The Guardian, December 2007
“I don’t want my son to live the same life I have led. I don’t want my family to suffer. We are all in the same world. Some people are suffering and some people are enjoying and I don’t know the reason why.”
That was the last paragraph of a story which I [...]
The top man at Uganda ’s ministry of finance in Kampala keeps an old greetings card in his office. It shows an employee who has just been given a miserly pay rise and has gone to his boss to show him what he thinks of ‘trickle down’ economics. He is standing on the desk and peeing on the boss’s head.
The chief officer said it all. After the French police had questioned him, when finally they had persuaded him to admit to eight wretched, blood murders – to admit that he had been there personally with his pistol in his hand while the Africans were shot to death – the Ukrainian sailor cocked his chin at the cops and told them that he had done nothing wrong really. He said: “Europe will thank us for what we did.”
Kingsley Ofosu lived in Ghana, in a town called Takoradi which is built around a natural harbour on the edge of the Gulf of Guinea. His mother worked in the street market, selling tomatoes, and his father scratched a living in a mining town called Tarkwa 50 miles inland. He had two brothers who shared a bed with him and a third who slept on a mat on the floor. His family called him by a pet name, Cudjoe.
