a war veteran. Ama snorted loudly and other passengers turned to look at her. They quickly turned away their sad looks since Ama’s dark clothes and swollen reddened eyes showed she was recently bereaved.

The bus turned right at the Bantama roundabout and the group alighted to continue left on foot down the erosion-eaten untarred road.

They had come early to avoid any confrontation before the judgement. But to their consternation, there was Kofi Boateng--accompanied by his squat elder sister, a paternal uncle, and his younger brother—in front of Opanin Kwadwo’s house. He paced back and forth, his lips pinched and his bony face as hard as reinforced concrete. He threw his cloth on his shoulder as they came near and stared hard at Ama.

“I thought you were intelligent,” he bellowed. “But look where you’ve summoned me.” He tittered. “Opanin Kwadwo himself inherited his uncle’s

properties, including this house where he’s going to sit in judgement. Do you think he can contradict himself?” He snorted.

Calmly Ama said, “I’ve no case with you here outside.”

“You have a case,” Kofi ’s sister yelled. “Today you’ll know who we are.”

“Is it you Mame Dufie talking to me like that?” Ama said and Mame Dufie scowled. “This’s really a wild wide world.”

“Add up the cost of whatever you’ve done for me,” Mame Dufie said. “We’ll pay back.”

“Yes, we will,” Kofi added.

Ama remembered how often she had helped Mame Dufie who also passed through her to get financial help from Osei Poku. “Have I said you owed me anything?” she said. “If your conscience is burdening you, I’m not the one to lift the load off it. Besides, if you stoop to peek at your neighbour’s behind, don’t forget yours is revealed too. Have you forgotten that you’re also a married woman?”

“Don’t kill my husband with your mouth,” Mame Dufie growled.

“Who killed mine with the mouth?”

“You should know.”

All this was taking place with the others yapping at each other too. Ama wished she hadn’t helped Mame Dufie during her difficult moments. Revolt welled up in her. The insinuation that she might have had a hand in her husband’s death galled her. She tried to rein in her feelings which were like a swarm of ants. She bit her underlip and her lean chest rocked with sniffles. “Thank you, Mame Dufie,” she whimpered. “Thanks a million.”

“Courage, courage,” her group comforted her.

Ama rubbed her moist eyes with a corner of her cloth and sighed. Now it was the others who quarrelled. At this moment Opanin Kwadwo appeared on the high veranda, managed to cool down tempers and called them in.

They got seated in the large sitting room in which a ceiling fan whirled. The royal blue room was spacious and decked with bulky furniture.

As custom demands, Opanin Kwadwo asked for water to be passed around.

“I wouldn’t drink in the same cup as these people,” Kofi growled, pointing to Ama’s group with his left hand.

This was considered derogatory, an insult. Uncle Yaw bounded to his feet. “Who’s your slave here?” he yelled

Kofi jumped to his feet too.  “You! You! You!” he yelled back, jabbing his left fist at Uncle Yaw who counterattacked.

Opanin Kwadwo raised his hand to shush them. “Peace. Peace. Peace, here,” he muttered. “We’re not here to fight but to reconcile people. If I sense any more brawl, I’ll suspend this meeting and go back to my peaceful village. I don’t think I called you here to witness a fight, did I?”

People grumbled now.

“Go on, Abusuapanin,” someone said, as the vociferations diminished into mutterings.

“As for the water, there’s no lack of cups in this big house...” Opanin Kwadwo waved around. “... for even a whole village to drink from.” He nodded to a young girl standing by a Bosch refrigerator humming in a corner like a high tension wire.

Cold water was then handed around in cups arranged on two trays, one for each group. People sighed with pleasure after sipping the water. It wasn’t everyday that one got refrigerated water to drink. Ama just took a draught and set the glass on the table before her.

At length Opanin Kwadwo asked: “Is everybody satisfied?”

People nodded and answered in guttural tones. “So cold and so pleasant it was,” somebody sighed and all chortled. Except Ama.

“Okay,” Opanin Kwadwo said, “As custom demands, Manager as a man will talk first.”

“Abusuapanin?” Kofi’s uncle got up, clutched his cloth under his armpit and said. “What you’ve requested is correct, but that shouldn’t be the case here.” His group murmured their approval. “Manager has been summoned here. Kofi maybe doesn’t know why he’s been called. Supposing he begins and talks about something totally different?” His group’s guttural agreement became more vociferous. “So the complainant should talk first.” Then he sank abruptly into the red vinyl seat with a thud. The cushion hissed like air escaping out of an inner tube.

“That’s it! That’s it!” Kofi’s group chorused.

Ama bounded to her impressive height like a giraffe. “I’m not afraid to talk, first or last!” She stared defiantly at Kofi’s group, particularly fixing Kofi in the eyes.

“Who is?” Kofi retorted. “Man-woman!”

“Shameless, covetous man,” Ama answered.

“Ama Serwaa, did I ask you to talk?” Opanin Kwadwo said. Then he turned to Kofi: “Aren’t you a man to exercise patience?”

The two sides began to blame each other’s person.

Opanin Kwadwo shushed everybody at the same time that Ama said, “They said I should talk first and I did.”

“Look at this,” Kofi said.

Ama snorted.

Opanin Kwadwo raised his hand. “But I should first give you the right to talk, Ama. Should this confusion continue, I’ll be right to leave.”

“May I say something?” Ama said. “I’m speaking first because I’m the victim. This has nothing to do with man or woman but right and wrong.”

“What’s she saying?” Kofi cried and voices rose.

Opanin Kwadwo waved for calm and then nodded to Ama to talk.

“Our ancestors say once a matter comes out, it can no longer be hidden. We all know what has brought us here.”

“We don’t!” Kofi snapped.

Opanin Kwadwo said: “The same ancestors, on welcoming a visitor, say, ‘we know yet we ask.’ So give us the background.”

“No long story,” Kofi said.

“Kofi, you’ve no right to talk again.” Opanin Kwadwo’s voice rose. “Your turn will come. Should you interrupt again, you’d pay a fine of a sheep and a bottle of schnapps.” He waved to Ama. “Go on, our wife.”

“Whose wife?” Kofi murmured and Opanin Kwadwo gave him a dark look.

“You all know that on the day my husband was laid to rest, Kofi Boateng snatched his properties.”

“Snatched!” Kofi sneered.

“Ei! Kofi Boateng,” Opanin Kwadwo cried, clearly exasperated. “Are you a woman?” He  shook his head mournfully.

Ama ignored Kofi. “The bed on which he was laid in state still stood in the living room. No matter how heartless a person is, he’d at least wait until the bed was taken away before pouncing on the deceased’s properties. I’m not here to drag anything with Kofi Boateng. I need our properties back.” Then she sat down and frowned.

“Have you all heard her?” Opanin Kwadwo asked

“Yes, we have,” all responded.

“Empty talk,” Kofi’s younger brother said.

Ama’s eldest son, stout and already a man at nineteen, bounced to his feet. “I wouldn’t allow anybody to insult my mother,” he yelled.

“Did I talk to you?” Kofi’s brother asked.

“You disparaged my mother, you scoundrel!”

Kofi’s brother sprang up and dashed towards Ama’s son. Kofi’s group restrained him at the same time that Ama’s other children clenched their fists ready to fight. Their mother’s group contained them too. But not without some pains.

“Who are you to call me a scoundrel?” Kofi’s brother boomed.

“Who are you too?” Ama’s eldest son shouted back. “Wasn’t it my father who sent you to school?”

“Because I had lost my father and my mother was paralyzed. Do you know what my mother did for your father? Anyway, know that before being your father, he was our uncle.”

“Stupid logic!”

“Like mother like sons,” Mame Dufie said.

“Harlot,” Ama’s youngest son said.

This was the worst insult one could hurl at a married woman.

Mame Dufie jumped up, shaking. “Who’s a harlot?” she shrieked.

“You!”

“What am I witnessing in my house?” Getting up Opanin Kwadwo growled and glowered about. “Am I a family head or a good-for-nothing?” He hurled his cloth onto his right shoulder. “I better go back to my village.”

Supporters of both groups restrained him, imploring him to stay.

Opanin Kwadwo finally lowered his cloth into his armpit and said, “Can a child insult his aunt?”

“But can she insult our mother who made her what she is today?”

“Whatever I got through her was our uncle’s property. Wasn’t she just a vegetable seller before marrying him.”

“And do you know who made your uncle go into farming?” Ama said.

Silence greeted this and Ama’s group grunted with glee.

“You’re dragging this matter too far,” Opanin Kwadwo said irritably. “How can these children not respect my position? I want them out of here before I’ll sit down.”

“They shouldn’t go out to fight,” Uncle Yaw warned.

“I’m not interested in staying here or outside,” Kofi’s brother said and stormed away.

“Then get away from here,” Opanin Kwadwo yelled after him. “I don’t like impolite youths.” He turned to Ama’s children. “You also go and wait in the courtyard. We’ll call you when we need you.”

Ama’s children hesitated, with dark frowns. “You  go,” Ama said. “I can face them, even alone.”

“Can we listen to Kofi now,” Opanin Kwadwo said as Ama’s children left.

“Ama Serwaa said that I pounced on her husband’s properties. Is she ignorant of Asante culture?”

“Is what you did Asante culture?” Ama retorted.

“Don’t jump down my throat,” Kofi thundered.

“You also interrupted me,” Ama snapped back. “Tit for tat.”

“Our culture gives me the right to the properties. When I take them is my own business. I’ve finished talking.”

“You’ve all heard Kofi too?” Opanin Kwadwo asked.

“Yes, we have.”

“Anybody has something to add?” Opanin Kwadwo looked around. Nobody offered to talk. “Call in the children.”

When they came in, he said, “I’ve listened carefully to the litigants and I’m surprised at not hearing any of them say what I expected of them.” He paused. The silence was thick. “Ama Serwaa wants her husband’s properties back.”

“Of course!” Ama said.

“Kofi Boateng wants to keep his uncle’s belongings.”

“My lawful inheritance,” he corrected vehemently.

Opanin Kwadwo ignored him. “How can we reconcile the two? I’d thought our wife would have asked for Kofi to take care of her and her children as custom demands.”

“Never!” Ama interjected. “I’m not helpless.”

“Then why don’t you go away?” Kofi said.

“So that you can enjoy the booty?”

“Hush! I’d also thought Manager would have offered to take the widow and her children under his care.”

Kofi grunted and Ama tut-tutted.

“But I heard none of that and I’m sad. All of us know that in Asante a nephew inherits his uncle’s property and even succeeds him to the throne.”

Kofi’s group grunted in approval.

“I myself inherited this house and other valuables from my uncle. His wife and children still live in this house. The girl who served us water is one of the deceased’s daughters. I’ll therefore call on Manager to take our wife and our children back to the house and take care of them.”

“May I say something?” Ama said, her voice trembling with anger.

“Let me finish first. And I’ll entreat Ama and her children to go back to the house. Even in the olden days Kofi would have married Ama. Isn’t that the case?”

“That’s it! That’s it!” Kofi’s group chorused.

“Kofi, can I count on you?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You have three days,” Opanin Kwadwo said. “And Ama?”

“I don’t want to live under anybody’s roof. We want our share, that’s all.”

“Do you already have a suitor?”

Ama burst into tears, lamenting her husband.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, my daughter,” Opanin Kwadwo said in the sudden calm. “Please forgive me.”

Ama’s group calmed her down.

“And what about our children?”

The eldest stood up. “We stand by our mother,” he said.

Opanin Kwadwo sighed loud enough to blow out a candle. “Then I can’t solve this case. Who am I to go contrary to an ancient custom?”

“Abusuapanin,” Ama said, “don’t worry. I’ll seek redress with a higher authority.”

Opanin Kwadwo shrugged slowly. “Please, no fighting outside,” he entreated and clutched his head in his palms.

Outside the two groups separated while lashing each other with their tongues and booing to derisive hand claps.

Back in the house Uncle Yaw said, “It may not be the shortest but the surest route is the State court.”

“I’ll try the Asantehene’s court next,” Ama said.

Uncle Yaw shrugged.

            The following Friday, Ama Serwaa and her group headed for the Manhyia Palace, the seat of the King of Ashantis. She had brought the case for trial here by uttering the tabooed oath of the King before Kofi Boateng.

            Ama had left home that morning in high spirits but as they approached the palace situated at Manhyia, north of Asanti New Town, her optimism began to wane. Was it the awe of approaching the home of the inheritor of the Golden Stool, or the foreboding that she couldn’t expect redress from an institution itself based on matrilineage? Whatever it was, Ama felt uneasy indeed. The doubt gnawed at her heart, clawed at her shoulder and weighted her feet.

Before entering the royal courtroom they removed their sandals. The Council of Elders and the King’s Court were already seated. Ama’s knees wobbled when the King sauntered in amidst praises. He was richly adorned in a colourful kente cloth and golden ornaments. She felt respect mixed with fear. But the King smiled amiably and waved to them to sit down. Ama was relieved to be seated. She had thought she would crumble at any moment. The King, as usual, spoke through his linguist whose duty it was to pass messages to and from him.

Ama stated that she had toiled for years with her husband. Now that he was gone, she and her children have been dispossessed of everything. “How are we

supposed to live?” Ama asked in tears. “You’re the only one who can help me, Great King.” Then she brought in the evidence of neighbors from her former home.

Kofi Boateng first apologized for driving the widow and her children from the house. Then he asked the court to say if he had a right to the inheritance or not.

The King said that in Asante, the family line was matrilineal. In inheritance a man’s sister’s son had priority over his own son. This nephew-uncle kinship regulated land rights, inheritance, and succession.  He said he himself had succeeded his uncle to the throne. On his death, his nephew will succeed him. He therefore recognized Kofi Boateng’s right to the inheritance. However he asked him to care for Ama Serwaa and her children.

“Our Great King, “ Ama said in a shaking voice, “With all the respect due you, I’m obliged to refuse the offer. With your permission I’ll remove the case to the State courts.”

Ama was granted permission.

“You’re now on the right road,” Uncle Yaw said.

            Uncle Yaw’s daughter’s counsel helped Ama to file the lawsuit at the Kumasi

Magistrates Court.

            Two months later, as Ama, due to the thirty kilos she had lost, climbed effortlessly up the wide, high terrazzo steps leading to the glistening stately wooden doors of the courtroom with its colonnades like a Roman palace, she felt as if she was stepping up to God, the impartial judge. 

            The Magistrate came in and Ama stared with arched eyebrows at her solicitor. Ama had been happy the case was to be judged by a woman who had the reputation for correcting injustice, especially to women. Now she saw a man.

            “She has earned promotion and has been transferred to the capital,” the lawyer explained. “This one’s a traditional ruler.”

            What terrible luck! Ama thought. Now, it’s Kofi who’ll be rejoicing. Across the courtroom he sat poised like a statue. Lord, I entrust myself into your hands, Ama prayed and crossed herself. Ama stared at the dark wall behind the Magistrate with a white drawing of a scale equally balanced. Yes, this’s where I need, she told herself. A place where justice is meted out equally. Although she felt confident, Ama wished the lady magistrate sat on her case.

            In her testimony, Ama made a passionate case of how she had suffered with her husband to build up his riches. “I didn’t see any member of his family, much less Kofi Boateng over there,” she added and the courtroom buzzed.

            The clerk established order and she continued. “But greed and outmoded custom are going to rob me of the benefits of my efforts. Who’ll take care of my children?” She therefore called on the court to consider her, a poor widow, and her orphans and do them justice.

            “I don’t have much to say,” Kofi Boateng said in a hoarse voice. “I want the court to say whether in Asanteman it’s a nephew or a wife and her children who inherit a man.” The courtroom hummed.

            Ama Serwaa’s lawyer asked the court to acknowledge the case of a woman who has burnt twenty years--half of her life--helping build up properties she couldn’t rebuild again. But Kofi’s lawyer countered by asking the court to say, if in the absence of a will, Kofi acted contrary to tradition.

            In his judgement, the Magistrate said the life of Africans was a constant clash between steadfast customs and irreconcilable foreign values which strove to supplant them. “As a traditional ruler who has succeeded his uncle, I’ve to side with the

defendant, on condition that he would care for the widow and her children. But as a lawyer trained in Britain I know that the plaintiff and her children have a right to the property. Unfortunately no interstate law exists. But in the name of justice and as a compromise I’m ordering the sharing of the properties between the two parties.”

            Ama let out a shriek and nearly jumped to the high ceiling on which old fans whirled. She hugged her children. They could finally continue their education without any hindrance.

Tears of joy streaming down her cheeks, Ama whipped out a white handkerchief from her chest and waving it above her head, danced out with her children and grinning supporters.

Outside the courtroom Ama tucked her handkerchief into the hem of the white cloth tied firmly around her thinning large waist and brandished the V sign with both hands while her admirers still cheered her on. She has found her smile again.

The part of his cloth now bunched under his armpit, ashen faced and lips quivering, Kofi burst out of the courtroom like a wounded bull, followed by his bellowing partisans. “You think it’s finished,” he thundered, his bulging bloodshot eyes blazing in his coal-black face. “I’ll go to the Appeals Court.” He flung the slipping dark cloth —one of Ama Serwaa’s husband’s--back onto his slumped shoulders (like a Roman toga) as if he had a quarrel with it.

            Now that her right to her husband’s properties had been recognized, Ama felt really encouraged. “It’s your right,” she shouted back in her high-pitched voice. “But know that I’m prepared to fight you even up to the Supreme Court.” Then she burst

into a victory song, waving her handkerchief with her left hand and turning round and round.  

Kofi  Boateng chewed his thin lips. Then, jabbing his scrawny fingers at Ama Serwaa, he raved: “How can you, a woman from another family, contend with me, a man, over the property of a member of my family?”

            Ama braced her large palms firmly on her wide hips and craning her ringed neck like a proud peacock, asked: “Where were you when I was struggling since 1963 with the member of your family to build up those properties?”

            Kofi again threw the cloth onto his shoulders. “You can go up and come down,” he bellowed. “You wouldn’t get even a rag.”

            “Tell that to the bailiffs when they come,” Ama said and Kofi’s shoulders slumped and the cloth nearly fell off it. Ama knew now: the law was mightier than force or the law of the strongest and if one kept on looking one would end up finding it.