Mr. Okoh called out to someone to bring a chair, and a kid of about ten in a ragged shirt appeared like magic from nowhere with a rickety blue plastic one. These must be all made in China, Dawson thought with sudden insight into the ubiquity of the plastic chairs in Ghana.
“You say you are?” Mr. Okoh asked, squinting at him in the poor light.
“Darko Dawson. I am from Criminal Investigations Department, Accra. I am looking into the death of the Chinese man Bao Liu. You have heard about it?”
Mr. Okoh sat up straight while his wife sent him an anxious look.
“Yes, please,” the man said warily. “But we have nothing to do with it.”
“Of course you do not, Owura Okoh,” Dawson said respectfully. “But I understand that he-the Chinese man-caused the death of your son Amos.”
Mr. Okoh looked away, his jaw clenching rhythmically. It was a long time before he spoke again. “Yes,” he said simply.
Dawson nodded and waited another few moments. “Please, I want to find out what happened,” he asked softly. “How did Mr. Liu cause your son’s death?”
Mr. Okoh was looking down at his hands, which were twisting around each other. “Amos worked with me,” he began. “We farmed corn, oil palm, and cassava. We used to have a big farm, but once those Chinese people came, they spoiled most of it with the excavators.”
“Excuse me,” Dawson interrupted as politely as he could, “how is it that they came and spoiled your land? Did you know that was going to happen?”
Okoh shook his head. “One day, they just arrived and started clearing all the trees away.”
“Who gave them permission to do that?”
Okoh looked up. “The Chinese people come with their money and they pay the chief for land that they want.”
It was the answer Dawson had feared, and could be the reason why Nana Akrofi had spoken so glowingly of the Chinese. “Did the chief tell you that they had paid him for the land?”
“No.” Okoh practically snorted. “If you are living here in Dunkwa and you don’t know that the Chinese people are paying the chief for land to look for gold, then something is wrong with you.”
Theoretically, Dawson thought, the chief could sell off pieces of the land under his chiefdom, but he was also supposed to look after the well-being of his citizens. If what Mr. Okoh was saying was true, and unfortunately Dawson believed it was, then Nana Akrofi was a callous, greedy man who was looking out for himself alone, all too common a story in Ghana, Dawson felt.
“When they came and excavated almost all the farmland,” Okoh continued, “we were left with only a small amount, and now, because the way is now blocked by the mining pits, we have to pass the pits first before going to the farm. During last rainy season, the rains were very heavy. It even flooded Dunkwa, and at one place, the dividing wall between two pits fell down and the pits came together.”
Okoh was demonstrating with his hands, and Dawson got a good picture in his mind.
“So,” Okoh went on, “because there was no more dividing wall to pass to the farm when the two pits became one, some of the Chinese people built a bridge from ropes so that you can walk across. The floor of the bridge, they made it with wood, and then the sides are of rope. That bridge…” Okoh stopped, shaking his head.
“It isn’t strong?” Dawson prompted.
“Oh, it’s very strong,” he replied, “but when you are walking on it, you have to be careful because it bounces up and down and swings back and forth.”
“I see.”
“And one day, Amos’s girlfriend Comfort was going to the farm, and that Chinese man Bao was there, and he started to talk to her. He knows how to speak Twi, so he told her she was beautiful, and he wanted to give her some gold, and she laughed and said okay. By that time, Amos was coming from the farm, and he saw Bao conversing with Comfort, and he became very angry and shouted at Bao, telling him to leave Comfort alone. Then Bao too, he told Amos to clear out from his land. His land.”
Dawson saw Mr. Okoh’s anger rising like a wave gathering strength at sea.
“And Amos told Bao, what are you saying? You, a man from this faraway China coming here to steal the gold that has belonged to our fathers since time began, and now you are calling it your land? You are a fool!”
Even “fool” did not seem to carry the full weight of the fury that Amos must have been feeling at that moment.
“Who told you the story of what happened?” Dawson asked Okoh.
“Comfort, and many other people. Ask anyone who was there, Mr. Dawson. So many people were there, and they will tell you the same story.”
Mrs. Okoh was looking directly at Dawson, nodding slowly. “Ampa.” It’s true.
“Then Comfort told Amos not to mind Bao,” Okoh continued, “and that he should come back to the house because the rain was coming again. Then she went on the bridge first to walk in front of him, because he always told her in case she stumbled. When they got to the end of the bridge, Bao started to hoot at Amos from the other side of the pit. He used bad words in Twi. You know, these Chinese people, when they come here, they learn the bad words in our language and use them against us.”
“Please, Owura Okoh,” Dawson said, “what did he say?”
“An insult about Amos’s mother.” Okoh shook his head. “I can’t repeat it.”
Dawson knew the one. It meant, your mother’s vagina. It was the most odious offense of all-so abhorrent that its utterance could well result in one’s being beaten to a pulp. Maybe Bao Liu didn’t know how terrible an insult it was, but then maybe he did. Either way, Dawson was forming a picture of the Chinese man as a vulgar, malicious brute. Assuming Owura Okoh’s account was true.
Mrs. Okoh’s eyes had become swollen and red with grief, pain, and perhaps fury was there as well.
“Then Amos,” Okoh said, his voice cracking, “he turned back and told Bao he was going to kill him for what he had said. Amos was holding a cutlass, and when Bao saw him coming back, he held the rope of the bridge and started to push and pull it to make it tip. And when it tipped, Amos… Amos…”
Okoh gulped for air, and Dawson felt his own chest twist inside like a wet towel being wrung out.
“Amos fell inside the pit,” Okoh forged on. “The pit is very deep. The mud is thick. You can’t even swim inside. He was shouting for help, but no one could help him. There was no rope to pull him, no pole that was long enough. One man, he tried to drive the excavator down to the water so that Amos could hold onto the bucket, but the excavator too, it was too heavy and was about to fall in the water.”
Mrs. Okoh was sweeping away tears that were streaming down her face faster than the Ofin River, but she didn’t make much noise-just desperate, glottal sounds, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
Dawson could say nothing for several minutes. The anguish of these two was unbearable. He thought of the unthinkable for a fleeting moment-Hosiah or Sly drowning in a deep pit of muddy water as treacherous as quicksand-and he shuddered.
“And that man,” Mr. Okoh whispered, “that Chinese man Bao, when the police came to question him, he lied to them and told them Amos slipped. And he paid them to leave him alone.”