By Godwin. This is a story of something that happened to me almost 10 years ago now.

In 2001, after graduating from senior high school, I decided to travel to the Ivory Coast with a friend to look for a job so I could raise some money towards my university education. I went with this friend of mine who had a brother in The Ivory Coast.

My understanding was that we were going to teach English in primary schools because of our English-speaking background. I had already taught at a primary school in Ghana (actually the school owned by the now Deputy Minister for the Upper East Region).

The way my friend presented the story I had the conviction that we would be hot property because of our English background in a French-speaking country. But I didn’t tell my parents about it because during the time there was instability in The Ivory Coast . I told them I was going to Accra.

We traveled from Bawku via Kumasi in a trotro and then over the border at night. We were received nicely by my friend’s older brother where we stayed in this huge compound house with so many young men and women there. I even thought it was a hostel or something, but he told me it was a compound house for the brother. His brother had a cocoa farm, a very big one.

For one week we were living the house, eating and drinking. There were about 20-25 motorbikes in the house. If we felt like going to town we just jumped on a bike and went. We were just eating and sleeping all the time and I got up one Saturday morning and asked my friend, “Challie we came to look for money. We’ve been here one week now, all we do is eat and sleep, what’s happening? Can’t we look for a job?”

He told me that his brother would assist us to look for a job.

I said “OK, let’s go see your brother.”

He replied that he already saw his brother about work, but the brother said he was going to think about it and get back to us.

Over the next three days, in the morning around 9 am, the brother came to the compound house to visit. He didn’t live there.

On the third day he came to talk to me and my friend. The older brother asked me, “Do you really want to make money?”

I said, “Yes.” He asked me what will I do to make money.

I said, “We came with the hope that we’ll get some teaching to do, but at worse I don’t mind working on a cocoa farm if that’s what I have to do.”

He said, “Just that?”

I replied that I could do anything to fetch money.

He said OK, there is business that can give me money.

I asked, “What is that?”

He said, then, that he does not just do cocoa farming, but that he sells guns and asked if I had seen all the motorbikes.

I said yes.

He said that’s what they use to transport the guns into the forest in the night. He explained that the buyer will come during the day time, strike a deal, do 50% deposit. In the night, the young guys will carry the guns into the forest and meet the buyers, take the remaining 50%, and deliver the goods. He said there’s a lot of money and risk involved.

“The risk is that you could go and not come back,” he said.

I asked him, “What does that mean?”

“What it means is that at times you get troublesome customers who think of any easy way out by shooting the boys in the forest in the night and running away with the guns and not paying. But if you make just one trip you may not need to go again,” he said.

I sat down for about 5 minutes and didn’t say anything.

Then he asked me if I had anything to say.

I said, “It’s true that I came to look for money and that I need money badly, but I’m not ready to exchange my life for money, so I’m sorry I can’t be involved in that business, but I’ll be very happy to work on the cocoa farm.” It seemed simple. I had worked on a cocoa farm for 6 months between JSS and SS.

He said to me that he had enough workers on the farm so I said, “OK, I’m also sorry but I can’t sell guns because that is wrong and I’m not ready to do that.” I had no idea the about implications of saying this to him. I was experienced in some ways but naïve in others.

But all he said to me then was, “OK, you can think about it. If you do change your mind you can let me know.”

I said to him, “I’m not thinking about it. I’ve made up my mind. I won’t do that job.”

After this he walked out without saying anything.

I just thought that was it. I was already thinking of the next step. Should I go out and look for work from someone else? Should I just stay there and hope that he would change his mind and ask me to work on the cocoa farm? I didn’t know what to do.

I went to bed alone wondering what to do. Since we arrived I had shared the same room with the younger brother, my friend, but that night my friend didn’t come home. Normally we would go to bed at 10 at the latest, but even at midnight he wasn’t back. I became worried and then he showed up sometime around 1 or 2 a.m.

I asked him where he had been.

He said “You shouldn’t ask me that question” and told me that I had to leave.

I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “You have to leave right now. There’s no time to explain.”

“I don’t understand. Where am I leaving to? I don’t know where to go,” I said.

He then explained, “What you said this morning angered my brother. He was very offended. Listen, he has asked his boys to come here and kill you tonight. He told me not to stay with you so his boys could come and kill you alone. But my brother just left for town so I came here to tell you to leave now while he is gone.”

I had not felt scared until then. I said, “Well, leaving the house is the same as being dead. I don’t know anyone in the whole country and I don’t have money so they can kill me here.”

But he pushed some money into my hands and told me to go so I picked my bag and walked out like that. I have a good memory for directions and walked to the station in the dark. When I got there, there was no vehicle. I hung around the station until 5 am when the first vehicle bound for Ghana began loading. I jumped in and paid but…”

Stay tuned for the 2nd half in two day’s time.