Author: Amma Darko
Publisher: Sub-Saharan Publishers, Accra
Pages: 200
Reviewer: Adjekpagbon Blessed Mudiaga
The average mentality of many Africans both educated and illiterates, that God will cater for the children they breed without proper arrangement and means for their upkeep, the resultant effects of abandonment, incest, superstition, street children and the role some genuine Non-Governmental Organisations play in the African society, amongst others are the focus of Amma Darko’s novel titled Faceless.
The 25-chapter novel deals with what can be described as the ‘stupidity of some women getting married to any man to breed children like rats.’ This phenomenon is well dissected by the author, Darko, in an entertaining, informative and educative style that makes the reader giggle and sorrowfully shed silent tears simultaneously from time to time as events in the story line unfolds.
The setting of the novel is Accra, the capital city of Ghana. A young man known as Kwei who is not yet capable to independently cater for himself as he is still relying on his own mother whom he lives with, impregnates a lady called Maa Tsuru. She subsequently gives birth to two sons who become elder brothers to their younger sisters named Baby-T and Fofo.
Maa Tsuru and her two daughters are the central characters of the story. Baby-T is the older, and Fofo is her little sister. Kwei later leaves them and their mother to suffer as he could not carry out his duty for their proper upkeep and education. The quatrain turns out to be street children to make ends meet as their mother finds it impossible to solely take care of their needs.
As if the misfortune of dating parasitic men is Maa Tsuru’s god of destiny, she falls into the hand of another good for nothing man, Kpakpo. However, Baby-T is later raped at the age of twelve by her uncle simply identified as Onko. This triggers her removal from her mother’s family house.
Kpakpo, takes Baby-T to one middle-aged prostitute, Mama Abijan, who had plied her trade in Ivory Coast and Agege in Lagos, Nigeria. She thereafter transfers her to another middle aged prostitute, known as Maami Broni. While Maa Tsuru thinks that her daughter is being taken care of as a house-help where she lives with a woman she does not know, she did not know her child is being used as sex-slave to service randy men who patronize brothels. The money paid by them to Maami Broni meant for onward delivery to Maa Tsuru, is cornered by Kpakpo her jobless and dubious lover until the bubble burst. Surprisingly, after some time, Fofo is also asked by her mother to leave the house to join street rascals too because she feels Fofo’s presence is a sort of disturbance to her relationship with the homeless Kpakpo.
Meanwhile, Kpapkpo had also made her two-supporting grown up sons abandon her due to the unbearable shrieking of their mother’s bed and her sexual moans, the very first time he stepped into their cubicle to make love with her in the name of keeping her warm, before the subsequent final exit of her two aforementioned daughters.
Maa Tsuru’s behaviour represents the shamelessness of some ladies who satisfies their inordinate sexual desire at the detriment of the peace and harmony of their children because of their lovers’ interest. She later gives birth to two wretched-looking little boys for Kpakpo, while the one that would have been the third child resulted to still birth due to abject poverty.
After a while,
The roles of investigative journalism and the cooperation of Non-Governmental Organisations in helping to unravel criminal activities in any society comes to the fore when Sylv Po, a radio journalist and a group of ladies namely- Dina, Kabria, Vickie and Aggie working with an NGO known as MUTE, swing into action to unearth the killer of Baby-T, after Fofo had an encounter with Kabria in a market and builds familiarity from then. Kabria represents the good image of a responsible married woman in the plot, as she takes good care of her very demanding children, husband, and performs her official duty at MUTE ala an original hardworking average African woman orientation.
From the foregoing, the question that comes to mind is; does proper marriage or just mating outside wedlock to bear children make anybody responsible? If yes, why are there many problems in the global society today caused by crimes committed at both high and low places of public and private corporations perpetrated by some supposedly responsible married men and women whose so-called marital responsibility status is as worthless as tissue paper comparable to Kwei and Kpakpo’s misdemeanour in the novel, if being married or merely breeding children is a yardstick for measuring responsibility?
Someone’s responsibility is a personal decision whether one is married or not as Dina, a single lady who heads MUTE show her commendable level of responsibility, that one does not necessarily need to be married before you could behave responsibly. Your personal character determines how responsible you are whether you are married or have given birth to children or not, just as Maa Tsuru, Kwei, Kpakpo, Onko, and other parents in the story line rubbish the archaic philosophy that sees all married people or those who have given birth to children as responsible beings. No wonder many rogues also get married or give birth to children in order to be counted by a depraved society as responsible. In this vein, the novel tends to portray that anybody who thinks he/she needs to get married in order to be counted as responsible needs to go for psychiatric examination. You cannot give what you don’t have. If you have not been responsibly single, getting married is not a guarantee that you will be responsibly married, as cases of many irresponsible married couples are commonplace. Even, some couples have been selling their cherished African children these days. How logical then, is the responsibility status of being married and the value attached to bearing many children in this jet age, while hoping that God will help to take care of them?
The author, in her stylistics reliance on humour, various figures of speech and sarcasm, systematically punch holes in the age-long myopic African mentality that regards philandering men and women either properly married or breeding children out of wedlock as responsible because they decided to have sexual union and breed children while committing crimes one way or the other to cater for them even inadequately.
This occurrence somehow throws up another question such as, isn’t it time to put into the trash can, the conferral of ‘responsibility status’ on every person on the basis of just mating and bearing children whom many of their parents have been embezzling both public and private funds at the expense of the masses, to cater for? Hence, from the look of things, the major philosophical, biological and technological advancement and achievement an average African could easily boast about is the breeding of children like soldier ants because mating is the cheapest thing that can happen between the opposite sexes, while children are seen by many as the immortal angels that would keep their names hanging in the sun whether they were well brought up or not, as Maa Tsuru, Kwei and Kpakpo represents parents with such shallow brain reasoning. Isn’t this a Stone Age dementia still seriously embraced by many modern day Africans?
Furthermore, other issues raised in the story line include inadequate equipping of various African countries police with Ghana as a case study, sex education, African philosophical belief that the male child is superior to the female, rape, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), HIV/AIDS, environmental sanitation and appearance of apparition to those who are accomplices to murder, amongst others. Solutions to some of these societal challenges are also proffered by the author through various characters.
However, there are many twists and turns in the plot. It is surprising that Onko, Baby-T’s uncle who had defiled her and led to her removal from her family house, is the same person responsible for her death too, as findings later reveal that he traced her to Maami Broni’s prostitution room in the inner part of Accra to make love with her again and collect her pubic hair for a ritual to resuscitate his dwindling welding business, based on the recommendation of a juju-man. Whereas one notorious street gang and prostitution ring leader named Poison, has been the major suspect for her death.
In conclusion, the very ridiculous philosophy of some Africans always giving birth to children even when they can barely take good care of themselves, while expecting God to come down to cater for the wrongly-timed born children, seems to be the author’s satirical focus. Also showcasing along this ill-fated ideology, is the monomaniacal tendency of some ladies who would rather maintain some unworthy men in their life than to be seen as women without men, vis a vis some men who maintain some unworthy women than to be seen as men without women in their life.
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