An unceasing interrogation of the stories told to us by the schools now felt essential. It felt wrong not to ask why, and then to ask it again. I took these questions to my father, who very often refused to offer an answer, and instead referred me to more books. My mother and father were always pushing me away from secondhand answers - even the answers they themselves believed. I don’t know that I have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But every time I ask it, the question is refined.

He held a book in his hands, and my eyes fell on the title: Tell Freedom by Peter Abrahams. I was transfixed. The words seemed to speak of a world beyond the walls of the Alliance.

Mwaniki was shy, but when it came to playing the piano, he was very expressive. He did not have formal training in music; he just picked up his piano knowledge from his two predecessors, reinforcing my positive attitude toward learning from one’s peers. I got more Kiswahili from David Mzigo than from Dollymore, the master who taught Swahili. Mzigo was a native speaker; Dollymore had picked it up while stationed in Mombasa as a soldier during the Second World War. Discussions and arguments on history and literature that I held with friends, and the math exercises that I did outside the classroom, greatly added to my insights, sometimes proving useful in tests and exams.

The girls who picked on me were neither persuaded nor deterred by my recitation of this history. But my father was right on one count: their words no longer pierced my skin. When they approached me, I stuck my nose in the air imperiously and walked in the opposite direction. To their insults, I did not respond. I acted as though they did not exist.

My father continued to teach me about Ghanaian history after discovering that the entire continent of Africa was excluded from my world history textbook, except for Egypt. And the illustrations of ancient Egyptians in the book made them look decidedly European. “Nonsense,” my father said.

The lies told about God's Word in order to build a case for racism led my dad and his siblings to reject Christianity, but the values of his parents’ faith – courage, perseverance, love, and order – permeated 6001 and the lives of those in it. My grandfather was soft-spoken and rarely raised his voice, but made his views known. My grandmother was a disciplinarian. She didn't shout but was a straight shooter. My uncles and aunts knew their parents supported their political activities, yet they didn’t think of their mum and dad as revolutionaries in their own right.