My Son, My Mirror

I had just returned to Los Angeles from a month in Ghana after making my Baha'i Pilgrimage, and I knew my next story to tell would be about my son Samuel. I knew this story was going to be difficult to write, but I just couldn't quite put my finger on why. And then during a moment of meditation at the Shrine of Baha'u'llah, the resting place of the Founder of the Baha'i Faith, the reasons appeared to me.

I love my son Alex because I see in him the person I am striving to become - positive, quietly confirmed in his faith, optimistic, outgoing and engaging, always giving of himself and always humble to accept the assistance of others. My love for Sammy is just as strong, but it's different. In Sammy I see so much of myself and I realized that both of our characters were defined by growing up in broken families

Alex grew up with the security of a mother and father who expected the best from their children, but also showered them with love and gave them a solid foundation to fall back on as they continue to navigate their way into adulthood.

Sammy and I did not.

Sammy was raised by his mother but his father left the family when Sammy was 12 years old. His primary father figure was Uncle Alex, Sr., Alex's biological father. In the Akan culture, remember that the name for "father" and "father's brother" in Twi are the same, and this manifests itself in the culture such that the brothers and sisters of biological parents step into the role of father and mother to all children in the extended family.

With Sammy's father leaving, he was suddenly required to grow up quickly and take on many of the responsibilities that a father would in a family of 11 children. My experience was similar, surviving my own parents' divorce with I was 17 and thrust into raising my younger brother.

Sammy and I talked about the struggles we had with our parents. One day Sammy told me, "I live with the anger I have towards my father, but sometimes I'm surprised that I feel more anger towards my mother." I knew that feeling. Why didn't our mothers fight for us? Why didn't they protect us and allow us to remain boys instead of turning us into replacements for the husbands who had failed them? Why did we have to take care of them and rescue them when it should have been the other way around? I told Sammy that our parents did the best they could with the capacities they had available to them, but it's OK to feel that anger. Embrace it, get to know its size, and then move on from it so that it doesn't control us. That's called forgiveness. Forgiveness for our parents, but also forgiveness for ourselves. Forgiveness for the little boy who never got to be. We both have been able to support each other in finding a path to acceptance and unconditional love for our parents.

The result of such an upbringing is profound. We tend to be loners, we are comfortable with solitude, we have a fear of failure which makes it hard for us to pursue our interests and passions in life, and we have a hard time accepting help from others when it is offered. We are caught in a world of survival, where at any moment we will find ourselves alone and falling.

A husband leaving his wife and family was a rarity in Ghana when I lived there in 1982. Thirty years ago, traditions and the extended family unit were much more intact. Marriage was seen as an institution providing the foundation for raising children and the safety of a family that included the extended family members. Leading up to any marriage, there were cultural steps taken to ensure that through the process of courtship and engagement the couple was assisted by parents and grandparents to assess the characters of the couple and their compatibility with each other, as well as the compatibility of the two families that would be joined in the union.

This foundation that kept a family together back then manifested itself in different ways. Like Uncle Prince, the eldest living member of a family was entrusted with the responsibility to sort out quarrels and disputes. That advice then became an unwritten contract to abide by, believed to be enforced by the Nananom Nsamanfo, who are the Ancestors in the next world watching us. Juju, or magic, can also play a powerful part of traditional the belief system, whereby cause and effect on a spiritual level play a part in everyone's lives. If you do harm to another person, there will be repercussions on a metaphysical level which could manifest itself as bad luck or illness.

One of my most cherished interests is in the Akan proverbs, which were also used to assist in keeping the bonds of marraige and family strong. When I was a student at KNUST, Akwasi Osei took me to a village outside of Kumasi where I had the opportunity to sit with a fetish priestess and discuss the proverbs with her in depth. Typically, the grandmothers of the family were charged with providing advice, often using the proverbs. The following are a few of these beautiful gems of wisdom:

• Nea oforo dua pa na wopia no. The one who climbs a good tree is the one who is helped. (Well thought plans will bring others who will want to assist you.)

• Nea wonom ho no wonnware ho. One should not bathe in the water others drink from. (Do what is right, not what is convenient.)

• Onipa ye de. Mankind is sweet (No man should live in isolation.)

The origins of the proverbs are not known. The earliest western account of them appears to be by a British explorer named Mary Kingsley in the late 1800's. It can be deduced that if the history of Okomfo Anokye takes place during the late 1600's, then they are at least that old. Okomfo Anokye was one of the Akwapim people from the Aburi Hills north of Accra. It is believed that he was a priest who had supernatural powers, and was responsible for bringing down the Golden Stool from the gods in the sky to the Asante people, resulting in a constitution and a federation among all the Akan peoples. My own feeling is that he may have been a prophet or a seer and the Golden Stool is symbolic of the knowledge he brought in order to form the federation and further civilization. The proverbs also reflect this divine wisdom, bringing order and peace by providing insight about the appropriate behavior of the individual to maintain harmony in the community.

Ghana has experienced political stability and economic growth ranging from an impressive 10% to 14% each year for the last 25 years, and the country has also experienced a shift in cultural traditions as young people are exposed to western values and consumerism. The result has been a fracturing of the extended family system and a weakening of the traditional values. So many children growing up in the cities are not aware of the proverbs and traditions, and their grandparents are rapidly becoming expendable rather than maintaining the role of the moral anchor of the family.

Westernization has brought with it a western perspective on personal relationships. Rather than the cultural norm of being a community member first and an individual second, people are rapidly becoming accustomed to thinking of themselves first, avoiding pain by leaving tough situations rather than trying to make them work for the greater good. With the safety net of grandparents' wisdom being overlooked and the extended family disintegrating, assistance and support is vanishing. Sammy and I are all too familiar with this. Sammy had to fend for himself when his father left for Moree, and I was had to do the same when my mother left me. Parents who had decided that their families no longer mattered more than themselves.

I started to get phone calls from Alex - he was very scared. He told me that Sammy had disappeared. No one knew where he was and he wouldn't answer his phone. He finally returned a few months later, but wouldn't talk about where he had been and what he'd been doing. After a couple months he would disappear again. I tried to talk to Sammy about this, but he would not open up to me about it.

The situation became increasingly alarming, so last year I sat Sammy down outside the wall surrounding Uncle Prince's house just above the valley that the house overlooks. It was strangely quiet that day, only the breeze coming through the valley through the acacia trees and the hawks lazily soaring in circles over the silk cotton trees.

"Sammy? You know I love you like a father - like the father you never had. Well, I want to help, but if you can't tell me what is troubling you then we can't come up with a solution. So, I'm here to listen. No advice unless you want it. No judgment, no criticism. Just to listen."

Sammy looked at me, not sure what to do. He took a deep breath, and then he took a leap of faith with me. He told me that he had originally saved money from welding jobs in order to build a welding shop with his best friend. His friend swindled him out of the land purchase for the shop, and he lost everything he had saved. Since he was now a young man, his mother had been pressuring him to bring money home to support his brothers and sisters. Her pressure became so great that he had to leave home and go to the illegal gold mines, digging knee-deep in mud and caustic chemicals, and sleeping in a cold canvass tent. He was endangering his own life in order to bring home a small amount of money which would buy some time until his mother's pressuring began again. This cycle continued for another year, and Sammy was hardening into a sullen, quiet and broken young man. The spark in his eye had vanished and his wonderful humor was gone.

We had been visiting a friend named Danquah in Yamoransa regularly. He owns a computer repair shop, and he was always busy with customers bringing their PCs for repair. Danquah was open to talking about what Baha'is believe in, so Sammy, Alex, Uncle Prince and I would go visit him a couple days a week to discuss world events and what Baha'is believe are the solutions to these problems. And every time we would visit, Sammy inevitably would maneuver himself to looking over Danquah's shoulder, fascinated with what he was working on.

While we sat outside the wall, I asked Sammy if he was interested in computers. He looked at me in shock. "How did you know, Wofa Yaw?!" I laughed and told him that I had been watching each day we went to Danquah's shop, and it was clear he had a passion for them. I pointed out to Sammy that his work at the goldmines was a dangerous short term solution that would not resolve the long term situation. I told him that if he wanted to go to school to study computers, I will gladly send him. He could have a viable trade doing something he loved, and he could have a future to get married and have a family of his own.

Sammy was stunned. He objected, "But Wofa Yaw, I can't... " I interrupted and said that rule number one in our relationship was going to be that we will never say 'I can't' to each other. This was particularly hard for me to say because I see that quality in myself, always cautious and always afraid that the worst could happen. But as a father, I couldn't show him my fear. My job was to provide the foundation that will always be there for him to jump off of, and to ensure that he would always be safe doing so.

Sammy revealed to me that with his father's leaving, so did any hope to go to secondary school because there was no money. As a boy he would sit on the porch and watch his friends walking to school in their freshly ironed school uniforms while Sammy was left behind. He said he had no education so he had no future, backed into a hopeless corner and giving up. He told me it was shameful to be so stuck in life, like being trapped in adolescence while watching your friends move on, never allowed to grow up and never allowed to look ahead.

I think my heart broke right then and there, sitting and listening to this young man's story while looking out into the quiet valley. I thought about my own broken dreams and how I had struggled to take care of myself. No child should ever be limited by circumstances, deprived of a future and robbed of having hope.

I put my hand on Sammy's shoulder while he fought back the tears. I told him not to worry about that right now, and that together we will get this all sorted out. I gave him my commitment as a father, witnessed by the Nananom Nsamanfo who sent him to me as their gift, that I will never let him fall again and that no matter what I will always be there for him. We would see this through together, and we'd come up with a plan.

We got to work and soon after that, Sammy found an introductory certificate program at one of the computer vocational schools in Cape Coast that did not require a secondary school diploma. We agreed that this was the first step, and we should pray for doors to continue to open. Sammy was in school shortly after that, and enjoying every minute of it. He told me, "Dad, now I walk with my head up. People ask me what I am doing and I proudly tell them that I am going to school." He discovered he was a good student too. In fact, so good that one of his teachers took him on as an intern for the summer to work at his computer repair shop in town. And later our prayers were answered when Sammy got accepted to a prominent computer college in Accra where he has been able to arrange with the college for him to complete his secondary school certificate along side his Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science.

One of the most profound Akan proverbs is Se wo were fi na wo san kofa a yenkyi. This means, "It is not taboo to return and take what you have forgotten." Sammy is doing just that, cleaning up his past and going back to collect what is rightfully his.

What brought me the greatest joy was during this last trip home to Ghana this summer, seeing that my happy son Sammy was back. Alex, Sammy and I went to visit a friend of mine in Accra where we stayed for a few days. I woke up very early one morning, so I walked into the boys' room to check on them. They were awake but not out of bed yet. I sat at the end of Sammy's bed while the three of us talked and laughed. I wish I could have stopped time and lived in that moment forever.

During the first week Sammy went to classes at his new university in Accra, I called to check on him and see how he was settling in. The excitement in his voice was palpable. I told him, "It's going to happen Sammy! I can see that with a lot of hard work your dreams are about to come true! I'm so excited for you! I can't tell you how proud I am of you!"

Sammy was quiet for a moment, and then replied, "I love you, Dad."

When I pass on, I wonder if God will be smiling when I tell the story of saving this child's life? I've done one thing right in my life.