I AM NOT YVONNE NELSON

ious private schools sprouted everywhere in Ghana, charging fees in American dollars and offering British curricula, St. Martin de Porres School was one of the most exalted schools in the count

ng group, but the group’s founder, Lauryn Hill, later ventured into a non-profit aimed at helping refugees. The original Fugees trio had Wyclef Jean, Pras Michel and Lauryn Hill, while the St. Martin de Porres version had Enoch Nana Yaw Oduro- Agyei, Nii Tettey, one Aziz, and me. Being the only female, I was obviously the Lauryn Hill of the group. Nii Tettey had returned from the United States to join us in junior secondary school as it was then called. With his American accent, he was the closest we came to mimicking Fugees. We memorized and sang their songs at school functions. There were times we composed our own songs and performed them at school functions. As a group, our favourite was Fugees, but my personal favourite was the Ghanaian rapper Obrafour. There was something about his music that blew my mind—the unparalleled depth and the dexterity with which he owned the Twi language in his raps. Obrafour’s music was so rich that members of the older generation who were not accustomed to hiplife and rap music got drafted into the genre because of his irresistible appeal. I did not have his photos in my room, but he was permanently engraved in my heart. I was influenced by foreign musicians, but Obrafour has been my all-time greatest singer. I remember how I saved money from my feeding allowance to buy his “Pae Mu Ka” album and learnt every line of each song in that album. He used to come to a studio in Dansoman SSNIT flats—I think it’s called DKB Studio or so—and that was the closest I got to seeing him in person. Whenever I spotted him in his short dreadlocks at the time, I would shout his name from my school compound. Many years later, while helping him promote his 20th-anniversary concert, I told Obrafour how I used to shout his name. I didn’t know whether he believed it, but he remains my finest artist of all time. Besides Fugees, my group performed Obrafour’s songs in school. He was big in the day and still commands enormous respect in the industry. We dreamt about growing up and sticking together to do great things as a musical group. Life, however, had different plans for us. Our ultimate goal started to dissipate even before we completed basic school. Our circumstances separated us even before we had time to plan how to stick together and pursue that dream. Aziz is now married with children. Nii Tettey returned to the United States after junior high school and not much is heard about him now. Enoch Yaw Oduro-Agyei is, perhaps, the direct beneficiary of our childhood attempt at music. He is a Ghanaian singer and composer under the stage name Trigmatic. I also ended up in the entertainment industry outside of music, but the influence of American music almost defined my life even before I figured out the course of my young and not-so-ambitious trajectory. I used to have photos of Fugees in my room, and my family thought I was useless. The whole American music culture influenced me a great deal. I dressed like a boy, and I still have traces of that tomboyish lifestyle in me to date. The influence was huge, and I loved it. But what appeared like a craze for music and the arts was a good escape for me, an escape from loneliness, especially as I began to discover that I didn’t fully belong in my family. Music was, therefore, a welcome escape from a possible depression that could have come with that childhood loneliness. My other therapeutic moments were the times I spent with my best friend, Miranda Mould. Miranda had her own share of the weight which life had placed on our young and fragile shoulders. She lived about three blocks from my house and we spent a lot of quality time together. We often sat near the Ghana Telecom telephone booth that was close to my mother’s shop, and whenever it malfunctioned, we served as the prompters to those coming to patronise it. We would tell them it was not functioning and continue with our discussion as they turned away. Sometimes we just sat there, with nothing to talk about but enjoying each other’s company while thinking about what preoccupied us at the time. And I had a lot to occupy my mind. My teacher’s question had led me to discover a lot more about myself, most of which were not pleasant. The immediate discovery was about a father who didn’t like me, a father who behaved like I did not exist. The story from my mother was not something that could make up for the absence of a father. It was the unflattering story of my birth, which came up a number of times in situations of anger. When my mother was angry with me and really wanted to hurt me, she would