The thick brochure showed a timeline of photos of Major Mahama’s life. It was easy to notice that old age did not have the privilege of stamping its sagging mark on the supple contours of the Major’s countenance.
His cheeks were yet to shed its baby-like feel. This is man is young, too young, very young, very too young.
At his casket, four soldiers guarded the poles of the white tent like members of a neighbourhood watchdog committee. Three weeks ago, he had no such guard in that lonely walk to meet his death Monday morning.
Coming early but shunning prominent area, Samia Nkrumah slipped into a tent for commoners.
She was the first high-profile politician to visit the wife and family of Major Mahama and resisted party advice to go with even a little media attention
Samia hugged her and told her own story of her father’s death after which she handed her a copy of her father’s book, the Dark Days in Ghana as the widow tried to make meaning out of her own Dark Days of Barbara.
The tributes are powerful in Accra but most likely impotent in Denkyiraboase where a town’s 80% illiteracy rate would rob them of knowledge of the man they had just robbed us of.
The tributes would be like mumbling, only less clearer than Mahama’s last moments of terrified pleadings.
Here at the State House, the tributes mainly a trinity of Dennis, the father, Veronica, the mother and Barbara, the wife, touched mourners in the most tender places of a man’s soul.
Sentences drew gasp, sketched quick twitchings on faces, the arrgghh, the aooow, emanating from beneath the tents as men and women expressed inaudible pain like speechless pets.
Every fresh tears had molecules of anger. And in some cases, every fresh anger had molecules of tears.
The assembly of mourners responded to sentences in the tribute like stocks on the stock exchange reacting to bad news – sudden.
And then there was a sermon by Founder of Lighthouse Chapel International Bishop Dag Heward-Mills.
The sermon, evangelistic – prepared to jam the senses out of soulish complacency of short-spanned thinking about earth and eternity.
The Bishop asked the mourners to add 50 years to their ages and then look for their new addresses or residence. Not likely here on earth.
He reminded the gathering of that pompous rich man in the biblical story of Lazarus, maybe it was because his riches was that of an intellectual mind, perhaps he was a PhD holder or just maybe a deep-thinking atheist.
But it didn’t matter. In eternity ‘this rich man thought he was still a big shot and he could send people’ but he didn’t know power had changed, an old Bible story had a terrifying freshness of what could be you in 50 years.
While the merciless sun drew out dehydration from us, the mourners clamoured for bottles of drinking water to quench the thirst. But right there, the Bishop reminded the mourners, that rich man in a fire much more hotter than this golden orb would have felt grateful not for a bottle – but a drop.
You would gulp down the water with picture of a thirsty rich man envying you for a drop etched in your mind.
And then there was an altar call which called virtually everybody including people who were already Christian – only a little unsure this time in view of the Bishop’s rattling message.
But what is the harm in responding to another call after that first response some several years ago? Maybe it is to make assurance double sure, the wobbly in faith might feel.
The congregation accepted a fresh offer of God’s forgiveness and salvation but held on strongly to unforgiveness for Major Maxwell Mahama’s killers.
A woman who had just thanked God for forgiveness, branded the people of Denkyiraboase ‘nkwasiafuo’. And when a clergyman said ‘the people of Denkyiraboase have declared war’ another freshly forgiven mourner asked for a firing squad of 79.
They accepted God’s mercy but whispered into His ears – ‘not for this one and that one’.
We learnt of Major Maxwell Mahama’s tender heart in a portion of his mother’s tribute. When the family pet died last March, a disconsolate Maxwell Mahama wept for the dog. He mourned the dog for two days.
When he stood over the dog’s grave, it must have had a harrowing resemblance to his own two months away. And soon we rose to sing the hymn ‘where is our God?”
People cried like death is a surprise. Yet, yes, it was a surprise. nobody should die this way.
When the government declared a war on galamsey this year, it was meant to be figurative. But in Denkyiraboase it appears to have been taken literally.
The first victim of the war on galamsey has been recorded. A quick rising of Captain Mahama has been met with a quicker retreat.
Now Barbara, in her 20’s, made a painful walk down the carpet to lay the final wreath only five years after she made a much cheerful walk down the aisle to wear her ring.
We have no recording of his last thoughts before that last stone crashed his skull. But now we know from the tributes the focus of his final reflections.
Barbara, Barbara, Barbara
Major Mahama laid to rest
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