In my Fathers' House:Africa in the philosophy of culture

Abstract

My first memories are of a place called"Mbrom,"a small neighbourhood in Kumasi, capital of Asante, as that kingdom turned from being part of the British Gold Coast colony to being a region of the Republic of Ghana. Our home was opposite my grandparents's house- where scores of her kinsfolk and dependents lived under the direction of my stepgrandmother," Auntie Jane,: who baked bread for hundreds of people from Mbrom and the surrounding areas down the street from many cousins of various, usually obscure, degrees of affinity. Near the center of the second largest city in Ghana, behind our hibiscus hedge in the "garden city of East Africa," our life was essentially a village life, lived among a few hundred neighbours; out from that village we went to the other little villages that make up the city. We could go higher up the hill, to Asante New Town, to the palace of the Asante king, Prempeh II, whose first wife, my great-aunt, always called me"Akroma-Ampim"(the name of our most...