1960's Africa
by Jane Johnson
July 1, 2000
In 1967 I was
an 'A' level student of Geography, including Physical and Regional Geography,
and the 'set' continent was Africa, specialising in West Africa, around the
Equatorial region. When the opportunity for a school trip came up, how I longed
to go...
As a Sixth former I had worked eight hours a day, six days a week, for a whole
summer, in various departments at J Sainsbury's supermarket, for the gross pay
of six pounds a week, and I saved all I could for the school trip on the Cruise
ship Nevasa...
In those days it was necessary to pay one's Mum as soon as you started earning,
so what with the two pounds a week towards my keep there remained precious little
at the end of the Summer Holidays... The princely sum of twenty-four pounds!
Luckily for me my Mum made up the necessary for the sixty three pounds sterling,
three and a half week's cruise - and the following January, 1968, I was on my
way to Bathurst in Gambia, Freetown in Sierra Leone, Tema and Takoradi in Ghana,
and Dakar in Senegal.
We were a mixture of sixth-form and University students and regular fare-paying
passengers. It was an 'educational' cruise, and we had expert lecturers, together
with some members of the Ghanaian High Commission, other dignitaries and musicians,
and our own temporarily exported teachers...
Needless to say, even before the coming of 'Grange Hill' - and having almost
outgrown 'St Trinians' - our girl's grammar school was if anything worse; high
jinks were the order of the day.
We decided one night to hide in our lockers, leaving one girl in her bunk to
tell the matron that we had all gone off to visit the boy's dormitory...
In a fine flurry of alarm the buxom lady bustled off in search of renegade schoolgirls,
while we all burst into a shrieking fit of giggles - this was the 'sixties,
and life was to say the least more sheltered - however we were not to know that
there would be a screaming alarm sounded...
We jumped into our clothes; it was so hot where we were, just off the coast
of the Ghanaian and Nigerian border in West Africa, approaching Tema, and the
humidity in that equatorial region was 97%, with temperatures in the early 100's.
Wearing clothes in that heat and humidity made us soaking wet in minutes, and
was excruciatingly uncomfortable, but we had to be prepared to abandon ship,
so we dressed and went to assemble by our beds, awaiting the inevitable telling
off.
We were shocked to find that, under the impression that we were a Ghanaian troopship
(the SS Nevasa had been converted from a troopship after the war,) the Nigerians
had started firing on us, and we'd had to retire to a safe distance in order
to clarify our position and convince them that we were a bona fide UK educational
expedition (who knows what devious cover ups we were in reality enabling).
Added to which we were mortified to learn that a passenger had fallen down a
companion-way, the victim of a fatal heart attack. Fortunately for us, these
matters were deemed serious enough to put our escapades into the shade, and
we only lost one evening's privileges.
Eventually, our status and innocence assured, SS Nevasa was allowed to land
in the gentle port of Tema, and we were escorted to the various tourist-friendly
villages complete with grass huts, ebony carvings and skin-covered drums, dried
percussive seed-pods, antelope or goat skins, and souvenirs.
We also visited the main city, and a market, and we were taken to a jungly school
where the pupils, having practised long, presumably for our benefit, gave us
a rendition of Jimi Hendrix and Rolling Stone numbers, with electrically amplified
musical instruments, evidently highly important in the music-loving Ghanaian
culture.
Wherever we went, each venue was accessed by a dirt track; the soil was composed
of red laterite, the pulverised dust everywhere coating our skins and making
us all look the same colour, whether black, white, or in between.
There was a trip to a pool, in trucks instead of buses - some buildings, mostly
low tech., and the sea wall fortifications. The Ibo and Woluf tribes were at
odds - and we had plenty of history lessons on board to orient us for each country
we visited.
Nigeria was seen as a bellicose country with aggressive tendencies, altogether
too unstable to risk a shipload of young people upon - but the gentle, laughing
Ghanaians were so vibrant and colourful, their rhythms so energising and heart-awakening.
I fell in love with Africa on that trip, and having been proposed to by the
son of a local chieftain (I laughed, to cover my inexperience and embarrassment,
but later felt strangely touched) I vowed one day to return.
The trouble is, aware of the influx of foreign money, hotels, Western exploitation
and development, it means my fond memories could well be challenged... But then
again, after thirty three years, so is my mirror!
I think, on balance, I would still like to go back, but these days the peoples
of West Africa are war-torn and mine-strewn. The children were different then,
playing in the dust, or standing to attention with a speared swordfish bigger
than themselves, at the sides of the dusty tracks we sped along in our lorries.
Nowadays they are soldiers, or the grandfathers of soldiers, and today's children
in Sierra Leone stride around with Kalashnikovs instead of spears, and hobble
with amputated limbs instead of the proud stance they for which they were once
renowned.
The tragedy of the escalating provision of arms, particularly by my own country,
that would never countenance its own children being treated in this fashion,
leaves me breathless in the face of such gross hypocrisy. I fail to see how
we can justify using our developed technology to supply weapons, rather than
clean water systems, assistance with agriculture, education, trade and communications.
Our original so-called intentions, to 'civilise and develop,' as opposed to
the reality, to subjugate, exploit, and indoctrinate a culture unlike our own,
have been shamefully manipulated, and our intervention in the age-old structure
of tribal organisation and the imposition of our own style of political organisation,
has led to the strife we see today.
I for one wonder if our 'innocent' study tour in January 1968 was instrumental
in opening up the continent and its trusting people to the worst, and not the
best of our culture...
The music playing is 'Africa'
sourced from a MIDI music site