HOW SAVE OUR FACES WAS BIRTHED

How "Save Our Faces" was Birthed

By

Godfred, Nana Kruentsi Ogoe

     April 24, 2022
godfrednanakruentsi@gmail.com                                

 

Like Richard Wright, I am not so pretentious as to imagine and to say that it is possible for me to account completely for my novel and letter, Save Our Faces, but I am going to account entirely for it- hammering out the inputs that had birthed this ‘text collection’. In order not to convey a sense of enormity out of emotions and fervency, I would explicitly discuss, clearly, my encounters, motivations, observations and proficiency towards this novel, and my changing attitude which had driven this work to its utmost point of birth, from a lineage of critical social scholarships that African authorities had already laid down in their artistic works.

            Save Our Faces is a novel that deals with the cultural, political and religious beliefs of intendants in institutions that put a force on the governed in a decentralized governance. It goes further to be considered that this work is an army, set of weapons in my effort, ready for a peaceful Coup D’état in institutions that breed malice with intents to ruin the governed and their goal, to see legal justifications. The problem, however, lies between two groups, which one group is ‘highly classed’ to the detriment of the other. For an exemplar, the demand that affected people of institutional flaws remain silent, despite their oppression, is unsound and needs to be subjugated.  In other sense, this situation reveals a grotesque picture of the less privileged and controlled group, which I would talk about in some other paragraphs.

The moment an author unfolds his tongue to speak about his subjects ‘artistically cooked’ in his work, he moves closer to the audience to affect and reinforce their ideas. What do I mean? There is always something beyond the reader that the author has artistically put into the readers’   subjective thinking for scrutiny- that the more the reader receives the text, the more he delves by travelling to reasonably look for parallels of the text and the experience which the author has conveyed in his work. This, greatly, has contributed to the facts, that the true idea in a particular knowledge is uncertain and that there is doubt either in general or toward a particular object or doctrine. Due to this, the author may seem to look for balance, like the airplane, in belief and disbelief, reality and unreality, and doubt and knowledge. But there will be some ideas he must ignore, not for a certain goal, but simply because of the continuous change of attitudes that readers have when they receive a particular text. Imagine an entire world of readers for a particular text. If I may ask, wouldn’t these readers differently receive the text from their experience of time, place, setting and individual character and behavior?

The birth of Save Our Faces dates back to my childhood and vigorously grew in my tertiary school experience, and there was not only one figure who had attempted to save the face from public ridicule. Many with me found themselves jeered by ‘official characters’ when they had tried to speak for themselves. I shall for this reason move you through some encounters.

            When I was a child, a small fellow living in Wenchi and under the love of my mother, Augustina Busia, a descendant of Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia, there was a boy who physically assaulted me for challenging him. I had stood to defend myself on the very truth I knew, that the old should admit when they are wrong. Some young people like me would also stand in fright to observe how younger ones like me suffered, yet they couldn’t utter a word for protesting. We never had refused the price of subordination, but the older group had strenuously constituted their own authority over us, whether as kings or social superiors- we couldn’t rebel when we were maltreated. All we had had to do is to pledge for accepting to be aliens among our good old brothers: they had had the chance to even take what belongs to us forcefully or cunningly. In that very encounter, I was taken to the ground by this old friend who scratched my nose with a stone, when we were on the ground. Well! That was how we the young lived. But what had caused this? Although, the old don’t condone ill behaviors, they overlook them, when the situation deals with them. I still think the old would never ACCEPT their wrongs, and this has been all there is in human institutions.

What! This is a culture? There has always been the African saying that the young don't oppose the old even when the old foul. Following this culture imposed by the old, it has ‘chameleoned’ into different patterns of behavior in Ghanaians, and such has entered into Institutions: (like the) Families, Churches, Universities, Police, other Civil Services; Public Services. Giving grounds for a reasonable opinion for such behaviors is unknown. I don’t doubt that the intendants in institutions may have sworn an oath to protect such offices and laws, but whether they were given the revelations of such laws in such offices do I doubt. Who knows? And who knows what? Maybe one answer I can propose to all these is to see the danger of such improper fractions where one group carry and suffer under devastating loads mounted to kill their hopes. And at some other times, I don’t appreciate the will through which the young, in general, are conditioned to come to be, as they are heavily burdened with the usual defeat. If I had seen only one encounter, I would have considered such as really rare. But if it is seen everywhere, why shouldn’t I speak? In the darkness of this encounter, this has continuously made me put ink in my pen, to show my proficiency and approximations toward the situation. Verily, this is killing souls: it puts people into chaotic fear and loss of personal dignity and acceptance. Let me make the portrait of this clearer by using some exemplars.

(I)                Little dogs are brought into homes by Ghanaian people. However, the animals’ lives become so miserable because the bad behaviors of Ghanaian people who have such ‘watching pets’ are indirectly learned by these little dogs. Who told us that dogs die for bones? Who told us that dogs behave only like pigs? A little dog which doesn’t get food, but only bones, shouldn’t turn to eat from the owner’s bowls? A little dog that is not given ‘shelter’ is homeless in its owner’s house- no food, no care and no love. Notwithstanding how such animal is treated, it is still mandated, under chains, to watch and take care of ‘the house’ from insecurity. That’s how the young are treated. Sometimes when the dogs become lenient, owners subdue them to take liquor which result in havoc and disorder in human lives. What symbols I have extended in such comparisons are so clearer and obviously evident in the lives of young people. Think about it! 

(II)              (I) Postulate that we all can be a perfect crucible in our most extreme defense of the spirit of the play called Life. I had ever heard the young say badly, “we wish we were not born”. But those voices making such utterance will soon be taking steps on the precarious ladder. Once the youth get out of their fears and once the news gets to its climax, pandemonium will break its shells on the streets across the country. Every youth would say, ‘Father, don’t take my forthright as rudeness, for I have learnt to be a man like you’. That argued, every youth, like the little dogs, will, then, have a life devoid of unpleasantness and bitterness. Life with the us has been like standing in front of a mirror to always see our beauty and have no picture in hand- it has been like watching and or catching the wind. Anyway! Before I move you through my tertiary school life to show how Save Our Faces has grown, we need to know that ‘our owners’, like the caretakers of the little dogs, show us some callouses in every stage of our lives. Don’t also forget that the ‘little dogs’ begin to bite when they are much grown. In this society, life is full of: cultural, political, religious and philosophical antagonists who lead us to war- like the little dogs that war for ‘shelter’. I would better indicate what had given birth to these habitudes.

 

(III)           How did Save Our faces grow? As I am aware, people had always strived to become better, to lead; to protect reputations. Those who did this initially are called ‘authorities’. They are grown in knowledge, wisdom, power and finance. For example, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah couldn’t have done us good without all the growth patterns I have mentioned. I can tell you that I lived my life without witnessing who this man was. Because when I was born, he was no more watching the earth nor heaven. Usually, our daily lessons in schools revealed that he was a man of his ‘Nkrumanism’. What do I mean? He only had a distinct belief and ideology that the African world should live in decolonization- the central contention through which he had adopted socialist political structures in line with African values of egalitarianism. This tells generations that Nkrumah wanted a system where all humans are equal in fundamental worth, moral status and social rights. When he attempted to find us independence, he saved our faces from the depth of low self-esteem and lack of personal dignity. Contrariwise, I can tell that we always observe Nkrumah’s Independence won for us, but, now, we strongly live the rejection of his basic ideas that put us in an equal ground. And that is why many people are rebelling the cold dictates of democratic authorities who by themselves are, I should say, ‘dictodemocrates’. They breed politics and principles that only are practical rather than moral and ideological considerations; such ways have shown the indelible and gratuitous greed, corruption, violence and assault, in citizens and their dictodemocrats. At the stage of rebellion, a motif intended for ‘reforms’, not ‘revolution’, Save Our faces is always born so I don’t even think I know everything about when it’s meaning was born; that is why it has already been an idiom in the language.

             To be honest, African writers are not only known for their good page-turning books that are found in most world libraries and canons, but they are also more recognized for adding their thoughts to our minds, in order to dialogue the pertinent issues in the African societies. Writers like Ayi Kwei Armah, Ngugi wa Thiango, Wole Soyinka, Veronique Tadjo, Chinua Achebe, Femi Osofisan, Ola Rotimi, Chimamanda Adichie, Ama Atta Aidoo, Frank Ogodo Ogbeche, and Buchi Emecheta, just to mention a few, have challenged African societies to embrace the true African culture, pride and dignity. Some of these writers I have mentioned, in post-independent stage within their countries, rose up to be activists of all sorts of change in demanding justice on pertinent issues and encountered serious persecutions for their works, from the then authorities. And which laws were to liberate them from the hands of Government? These writers [Ngugi wa Thiang’o (Kenya), Nawal El Sadawi (Egypt), Ken Saro Wiwa (Nigeria), Kofi Awoonor (Ghana) and Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)] are the few I can mention. I stand to put it that some authorities or the dictodemocrats (if my coined term can make me right) received their text with emotions like the Pharisees who were against Jesus.

            Who is man that can destroy our temple and laws? I put it clearer that, in the main, authorities are behaving like the Pharisees who were fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious and other ideals. At this point, the writers who were persecuted were challenged because they looked at the character and behavior of some political rulers in administering the state affairs, which made them look like antagonists and traitors. In Save Our Faces, the novel, I only looked at the law and how it is imperatively used against INNOCENT ONES, which is a new differentia. This is why Arthur Miller, the good American essayist and playwright, puts it:

“Few of us can easily surrender our belief

that society must somehow make sense.

The thought that the State has lost its mind

and is punishing so many innocent people

is intolerable. And so the evidence must be

internally denied.”

            Man will forever be MAN due to their constant association with stimuli. We’re aware that man’s stimulation resulting from environmental factors and change led many researchers to study their behavior. We’re also aware that Psychology, Philosophy and Sociology keep studying man’s composure, fundamental beliefs and interactions with other groups. What about Literature? We have felt pretty much love for it, in the expressions of life made visible to our imaginations. To support this arcade with a pillar, I would say that writers of time, age; season have, with their work, groomed the consciousness of man. Arguably, Literature, in itself, has served as the only ground that wrap around Psychology, Philosophy and Sociology in order to groom man for his real world. It is based on this testament that writers of the world have devoted themselves to prepare man for his world, yet man still wants to persecute at all cost. This is not WAR, but a real verbal interchange of thoughts and ideas, which cannot lead to persecution.

            I made the discovery that man is not bad at all; they can be watered with words for a good life; that is what literature does. What, after all, is any writing in Literature? And what is about (African) writers that we need? They are the only devoted servants through whom we come to know the real truth, the ideal- as everyone has come to face and play a role in the society, like Paul said:

I planted the seed,

Apollos watered it, but

God made it grow.

[1 Corinthians 3:5-6]

I pray to God to use Apostle Paul’s utterance to write my thought; perfectly do I want to say:

Writers planted the seed,

Readers watered it, but

Justification made it grow.

            (That’s all. And how I followed for the change, to still water men’s consciousness!)

            My tertiary school experience gave me a new eye to see, hear and understand things. I was, at first, a spectator; not a discerner of experiences that ruin people, until I was personally ruined. On my third journey for the four-year programme, I, with some twenty-one student leaders, was unlawfully rusticated in the news, by the leaders of the University that schooled me. To me, life seemed like a broken mirror that had been broken again into diminutive pieces. My daily and usual soliloquy was:

 

In this society, Life is

Full of Antagonists who put us to war.

Often times you’ll have your heart weeping

The deadly misfortunes of your life. But who cares?

None!

How does the slave tell the master’s wrong?

If he does, will he be justified?

Whoever knows the truth hastes it

For society is so!

Leaders push blame unto the governed

The governed blame Leaders

How so? Why so? Where so? The Blackland!

Who’ll even listen to us?

That we’re wrongfully judged?

Only one that wants to lay down his life!

             Until that stage, I never stopped thinking about ‘To be or Not to be’- the very words for Shakespeare to get into our conscience. The reason why I did not stop was because I was not for one moment ever ready to test the invading power of any Ghanaian Institution, but we were left with the last option, saving our faces. What had led administrators rusticate some innocent ones? Save Our Faces! What had led administrators dirty these innocent ones in the news? Save Our Faces. Just as people are bad in homes, people are bad everywhere. And everyone, good and bad, wants to save their face. Those Judases! They cannot make things right except they face the results. That is a part of the reasons why Save Our Faces has been born again. It will be born in any day man changes to decay his personality. My argument seems lugubrious, Any way! And know that Paul and Apollos (new set of writers) are ready for planting and watering to kill the factitious being of man created by their new face of life, because man has to be reborn by word.

            I feel that I’m very lucky to get into people’s thinking; I don’t know whether Save Our Faces will be a bad book for people. Should it be, then I’m successful for letting you know that the intendants who do wrongs will still argue their laws and persecute. That’s a sharp view of it! Truly, we may have no one ready for a cultural change, but all are busy living the change which is a disgrace for our national life. And if Nkrumah who was the theatre were alive, he would not have to: (1) impose, but instruct, (2) master, but serve; (3) judge, but inform. In that light I say,

“Theatre has fallen here, and the audience are confusedly living the undirected scripts: SUCH A LIFE OF DOOM”.

At last, I found how to end my good letter; I showed how people always are persuaded by society. Like Gotham city, let’s give it a SECOND CHANCE to invade the bad characters in the theatre.

 

                                                                                                         Godfred, Nana Kruentsi Ogoe

                                                                                                     (The Author)

                                                                                                   April 24, 2022