The Bond of Kingship

I attended Easter Sunday church service at one of the big interdenominational Churches in the country at Tema; comprising Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian. I went with my daughter to fellowship there for a reason.

To express our heartfelt gratitude to the resident minister for intervening in my daughter’s SHS placement saga.

Whilst at the Reverend Minister’s office, a very fine gentleman came in with his sister and daughter to see the Reverend Minister. Their mission was to be introduced to members of their family who fellowship at the Church. There are a number of kinsmen and women with same surname who fellowship at the Church.

Their family name comes across as one of the elite surnames that are products of the colonial legacy - those from Cape Coast or Central Region.

My daughter and I were fortunate to have sat in one of the family members car and driven from Tema back to Accra.

On Saturday 28th May, I attended an engagement and wedding ceremony of a maternal family member at Regimanuel Estate on Spintext Road. It was my first time being at the Regimanuel Estate.

My attendance at the ceremony was an opportunity for me to meet quite a number of my maternal family members - The Homeys - whom I have not met before. As Grandma Eunice was introducing me to other Homeys at the ceremony, I had a recollection of the incidence at the church in Tema after the Easter Sunday service.

As I kept reminiscing on family encounters/reunion, Ngugi Wa Thiong’s novel The River Between sharply came to mind. I once read about ‘the bond of Kingship’ in an extract from The River Between.

With an ever increasing or growth of families, coupled with migration, we now find ourselves in such instances where we do not know many of our kinsmen and women scattered across different geographical locations.

Whist working on my late mother’s obituary, I came to the realisation of something.

Obituaries are a good record of family tree/history. My mother’s paternal late uncle’s obituary served as a guide to me in preparing my mother’s own. It contained the names of lots of my mother’s paternal kinsmen and women.

Getting the names of The Homeys became a challenge as I don’t know many of them. I had to call on Grandma Eunice to rescue me with The Homeys family tree - some of whom I met at the wedding ceremony for the first time, or the second time for those who were at my mum’s funeral.

I had wondered why some obituaries contain long list of family members. I was of the opinion that the long list was needless. But in the hereafter, I see such long list as perfect record keeping or documentation of family tree.

These days, it’s not uncommon to read stories of persons having relationships or children with those they didn’t know they’re related to. A friend's sister had two children with the cousin. When they became aware of the fact that they're kinsmen, the relationship fell apart.

How can we prevent things like these from happening, especially in this age where relationships come about through social media?

May I take this opportunity to wish the newlyweds Richmond and Joan Homey congratulations! May your union be a very successful and fruitful one, as the officiating priest admonished? God be at the centre of it all.