GANDAH-YIR: the house of the brave. The biography of a Northern Ghanaian chief (ca. 1872-1950)

Abstract

I did not set out purposely to write a history text book on my father but to put on paper what he himself narrated orally to his audience when the family gathered to have some pots of pito [sorghum beer, C. L.] to drink. But having started to put on paper his own narration about his life history, I felt it would be very useful to the family, both for those members […] who have grown up to know him personally and those who have not had the opportunity to know him well or at all before he passed away. For it would be selfish of me and of any of my literate brothers who knew him so well and had the opportunity to hear all his oral history not to pass this down in written form so that his children and grandchildren and future generations would be able to read and remember him with great adoration as I do today.