Photograph Source: Kees Torn – CC BY-SA 2.0

It’s been thirty-three years since I walked the streets of Takoradi—over three decades that feel less like time passed than the tide gone out. And now, out of nowhere, fresh footage arrives of low-bellied tankers at dawn, gliding past the harbour walls Guggisberg built more than a century ago, my laptop beaming as if the ships not just carrying oil and cargo, but precious moments there.

I think of all that must have flowed through those waters. Cocoa in burlap sacks from the forest belt—Ashanti and the Eastern Region—hauled by train to the harbour. Then Manganese, its vague shimmer tied to Nkrumah’s dream after independence. Nkrumah, father of Pan-Africanism, spoke of steel, of harnessing rivers, of Ghana lifting itself through resources. But the Volta River project, though vast and full of promise, couldn’t quite carry it. The current faltered, as currents sometimes do.

Takoradi in 1992 moved at a slower pace than today. Market Circle brimmed with women in bright cloth. Bowls of smoked fish balanced on heads. Voices rose and fell above distilled petrol stoves. The sound of the marketplace was like music. Outside the post office, taxi drivers leaned against battered Peugeots waiting for fares along the road to Sekondi. Certain inner visuals insist we remember.

Ships queued patiently in 1992, their silhouettes more Conrad than Spearman, more Amma Darko than pulp fiction. Porters shouldered sacks of cocoa........

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