Out of Africa

About the Book

Four school teachers and their girlfriends, dissatisfied and disoriented with their lot in life and more particularly, the teaching profession as a result of low salaries, lack of benefits, run-away inflation and shortages of essential commodities due to mismanagement of their country's economy, prepare to enter the national university to acquire higher qualifications to help them get better jobs and income after graduation. They work assiduously, combining studies, full-time employment and gallivanting to savour the good life the Harbour City could offer.

At the time, their country was under a second military government in less than fifteen years after regaining freedom and independence from the British. Their entry into Elgin University is marked by over-excitement, boos and womanizing alongside intense academic activities. The excitement and ebullience spill over beyond the borders of the University campus, enticing the police and army, who are battle-hungry and deprived of physical training, to engage in intermittent invasion of the university campus under the pretext of flushing out malcontents and hooligans. For more than a decade, the campus becomes battle grounds for police and army invasions, brutalities, anti-government demonstrations, student politics and government intervention and interference in the academic life of the university.

To make sense and meaning of what was going on at the campus, the four students, their girl-friends and sympathizers team up to organize a personal club to support themselves in coping with the stresses and uncertainties of campus life amidst the ongoing cacophonic revolution. They align themselves with a relative and friend, Jonas, who lives in the third largest city of the Republic. Jonas agrees to be a proud sponsor and financier of the group, who refer to themselves as social climbers. Jonas pays a visit to the Elgin campus to participate in the group's first campus party. He meets with Joe and Osborn, two close friends, and introduces them to some six mysterious soldiers he was working with on some special project, as he intimated.

After the party, Jonas leaves for his city but mysteriously fails to reach his destination. Nothing is heard of him for months. Around the same time, other people mysteriously disappear in the Republic. Under intense suspicions, General Ito, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, announces at a press conference that certain individuals have been apprehended and put in military custody for engaging in illegal activities calculated to undermine his government. He assures the nation, however, that investigations are underway and that those people would soon be brought to justice.

Meanwhile, student demonstrations against the military government continue unabated because of the government's failure to meet their demands, one of which is to hand over power. Planning to entrench themselves in power, the military government organizes a national referendum seeking approval for a proposed tripartite union government involving the army, civilians and the police.

Joe and the group win the student union elections and he is sworn in as President of the Elgin University student union. Using their new political leverage, Joe and Osborn confront General Ito and his military strategists about the whereabouts of Jonas. They are arrested and placed under military custody for interrogations at the Castle dungeons. Demands for their release reach searing point at the campus, resulting in massive nation-wide student demonstrations. In the ensuing confusion and anarchy, some disgruntled non-commissioned officers in the army overthrow the military government, freeing all those in military custody, including Jonas.

A new civilian government is hastily organized and installed with Jonas as the new President. Joe and Osborn refuse to participate in the new government and, instead, negotiate for safe exit to continue their studies overseas. Jonas arranges scholarships for the group and a flight is planned for them. But at the airport, the group is ambushed in a fuselage of gunfire in which Jonas and two members of the group are killed. However, Joe and the rest of the group manage to embark on the plane and take off before any further damage could be done to them.

For over six hours, the plane, bearing the confused students, is suspended ominously in the sky with no word from the flight crew as to where it was headed. Then suddenly, an announcement was heard, warning the passengers to be ready for a touch-down at the City airport in the "Iron Lady's" country, not Africa! Then it dawned on the group that they have made it out of Africa! What a sigh of relief, though the demise of Jonas and the other group members is something to worry about.

About the Author

Born and raised in his native Ghana in West Africa, the author has studied and worked in countries across three continents as a graduate student and university professor. In addition to teaching at the famous Fourah Bay College, the University of Sierra Leone, the author was a freelance journalist contributing articles in the local journals. At the University of Ghana, his Alma Mata, he was editor of his Hall's student Journal, the Voice. He holds four degrees, including a PhD from the University of Reading in England. He is an alumnus of the University of Alberta. Currently living in Alberta as a Canadian citizen, the author is an Institutional Researcher at Athabasca University, Canada's Open University, in Alberta.