‘My young Master, forgive me for still addressing you like this. But then, is there anything else I can do? At my age, it is too late for me to start being too familiar with my betters. No, no, don’t say any more. You are a good, young man. I like you. But really, how can I call you this Kobina? Yes, in years you are a baby. You don’t have to tell me that. Can I not see that for myself? I can see that for myself. But now, age alone does not mean much, not much. It is a long time since age lost weight. In the old days, when a person was one day older than you, you had to defer to him or the whole clan would let you know your actual self, an insignificant miserable worm! But when your age does not prevent you from washing the underclothes of a white woman whom you know to be much much younger than yourself, what then is age? Thank God, I stopped doing that a long time ago. As for the black men who became the new masters when the white men went, well, they do not seem to think much of age either. I will tell you something soon. But even in the old times, people said that just to be old in itself was nothing. One could be old wise or old foolish. They used to say that to travel then was the thing. Well, my young master, I, Zirigu, I have travelled some. As I told you, I am an Ex-Serviceman. Went to Burma – or some place like that. Seen the front. But now you tell me you know what it is to be a soldier because you went to the Congo with our boys. Then I shall not tell you about the front. But it was there I learnt about white people. Oh, my young Master, when they are hungry, they can fight for food, and cheat each other like anybody else. . . . Sometimes you put food there for some people who were away. And their friends would eat it. When those people came back and there was nothing, they beat you. Yes, maybe, they would argue with their own brothers, but it was us they beat up. Hah, what man has seen!

‘Of course, some of us fought. That’s how people died. Or lost legs and arms. And to this day that I am talking to you, my Master, I don’t know whom we were there fighting and why.