Kofi Ntiri: Perhaps, The Most Painful Immigrant Story

By their nature, rhetorical questions do not lend themselves to easy answers: What on earth are we here for? The routine is sickening: quality education, a great job, big house, a beautiful wife, cute children and expensive holidays to wash away the fret and the weariness of an unintelligible life. Then, suddenly, life actually becomes unintelligible, making nonsense of achievement and promise: valedictories swap places with dirges, as obituaries take the spot of first class degrees. Another life ends, just like the one before it. No answers, just questions. Even more questions. What on earth are we here for? Fiddlers on the roof? Where does it stop? And it doesn’t stop. Stupid! Plain stupid!


Kofi Ntiri had gone through such a routine. In his case, however, there were vignettes of very painful misadventures, as though he had been contracted to pay a price for mere existence. But he made good the price: He would wean his sophomoric years at KNUST, where he had started a degree course in Engineering, to Canada, to begin the dreaded student-immigrant life. With no access to loans as an international student, he would work unheard of hours to pay tuition fees and accommodation. He would also give to Western Union and Moneygram what was due Caesar. But for him, Caesar was any old friend in Ghana who needed financial assistance. He helped too many people, including his beloved brother, Joseph Ntiri, whom he singlehandedly sponsored to Canada, even as a fee-paying international student. Joe never misses an opportunity to say thank you.


Toronto is topsy-turvy, the GTA being the nervous system of megapolitan Canada. Kofi spent twelve years in the turbulent-party-funeral-baby-out-doorings of Toronto with freethinking burgers. But he had too much on his mind to be a freethinker; the chemical engineering programme at Brock University was too tasking to make way for the parties. Yet, he honoured important community functions, driving long hours to please his hosts and scroungers. He would later transfer his engineering programme to Ryerson University in Downtown Toronto, where he would postpone the completion of his degree to accommodate pressing family matters. But he pressed through the problems: He recorded very good grades and graduated among the best of his class. Chemical engineering was his thing. He wanted to be an engineer, a chemical engineer, not civil or mechanical, but khemikle (his patented pronunciation of ‘chemical’). So he did become an engineer, recognised by the professional body. He even wore a ring to prove it.


All was set for a triumphant take off, to make it all count. And he made them count: He found jobs, then other jobs, then no jobs, until ‘The’ job came. When there were no jobs and job search really became a big job, he found good jobs in himself: He lived in hope-the hope that life has more to offer, and the love of his mother, which put it all together. From TTC to oil companies in Calgary and juicy offers from Vancouver, he did what he could, learning and unlearning, to build a career. There were job losses. There were also losses of jobs. But there was hope that the dream job was not lost. It would finally happen at Atomic Energy Canada, Chalk River, Ontario, where he would live and work until the sudden loss - of everything, all of it. Suddenly, nothing matters anymore, except one thing- the nagging question: What on earth are we here for? Still, no answers; just questions! Sure, he left footprints in people’s hearts, but do they matter anymore?


The phones rang. They wouldn’t stop ringing: everybody wanted to know how it happened. His mechanic cries: “I still have the parts I bought for his car; he was supposed to bring it over for a total overhaul. Maybe it’s not him.” Then, a bosom friend adds: “Just yesterday we were talking. He didn’t betray any signs. He was very much the lovely guy he had always been. This is cruel”. Then his brother yells: “He only complained of a little headache and the strength of the medication he was taking. It didn’t sound threatening. He had not had it easy for twelve years. All began to make sense recently. Now, it doesn’t make sense anymore.” Then an acquaintance chips in: “This is too much to take. Not this time. He was too young to leave, just too young. What a loss?”


“The pieces just do not add up”, his new landlady had to say: “A young man comes to rent an apartment. He pays and collects keys. He drops two bags, promising to bring the rest later that evening. He doesn’t show up. He is dead.” His two bags are still waiting in the new apartment in Pembroke. His old landlady is still ready with the truck that he was going to use to cart his luggage to the new apartment: “I kept waiting for him that day. He didn’t call to say he wouldn’t need it anymore. It was unlike him. He wouldn’t answer his cell phone. His car had not moved. The lights in his room were still on. That is when I suspected something was wrong.” There he lay on his bed, like he would usually lie, except that this time, he was woken dead while he was still in motion.


Oh yes, Martha. What happens to his young wife: A happy bride in February and a widow by October? She was to join him in Canada very soon, to start a family. Tons of documents had been pushed through the immigration system. She was waiting. Then she continued to wait for the day she would meet the husband in Canada. Instead, he goes to meet her in Ghana - the same husband, encased in a coffin, his hands on his chest. How does a 25 year old start out with the experience that septuagenarians dread to imagine? If there were children, she would feed into their eyes and comfort herself with the resemblance in their father. Or perhaps, it is good that there are no children, whose very presence would be a painful reminder of the loss of her love. She doesn’t win either way. It is stupid. Move on? To where? To whom? Stay on? But how? Stupid.


Then Mrs Ntiri, the mother who would count herself among the very few Ghanaians who looked upon when their child was lowered into the ground. The converse is what traditional establishment decrees. A child (and they always see theirs as tots) throws himself into the wilderness for 14 years, endures the cold community of strangers and pretenders, leaves an inheritance for his family and dies in the cold-where he didn’t belong. They always return. It usually takes long, sometimes very long. But one thing is for sure: They always come back home, to rest their cold bones in the sun. This is the luxury that Mrs Ntiri and her family had wished for Kofi. They were waiting for Kofi’s return (he was planning to retire home in five years) - the cure who would heal the sickness in the hearts of those who miss him. Instead they received the ultimate sickness.


Well, it was as if the spring had been wound up tight; it would uncoil of itself. You can’t hold it tight enough: It would always find a way to coil out. Who knew? Well, God knew. And he knows best…that Kofi Ntiri did his best as a friend to many, a colleague at work, a husband to a dear Martha and a very good human being. What on earth was he here for?



Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin, Ottawa, Canada
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