Gold of Our Fathers
Ghanaian-American Mystery Novelist Highlights Current Issues
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Kwei Quartey, born in Ghana to a Ghanaian father and a Black American woman, became a doctor after graduating from Howard University College of Medicine. But he soon retired from that profession to pursue his passion for writing mystery novels. Now living in Pasadena, California, he keeps up his close connections to Ghana, and his fiction shows a keen perception of the issues faced by Ghanaians and others in West Africa.
I havenĀ“t yet read all of his novels, but I have read most of them. They feature two protagonists, police inspector Darko Dawson and private investigator Emma Djan.
Among those I have read, two of my favorites are Gold of Our Fathers and Last Seen in Lapaz.
Gold of Our Fathers
Gold of Our Fathers in set in the gold mining town of Obuasi in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Inspector Darko Dawson is sent there from Accra to investigate the murder of a Chinese miner. The illegal gold mining, called galampsey, has fostered corruption and the involvement of profiteers not only from Ghana, but also from China, the United States, and around the world. See the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galamsey).
The BBC put it like this:
Water from a polluted river in Ghana was so thick and discoloured that an artist was able to use it as paint to depict the environmental devastation caused by the illegal gold mining that has spread like wildfire in the resource-rich West African state.
Mercury is increasingly being used to extract gold by miners digging on a massive scale in forests and farms, degrading land and polluting rivers to such an extent that the charity WaterAid has called it "ecocide".
"I could actually paint with the water. It was so bad," Israel Derrick Apeti, better known as Enil Art, told the BBC.
He and his friend Jay Sterling visited the Pra River - around 200km (125 miles) west of the capital, Accra - to make a point about the environmental catastrophe unfolding because of "galamsey".
This is the term used by locals to describe the illegal mining taking place at thousands of sites around the country - including the forested regions famous for their cocoa farms, as well as their vast gold deposits.
The West African state is the world's sixth-biggest gold exporter, and the second-biggest cocoa exporter.
Demonstrators recently took to the streets of Accra to demand that the government take action to end the illegal mining. The police responded by detaining dozens of protesters accused of holding an illegal gathering. They were later released as anger grew over the arrests.
The hashtags #stopgalamseynow and #freethecitizens were used to galvanise young people across Ghana and the diaspora, particularly in Canada and the UK, to voice their concerns.
Last Seen in Lapaz
As described on QuarteyĀ“s website, the plot is this:
Just as things at work are slowing down for PI Emma Djan, an old friend of her bossās asks for help locating his missing daughter. According to her father, Ngozi had a bright future ahead of her when she became secretive and withdrawn. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was be with her handsome new beau, Femi, instead of attending law school in the fall. So when she disappears from her parentsā house in Nigeria the middle of a summer night, they immediately suspect Femi was behind it and have reason to believe the pair has fled to Accra.
During Emmaās first week on the case, Femi is found murdered at his opulent residence in Accra. There are no signs of Ngozi at the scene, and fearing the worst, Emma digs further, discovering that Femi was part of a network of sex traffickers across West Africa.
Emma must figure out which of FemiĀ“s many enemies killed him, but more urgently, she must find Ngozi before she, too, is murdered in cold blood.
While this plot focuses on sex trafficking, the abuses by human traffickers also apply to countless others seeking to traverse the Sahel and the Sahara to make their way to Europe. See, for example, this summary by Deutsche Welle of a recent UN Report:
The lack of criminal prosecution has also encouraged many human traffickers to continue to ensnare people in need with the promise of delivering them to a better life in Europe. However, many end up dead along the way.
According to a report published by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in March of this year, at least 8,565 people died on international migration routes in 2023 ā more than 3,100 of them drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, and a further 1,900 died while still in Africa, with many perishing in the Sahara Desert.
This makes 2023 the deadliest year for migration since IOM began keeping records.
The latest IOM reports meanwhile suggest that more people die in the desert than at sea, with most deaths not even being recorded.
How many people die or are enslaved trying to escape sure death , or impossibility of providing food , water, shelter for their families ? There are solutions, just would take š° from those who always want more