(For Rev.-Col. Eugene Boapea Boamah Sintim[-Brown], Aka Kwaku Brown,
Retired Chaplain-General of the Ghana Armed Forces, 1941-2017)
When Wofa Panyin,
your elder brother,
passed on,
I shed
just a little
tear –
though fairly
well-heeled
and quite capable
of reaching out
to us,
my siblings
and me,
he lived
cocooned
by himself
and his brood
like an oasis
in a vast
desert
expanse…
none of his
clansfolk
could visit
his house
save those of
his wife’s;
she had
a very ironic
name,
like the Democratic
Republic of
Korea or
The Congo,
which are no
democracies
at all,
but veritable
and
anachronistic
hereditary
monarchies
fixated
on the phallic
symbols
of firepower…
Auntie Mercy
was her name,
which was
a joke,
for she was
the unkindest
of all
our
in-laws;
legend had it,
though my mom
thought
she had been
forced to it
by a
hostile
clan
to mount
her steely fence
against
the same…
yes,
when
Wofa Panyin
or Braa Panyin
passed on
in Deutschland,
I barely shed
a tear,
he had not
invested
anytime and
affection
in our lives…
still,
one day,
almost
out of the blue,
a massive fit
of sorrow
gripped
my throat,
and I found
myself weeping
silly torrents
of tears
for what I
thought
was a fit
of madness
from nowhere;
maybe
it had something
to do
with the fact
of us being
kin by
blood,
after all,
thus his death
meant
a reduction
of my
strength
and
joy…
it has been said
even the most
depraved
have their day
of recall,
I recalled
that single day
he gave me
a ride
in his
Hillman
which he came back
from London
with;
I sat in
Mama’s laps…
we were
trudging home
from the farm
on the bourne
between
Bomaa and
Kwabeng;
I was
a first grader,
it was a
great relief,
Auntie Mercy
was not
with him,
else
he would have
shot
right past
us like
a sling-shot,
and we would
have walked
all three miles
home,
sweating
profusely
like
Boti Falls,
sweating profusely
like we were
being cooked
alive,
streams
of sweat
in the sweltering
heat…
when news
of Wofa Panyin’s
passing
reached us here
in New York,
my mother
literally
cried her eyes
out,
I couldn’t
understand
why,
I also
couldn’t care
less then;
but somehow,
it still made
a bit
of sense
to me;
after all,
hadn’t he
been her
elder brother
dear…
for me,
though,
Wofa Panyin
had been
a total
stranger
at best,
at the worst
just another man
routinely
felled by
death –
7/26/17
(RIP)