FULL CIRCLE AND THE PATH THAT WE TAKE

The road back to Tamale from Bolgatanga is a long flat pavement strip that cuts through what one would describe as savannah. In all directions, grasses singed brown are surrounded by well spaced trees, still green in their foliage. The trees provide pockets of shade in what can be very long, hot days.

Along the roadside, there a great pockets of charred fields. People set fire to the fields around this time. As for why? Some want to catch bush meat. Some seem to like fire. Some do it because that’s what you do at this time of year. The problems that this causes are numerous (including damaging the fertility of the land in a region over 90 percent of the population are farmers), but people still do it.

Along the road, we pass small villages, people walking along the roadside, and hugely over packed trucks coming to and from Burkina Faso.

As we headed south, we could see the setting sun out the passenger side of the SUV. In the comfort of our vehicle, we watched the fiery sphere become gradually muted by the haze on the horizon which seems to be a mixture of the dust in the air and the smoke from burning fields across the region.

Early in our journey, I was also surprised to see a trio of mountains, in an area which – otherwise – is completely flat. At first, they were barely visible through the haze. As we got closer, I could see the golden sand that housed the brush covering the surface. While they became clearer, they remained mysterious as the visibility was not high.

When I returned to Tamale, my stomach was not feeling very stable. Levida, who was also raised in Scarborough, was in the SUV with the driver, Somed and me. Somed was going home, but Levida needed somewhere to stay in Tamale, before heading to Accra the next day. I made arrangements for her to stay in the spare room in Mr. Fresh’s house.

That evening, we went to get a watermelon, hung out at Layata’s house and watched a film called Capote.

The next day, my stomach was acting up, so I got a slow start to the day. By the evening, I headed to town and went to the internet café. While there, I opened an email from my Mother titled “Full Circle”. I had absolutely no idea what I was about to read. I thought that it might be something about seeing God’s hand in day-to-day life, or an interesting story about our family (I have gotten lots of those over the past five months). The contents were neither.

I was shocked by what I read:

“Twenty-six year old Denis Oppong was fatally shot just after 3am, Sunday morning”.

My mother knows Denis. She did not know him well, but she knew him as a regular fixture at our house playing basketball in the driveway, playing video games in the basement, eating and listening to music at the house, hanging out at Snappy’s, or as one of many who would tell my parents in their green Ford Taurus wagon driving around the neighbourhood, that they didn’t know where I was (even if I had just darted behind a fence, knowing I was supposed to be somewhere else).

Ten years ago, in September 1996, my parents moved my brother and I out of Scarborough to Richmond Hill; more me than my brother. We had been living in the subdivision at Ellesmere and Morrish at the time. We actually lived in three houses in that area alone. Denis lived just down the street at Ellesmere and Meadowvale.

Most of the people that lived in the area went to Morrish Public School. Before moving from the south side of Ellesmere to the north side, I had been going to Highland Creek; after we moved, I stayed there. A lot of the friends that I made in the area went to Cardinal Leger. Pretty much everyone from what we called ‘turf’ fit into one of those three schools.

After school, on weekends, in the summertime and at basement jams, people from all three schools interacted. I got to know the Cardinal Leger people through Justin who lived across the street from me in our second house in the area. Over those years, we spent most of our time with aspirations of being DJ’s, enjoying summer (hanging out by the store, riding our bikes, going to Scarborough Town Centre, meeting up with girls, and going to whose ever house had no one home), and getting into more than our share of trouble. In that sense, we were kindred spirits.

However, the summer that we finished grade eight, things became less innocent.

I had just finished grade ten and had already found myself in a few situations with the police. Things were changing fast in the area and in my life, and my parents could tell.

A lot of us began to find our way into crime. Over the next two years, a lot intensified, and it continued to intensify after that, but that is another story.

This story took place ten years ago on an autumn morning in Richmond Hill. It was a morning that I have not forgotten.

I was sleeping and my Mom rushed into my room to wake me up. She was almost stuttering and was highly emotional. I am not sure if she knew what to say, but as she woke me from sleep she said to me, “It’s Denis”, holding the front page of the newspaper in her hand.

The cover story was about a fatal stabbing that had taken place at Kennedy Station. After being unable to find the suspect for the murder that had taken place a few days earlier, the police received a go-ahead to publish his photograph even though he was 15, and still a young offender. In the hopes of finding him, his photograph had been placed on the front page of the paper. My mother recognized Denis immediately as she sat down to read The Saturday Star.

I remember laying in my bed and looking at that page. The photograph that they had of him didn’t really look like him, but suspect pictures rarely ever do; not like a friend, or person with loved ones, but still, and cold like the monstrous act he had committed. I had heard about what happened at Kenedy station in scientific detail on the news, but it was different reading what happened when I knew who did it.

I thought about days when we would hang out in Anthony’s basement, or when I would be practicing my DJ’ing while Denis and who ever else he was rolling with sat on the couch playing videos games. I thought of the time we went out to a dance at some Catholic Girls school, St. Joe’s, and his girl at the time got us all into the jam. I remembered trying to get him to sell me the first album from The Alkaholiks, 21 and Over, for less than he bought it for; but he didn’t. I remembered when Flynn (who we called Goggles) told Denis that this White kid called him “nigger” and Denis grabbed that kid by the neck and walked him, not loosening his grip, across the street until he pressed the kid’s back and his own fingertips to the door of a stranger’s garage.

I remembered days, after school, when kids from all over the borough would pass through the Kenedy station, a lot of them meeting up and lingering. I remembered a lot of the older guys in the area, and how Denis passed us all in gaining their respect: he did it without saying much

I visualized him there, and those guys that he started chilling with, and him doing it. I could see it. It effected me.

After that, I still spent every weekend in Scarborough, mostly at Peter and Victor’s house. We would stay out until the early hours of the morning, and walk down Port Union to the area where the bus didn’t run and fill a plate with their mother’s cooking that she left on the stove for us. Their Dad would often lecture us, and many times just me, for hours at a time about life. All I remember about what he would say is that he used to work for the United Nations. I wish I could recall more; I’m sure it was wise.

About Denis though, the story that I heard from most people was that he made a mistake. I had heard that there was some mix-up over a girl, and combined with the associations he was making at the time, he did what he did. The mistake was that he stabbed the younger brother, not knowing the difference. I am not even sure if he knew he had a younger brother. I am also not sure if that story is really true.

What I do know is this. A couple of weeks later, while in Richmond Hill a new kid came the school that I had just started attending. When I heard that he was from Scarborough, I wanted to find out where he was from. What I soon found out was that he was the guy that Denis had intended to stab, and that he had just lost his younger brother.

We spoke a few times, but I never told him that I knew Denis. For unrelated reasons, it wasn’t long before both of us switched schools.

Being a young offender, Denis got just over three years of confinement. Every once in awhile I would hear something about him, but not often. Then, one day at York University, I was walking by the student centre when I heard someone call out “Chris”. That was common as I knew a lot of people at York, but when I saw Denis, it surprised me.

After everything, I never expected to see him again.

I asked him what he was doing at York and how he was doing. He answered me, but I don’t remember what he said, except that he was going to meet someone. Then he left. I know it happened, but it almost seems like it didn’t.

When I opened that email “Full Circle”, it was the last thing that I expected to read.

Once again, my main source for what happened is the scientific description in the newspaper that describes a gun shot wound to the head. The description said he was laying on the sidewalk, bleeding and that he died on his way to the hospital.

I printed the story and went home, but I didn’t read it again. The words were already in my mind, and the images were in motion in my imagination. I could see it.

Before I slept, I prayed. I prayed for his family, that his life could be a testimony of God’s glory, and the he is met by God’s mercy.

I then slept after a few hours. Most mornings, the call to prayer over the mosque speakers wakes me up around 4am. I rarely ever get out of bed at this time, and usually fall back asleep. This morning however, I could not fall back asleep. I sat up and I was thinking. As I looked through scriptures, I heard a tone in the Word that I had not heard before: “O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit” (Psalm 30:3). A sobering word full of love, truth and reproof.

I did a lot of things in my life that I should not have done. I have done things that no one should do. I never did what Denis did, but I don’t feel so different from him.

At one point, for a few years, I wanted to go in that very same direction. I wanted to let my heart turn cold. I knew in that life you had to be willing to kill first, and your heart had to die to do that. I wanted to let it go. I remember a moment on the couch in my basement, when I could feel the allure and wanted to let my heart go, but God’s hand – the very presence of Christ was there with me – and held onto my heart, not letting me go.

Years later, after my share of charges, community service and court dates (along with a number of close calls), my direction changed. That is also another story of prayers from so many. Of a letter from my Grandmother and distrust from my family that was losing patients with me. It is a story of phone calls from my Dad and some weeks in the mountains and wild beauty of British Columbia. It is a story of the tears, arguments, fights, sacrifices, and persistent love – a I Corinthians 13, longsuffering, patient, never failing, bearing all things love – of my parents. It is a story of divine intervention, real life miracles. That too is another story.

I describe that time like I had reached the edge of a cliff, and a step or two more and I would have tumbled down it, and then I was turned around.

I remember one winter evening in a Tuxedo Court high-rise. In that cockroach infected apartment, there were a few bags of crack rocks, one friend on bail for substantial cocaine possession, another friend going from robbery to credit card scam to break and enter, and another – one that I used to tease and chase around in those summers, now carrying a loaded gun.

As we spoke about what we each were doing now, they were amazed that I was thinking of university.

I still remember, in that conversation, Justin dodging eye contact like he always did, telling me, “from where you were headed, when we hadn’t heard from you, we thought you were dead or in jail”. The impact of those words still has not left me. To this day.

I know where Denis grew up. I also know where he died. My car got around there towed while I was at one of the weekly meeting for the Harry Jerome Awards. I can see it in my mind.

At this point, my mind goes back to something another guy from the area, Anthony, once said to me. Anthony is the guy whose basement we spent the most time in. We would mostly watch music videos and movies, and get out of the summer heat. It was on his street that I first smoked weed (though he didn’t smoke with us…I think it was Peter, Richard, Denis, Brian and me). He hung out with all of us, but was able to stay very clear of the trouble that we had been finding ourselves in. We were good friends.

A few years after not seeing him, we crossed paths again. We caught up on a few things and he told me that he had read some of the articles that I wrote for Word Magazine. He then told me to that, “we’re watching you”. I know what he meant; to keep doing right, and not to forget where I come from. You know, I always felt that; that people were watching what I was doing.

In that email that my Mom sent to me, she wanted to make sure that I found out from her first. She offered words of comfort, and hoped that I could be grateful for where I am. She knows that could have been me. I am beyond grateful, but that is not how I feel. I don’t feel so different from Denis.

God has been so graceful to me. It really is incredible. I was so stubborn with some things that it took me about a decade to realize that I had been stubborn. I had so many chances. God has stayed with me through so much. My family stayed with me through so much. The pressure that I put on my Mom and on Drew, only they could really tell you about that.

I remember Kristina and Cheryce, two Christian girls at York that used to call me ‘Brother Still-Runnin’. They used to always ask me when I was really going to live my life for God. I would always be like, “I don’t know”, and with a smile, “it will come”. There was one day in the food court at York, and with the deepest concern and a powerful word of truth, they told me, “Chris, when you live for God you are going to effect so many people’s lives. God is going to do so much through you”. I could feel what they were saying was true.

As I sat up at 4am, and night was turning to morning, I could feel the weight of all of this. His life on this earth is over. I have had so many chances. I am in Africa, in Ghana, with so many blessings. The storehouses of this planet could not store the love that I have in my life. God’s grace, His power, and His anointing are with me. This very weekend I am scheduled to minister a message to a small congregation.

So I sat there thinking of so many people: Justin. Peter. Victor. Richard. Flynn. Tommy. Lee. Wayne. Bryan. Flo. I would be at that funeral if I could. I would just like to offer his parents a word of comfort. I would like to be there with my friends.

I pray for his family. I pray that his life is not lost in vain; I pray that it saves someone, and that it wakes someone up. I pray for mercy, that he is met by God’s arms of mercy.

I am here, though I could have been there. God knows best. His plans for my life, for your life, are better and greater than what we could ever dream or imagine.

While those words, I know, are true. I wonder why they don’t quite fit as the close here. I want to say that the tragedy that befell that young man does not escape me. The pain of his older brother is not missed by my understanding. God knows how deep my love is for my younger brother. I pray that he does not carry any guilt for the loss of his brother’s life, though I imagine that he has battled with that.

I am sure that they are aware of what has happened. I don’t think it brings much comfort.

Recently, I watched the movie Menace II Society again. It actually came out around the time I was referring to earlier, those summers I mentioned. If we didn’t watch at Anthony’s house, then we watched at mine or Justin’s. Really though, we probably watched it at all three of our houses. There is a scene when Larenze Tate, playing O-Dogg, is insulted by an Asian storekeeper who tells him “I feel sorry for your mother”. O-Dogg’s response is a cold-blooded murder, shooting him numerous times, then shooting his wife after collecting the video tape. There was something attractive to us about that. O-Dogg spends most of his time with his friend Cane, who sells drugs in the area. After Cane is almost killed while in his cousin’s car as it was jacked, Cane ends up going with some friends for revenge, which they get. Cane notes of having killed someone that, “it wasn’t the last time”. Near the end of the film, Cane is planning to move to Atlanta with a girl that he has come to love. While packing the car, he and another friend are shot to death. To a black screen, his voice concludes the story saying that “I guess it all comes back to you”.

There is no glory there.

I also think of The Autobiogrpahy of Malcom X. At one point, when Malcom was known as Red, he barely escaped Boston with his life, when he was almost killed for ripping off a fellow criminal. Years later, as a minister of the Nation of Islam, he returned to see how that man who had all the respect, all the fear and had easy money coming his way was doing. He was alone, old, and despondent. There was no glory in it. Even Biggie said of the life selling crack, “I don’t care who you are, eventually, you end up one of two ways: dead or in jail”.

I don’t know what chances Denis got. I have no idea what he was doing with his life. I know it is not my place to judge. I know that it is God’s will that all be saved.

With all of this on my mind this morning, I went to the internet café with the intention of sending an email to Victor, the only person from that circle of guys that I know how to contact from the other side of the planet. When I signed on to my MSN account, he was logged in. Though it was almost 4am in Toronto, and he was just about to go to sleep, we spoke briefly about what happened. I asked him if he was going to the funeral, and he didn’t know when it was, but said he would. I asked him to pass on my love to everyone, and he said, “for sure”.

Of his own, he said very little; actually, though he may have been tired, he simply put it, “it’s a shame”.