The Life Of Barima Okyere Boateng In Words....A MUST READ!

Until 10:30am of Monday, April 12, 2021, Barima Okyere Boateng was the Mmrotuohene and the Head of the Oyoko Clan in New Juaben.  The Mmrotuo stool is hereditary, occupied by an uncle of the Juaben Omanhene. Mmrotuo literally means the tail end of towns, signifying the gatekeeper. 
 
The Ayoko in both Asante and New Juaben are of one family - abusua baako, mogya baako (one lineage, one blood). A most obvious contemporary manifestation of this is that the Omanhene of Asante Juaben in the Asante Region, Daasebre Otuo Siriboe II, and the Omanhene of New Juaben in the Eastern Region, Daasebre Oti Boateng, are uterine brothers, from the womb of Nana Akosua Akyamaa II, late Queenmother of Asante Juaben. And, even though, on the hierarchy ladder, New Juaben is the younger of the two states; we, of New Juaben, can, at least, boast that, biologically, our Omanhene is the elder of the two brothers!
 
Known in private life as Dr. Joseph Felix Otchere-Darko, Barima Okyere Boateng was enstooled on August 16, 2005, following a long matrilineal line that dates back to a common ancestress, Aberewa Ampem of the Oyoko-Dako clan in Asantemanso, way before the Asante Kingdom was established in 1701, with Juaben as one of the founding states. His father, Opanyin Kwame Okyere, was a native of Bamang in the Asante Juaben Traditional Area. His mother was Odehyie Akosua Dufie of Koforidua, New Juaben, an intelligent, enterprising and successful trader. Akosua Dufie’s parents were Opanyin Yaw Asare of Asante Juaben and Nana Anima, also born in Asante Juaben, who, as one of those make that ‘Great Journey” (Akwantukese), became the Ayokohemaa of New Juaben in the early 1900s. Barima Okyere Boateng’s only sister was Obaapanin Abena Koh (Comfort Okyere), who died in November 2016, aged 86.
 
A great storyteller, Barima Okyere Boateng was proud of his family history and shared it often, especially with his children. He always maintained that the history of the New Juaben State was a unique Ghanaian story of a king and his people who were forced by a failed rebellion to migrate from their homes in the Asante Kingdom in the 1870s to settle in Akyem Abuakwa, which itself was by then, another imperial power’s protectorate. The choice of Akyem Abuakwa as a destination by his forebears was, nonetheless, by design rather than accident.  After all, he explained that, after the Second Anglo-Asante War (the Akatamanso War of 1926), relations between Kumasi and Juaben, very cordial until then, strained to the point of civil war, pushing the great leader of Juaben, King Kwasi Boateng and the entire royal family, including the celebrated Queenmother Juaben Serwaa and her daughter, Afrakoma, and the other royals, into temporary exile in Kyebi, where they were hosted by the Queen of Akyem Abuakwa,  Nana Dokua, from 1832 to 1839. In exile, Juaben lost two kings (Kwasi Boateng and his brother, Kofi Boateng), leaving the arduous task of rebuilding Juaben to their mother, the industrious Nana Ama Serwaa (Juaben Serwaa), who led a straight succession of three women on the Juaben stool, followed by her daughter and granddaughter, Queen Afrakoma and Queen Sarpomaa, respectively. 
 
 
THE AGE OF NEW IMPERIALISM: 1870-1914
 
Barima Okyere Boateng used to tell the history of the second and final migration from Asante with such pride because, not only was he directly connected to it, but, to him, it was also an important chapter in a series of interconnected events of that destiny-changing era, which reshaped the boundaries and sovereignty of African states as a whole in the infamous Scramble for Africa by European Imperialists. It was that imperialist scramble which, also, specifically threatened, weakened and redefined the reach and influence of the Asante Empire, while at the same time, reaffirming the enduring resilience of Asanteman.
 
The Third Anglo-Asante War (1873-1874) had just occurred, also called the Sagrenti War - with the name Sagrenti signifying how mercilessly the Asantes, Kwahus and Akyems combined to butcher the pronunciation of the name of the commander of the British Army, Sir Garnet Wolseley. The 1874 Peace Treaty of Fomena confirmed the termination of the Asante Empire’s alliances with Denkyira and Akyem; it also triggered the independence movement of Brong, Gonja and Dagomba from Asante and revolts within Asanteman. The Asante civil war had come about because of an attempt by Juaben, Effiduase, Asokore and Nsuta, taking advantage of the Sagrenti War, to secede from the Asante Union. It was not by accident that these events took place at the beginning of what historians call: ‘The Age of New Imperialism – 1870-1914’.
 
AKWANTUKESE

In telling his children of their history, Barima Okyere Boateng, a proud Asante in New Juaben, saw the irony that history portrays. For him, the emergence of the two Juaben states represented, in his words, “How we, Juabens, were able to eat our cake and have it back!”  It was in 1875, under the reign of Asantehene Mensa-Bonsu, that Barima Okyere Boateng’s grandparents, Yaw Asare and Nana Anima, fled their home in Juaben as part of a large contingent of royals and citizens from Juaben, Effiduase and Asokore. With them travelled most of the Juaben stools, including the Mmrotuo one. Led by Juabenhene Asafo-Adjei, they trekked some 180 kilometres south, ending in what is now Koforidua (the capital city of the Eastern Region), and its surroundings.
 
It was the Okyenhene Amoako Atta I, himself an allied fighter in the Sagrenti War against Asante, and a keen conspirator in the revolt that ensued, who welcomed the Juabens to Okyeman and instructed his divisional chief, Nana Ampaw of Kukurantumi, to provide land to the colonial government for the resettlement of the Juaben refugees, in what is now New Juaben. Having crossed the River Pra to build a new home on Akyem land, Barima Okyere Boateng’s forbears were never again to return as a whole to Asante, and yet the bond between the separated families of the two Juabens were never broken.  To Barima Okyere Boateng, having the two Juabens meant that, in his words, “We gained some independence with New Juaben and still enjoyed the benefits of being geographically part of the great Asante Kingdom as Old Juaben.” That was why he always looked forward each year to the celebration of the Akwantukese Festival, started by Daasebre Oti Boateng in 1997, to mark the ‘Great Migration’ from Asante Juaben to New Juaben a century earlier. He would sit in his palanquin at the durbar and in all his regal splendour, on the right hand of the occupant of the New Juaben stool, traditionally, his nephew.
 
60 years after the exodus, it was in Koforidua on June 8, 1937 that the man whose life we celebrate today, was born as Joseph Yaw Boateng Okyere. Donkor was added to his name because, after his mother lost two babies, the 'newcomer' had to be taken to a traditional priest by his parents for spiritual fortification to fend off the evil, hence “Donkor” (slave). As it turned out, renaming the new baby boy a “slave child” was good enough to put off the evil forces that took his other siblings away. His close family members and childhood friends fondly called him Yaw Donkor or Yaw Boateng,
 
The young Yaw Boateng had his elementary school education at the Roman Catholic Primary School, founded in 1934 in Koforidua. Unfortunately, the family breadwinner, his mother, died giving birth, along with her baby, three days before he sat for his Common Entrance Examination. Thankfully, he was blessed with a sharp brain, and was awarded a scholarship as a result of his excellent grades. He proceeded to do his secondary school education at the prestigious Roman Catholic school, St. Augustine’s College, in Cape Coast. Baptised Joseph Felix (Joseph meaning the ‘Increaser’, and Felix after Saint Felix of Valois, co-founder of Catholic order, the Trinitarians in the 12th century), he was a devout Catholic, attending the Church of St George, this very church, under various resident priests, from Rev. Fr. Alphonse Elsbernd, Rev. Fr. Anthony Bauer to Rev. Fr. Henry Janssen, until 1960.   
 
 
FLASHMAN – APUSUNIAN ‘56
 
At this time his sister, Abena Koh, who bore the responsibility of looking after her younger brother, was a young trader. Known as Flashman in Augusco because of his debonair sense of fashion and good looks, the young student, Joseph Felix Okyere fell in love, conveniently so, with his sister’s best friend and colleague trader, a proverbial ‘Koforidua Flower’ called, Yaa Asoah (1938-2019). Yaa happily supported her friend, Abena, to look after Flashman with provisions and pocket money for boarding school, supplementing the financial assistance that his grand uncle, Barima Okyere Darko, was also giving. Barima Okyere Darko was the Mmrotuohene of New Juaben from 1923 to 1968.
 
Flashman’s trader girlfriend recalled the battles she had to fight in those days to keep the female students, especially those from St Roses and Aburi Girls, away from her man, the Apusunian, during vacations. Ironically, it was an Abugiss old student who was to win him a few years later from Yaa Asoah when he travelled to study abroad.
 
Flashman completed his GCE O’Levels in 1956, took a year out to teach, and earned another scholarship to study for his GCE A’Levels in Basic Science at the same college, completing in 1959.  He taught for an academic year at PRESEC, which was then at Krobo Odumase, before it moved to its current place in Legon, Accra.  By 1960, Yaw Boateng, aged 22, and Yaa Asoah, 21, had been blessed with two children, Yaa “Maggie” Abrafi (Margaret Otchere-Darko, born in ‘58) and Yaw Sakyi (Joseph Otchere-Darko Jr. born in ‘60). But, his education would not let him settle down. At least, not yet. Thanks to his keen intellect, he obtained a full scholarship to study Medicine in then West Germany.
 
 
TIME IN WEST GERMANY: 1960-1980
 
He arrived in West Germany in September 1960, 15 years after World War II, and did a six-month course in the German language. In April 1961, four months before the Berlin Wall went up, he enrolled at the prestigious University of Bonn (in full, the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn) to study both Medicine and Dentistry, concurrently. The wartime bombardment of Bonn in 1944 led to the university’s destruction. As a mark of German Entschlossenheit (grit) and chutzpah during the post-war period, the university that was established in 1818 at the Age of Enlightenment, was quickly rebuilt and students returned, welcoming students like Joseph Okyere from Africa, as its academics set about restoring the institution to its former glory and more.
 
Within his first year in Germany, Flashman had fallen in love with a medical student from Ghana, an Abugiss old student, the gorgeous Paulina Korkor Kitcher (1938-2019), from Ada Foah. The two young lovers had great plans of getting married and spending the rest of their lives together. Paulina, whilst, in medical school, had a baby girl, Yaa Konadu (Paulina) in Germany. Since she had to continue her studies, she entrusted the care of the baby to her parents in Ghana.
 
As tradition demands, his grand uncle, Barima Okyere Darko, and a decent entourage, which included his Okyeame (linguist) and Abena Koh, went to the Nungua vicarage of the Presbyterian Church, with the intention to name the child. They were received by Rev. Paul T. Kitcher, presiding district pastor for Osu and Nungua, and his wife, Mrs Ellen Theresa Kitcher-Puplampu, a teacher. The righteous vicar, who had sent his virgin daughter to Germany to study to become a doctor, calmly asked the delegation to wait for him on the veranda. He went in, perhaps to have a short prayer for prior forgiveness and returned to the visitors with a fully-loaded rifle. It is said that the Okyeame was the first to take off, with the others, fleet of foot in tow, running for dear life, leaving behind, the elderly Mmrotuohene, who also decided to retreat but with some nervy dignity, mindful not to run off without his sandals. So humiliated were both the vicar and the chief, even if for different reasons, that it, unfortunately, meant the end of the relationship between Joseph and Paulina. 
 
Joseph Felix Okyere, as he then was, soon after this incident, applied for a transfer to the University of Düsseldorf, where he graduated as a Medical Doctor in 1967. That was when he added the name ‘Darko” to his last name Okyere, in honour of his revered great uncle, Barima Okyere Darko. He also changed the spelling of his “Okyere” to “Otchere” to stop it from being constantly butchered by the Germans. He justified it by saying, “the essence of a name is in how it is pronounced and not how it is written.” That same year, 1967, his partner he lived with, since 1964, in Dusseldorf, the elegant but no-nonsense Princess Sophia Afia Kyerewaa Ofori-Atta (1940-2009), gave birth in London to their son, Yaw Asare (Gabriel Otchere-Darko). That relationship was also short-lived. He would later on tell his son, Joseph Otchere-Darko Jr., “It was not cheap maintaining Sophy!”
She would also say of him in rebuff, “Joe was cheap!” Princess Sophia moved to Geneva, Switzerland, for further studies, after the breakup. 
 
Dr Joseph Felix Otchere-Darko left Düsseldorf to go back to the University of Bonn and completed his Dentistry course, graduating as a Dental Surgeon in 1971.  With both the MD and DDS degrees, he entered the University Hospital of Cologne (Köln, West Germany) for a postgraduate training in Maxillo-Facial surgery in January 1973. But, he was not satisfied. 
 
In his own handwritten words, he said, “With both the MD and DDS degrees, I embarked in April 1972 on postgraduate training in General Surgery… After spending six months at the Hospital for Surgery (till December 1973) in Bremerhaven (West Germany), I continued my surgical training at the Teaching Hospital for General and Trauma-Surgery of the University of Muenster in the city of Dortmund (West Germany) from February 1974. I qualified in Dortmund as General Surgeon in December 1979. In August 1980 I qualified as Trauma-Surgeon at the same Hospital.”
 
Thus, by the time he was ready to come to Ghana, Dr Joseph Otchere-Darko was a physician, dental surgeon, general surgeon and Trauma-Surgeon (traumatologist). By this time, he had married the stunning Margaret Appiah (1949-2011), daughter of rich entrepreneur, S. S. Appiah of Larteh and Koforidua, who, in 1970, famously bought 12 vehicles at a go and got one extra for free.
 
There is a tragedy in Dr Otchere-Darko’s tale, though. All the time he studied and worked in Germany, working day and night overtime in the theatre and at the A&E, making him one of the highest paid doctors in Germany at the time, he had just one ambition in mind: to earn enough money to push him back home as quickly as possible to settle with his wife and children. But, sadly, things did not work out that way. As early as 1975, while in Germany, he set up Eastern Construction Ltd, a well-equipped civil engineering firm with his uncle, Justice Emmanuel Okyere Darko and Lawyer Quartey, both of Baako-Apem Chambers, Koforidua. Doctor’s job was to procure the trucks, machinery and equipment and the other partners’ job was to run the business in Ghana. A doctor and two lawyers running a big construction firm as a side business was clearly not destined to end well. After that expensive venture collapsed, he moved on to set up a haulage and coach transport company, Constran Enterprise, with his wife, Maggie.
 
True to Dr Otchere-Darko’s preferred life of rustic quietude, the couple lived in a small Westphalian town called, Menden, Sankt Augustin, 8km from Bonn. The marriage bore four girls - Leticia, Becky, Daisy; three in Germany, and the last child, Josephine, in Ghana, when the couple moved their home there in October 1980, during the Third Republic. Mrs Margaret Otchere-Darko left her job at the Ghana Embassy in Bonn to move earlier to Ghana in 1979 to manage the family business and prepare for the family’s relocation. Dr Otchere-Darko took up an appointment as Surgeon at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital and lecturer at the University of Ghana Medical School, in Accra, shortly after he arrived in Ghana. But, he was never a big town boy. In September 1981, yearning to move back home, where he had brought back with him equipment to set up his own private hospital, he accepted appointment as Trauma-Surgeon at the Regional Central Hospital at Koforidua. 14 months later he had to sneak out of Ghana to the USA.
 
 
TRAUMAS OF THE RETURNEE TRAUMA SURGEON: 1980-1989
 
Those were tough days in Ghana, a nation in distress, with Flt Lt Jerry Rawlings and his team applying their own methods of fixing the country under very difficult circumstances: drought, high inflation, a collapsed currency, economic hardships, and the probing of individual lifestyles and wealth. Dr Otchere-Darko’s children whom he returned to Ghana from Germany with, had to witness the extraordinary hardships of Ghana in the era, where pans and bowls were used to queue for kenkey that was still on fire; when the most popular soap was oxymoronically named “Don’t Touch Me”; and the affordable fish for the masses on the market was an ugly, flat bones-bewitched kind called Erafua. Most of Dr Otchere-Darko’s private patients could only pay for treatment in kind... with yam, chickens and sheep being the currency of necessity. The family, which so looked forward to their home-coming, now looked back to Germany with nostalgic regret.
 
But, Dr Otchere-Darko, ever the optimist, would hearten his children to look on a bright side that was not, and could not have been obvious to the kids. He encouraged his children in Ghana to own for themselves the attitude of the German youth of the 1960s, a positive mindset, the psyche of a patriot. He would recount to his children how as a student in Germany after World War II, he was struck by the “positive spirit and energy” of the German youth of the 60s, in spite of the über-difficult circumstances of their upbringing. They were born, he stressed, in the midst of war, air-raid sirens, bombs, deaths and destruction. A painful humiliation from defeat, living in bombed-out cities. Some starved as infants; many never got to know their fathers; some lost their big brothers on the frontline. They were growing up in the 1960s with the easy option to blame the older generation for the catastrophe that they, the youth, were forced to grow under. But, no! Despite all the gloom and negativities of their upbringing, the youth of Germany in the 60s looked and worked towards a better future with eagerness, a can-do mindset and positive patriotism, Dr Otchere-Darko would stress to his own kids. He charged them to also believe that Ghana would also in the near future overcome her challenges and that our Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle, was on the way.   
 
Sadly, he, himself, soon became a victim of the era of CDRs and Citizens Vetting Committees. Even though he acquired the bulk of his wealth in Germany, he had a bad experience with the military regime in the very early days of the PNDC (within its first year), and was forced by the harassment to flee to the United States of America in November 1982, in fear and despair, leaving his family behind. He returned to Ghana in 1984, more miserable than he left, having lost assets and investments, including his fleet of trucks and buses, his bank deposits, to go through a bitter divorce. Fortunately, he had some good lawyers on his side, notably Yaw Barima and his very good friend, Anin-Yeboah, now Chief Justice. After returning from America, Dr Otchere-Darko went back to work at the Koforidua Regional Hospital until October 1989, when he migrated to South Africa. It was during this period, in 1985, that he met a lawyer at the Attorney General Department, Felicia Akorli, who was also going through her own marriage issues. After five years of friendship, they got married in 1989 and stayed married until death did them part. However, their marriage was an unusual one, with the man living and working in South Africa, and the wife working as a State Attorney in Ghana, visiting each other only on vacations, until they both retired.
 
 
HEALING THE SICK IN SA: 1989-2006
 
Not one for big cities, in South Africa, he very soon declined a job in Johannesburg, opting to work at the Medical University of South Africa Teaching Hospital (MEDUNSA) in Ga-Rankuwa (Gauteng Province) as a Trauma Surgeon and lecturer at the Department of Surgery. There he helped to train doctors in an institution which produces the largest number of new medical doctors in South Africa. In 1994, he moved on to head the Trauma Unit at the Bophelong Regional Hospital, Mafikeng, in the North West Province, alongside his own private practice at Victoria Hospital.
 
He finally retired from full time medical practice in South Africa in November 2006, and moved back to Ghana, spending time in his two homes in Koforidua and Tema, where he volunteered his services part-time as a GP in Sakumono until 2014. With his health failing, he stayed with his son, Yaw Asare and, daughter-in-law, Nana Adjoa, in East Legon for a year before retiring to his home in Koforidua.
 
Barima Okyere Boateng suffered a stroke in the evening of March 5, 2021 at home in Koforidua, fell into a coma and was sent to the Koforidua Regional Hospital. He was transferred to UGMC on March 6, where he received the best medical care for a month. Unfortunately, he never regained consciousness until his heart finally gave up on Monday, April 12, 2021.
 
Before his own death, Barima Okyere Boateng, from 2009 until 2020, participated actively in the funeral of all the four women he had his 8 children with, beginning with Sophia who died in 2009, Margaret in 2011, Paulina and Yaa, who both died in late 2019 and buried in early 2020.
 
He left behind his wife, Mrs. Felicia Otchere-Darko (retired state attorney), and his eight children, namely, Mrs. Margaret Otchere-Darko Asiedu (retired Care Worker, London, UK), Mr. Joseph Otchere-Darko Jnr. (ex-Banker, London, UK), Dr. Paulina Kitcher deGraft-Johnson (Psychiatrist, Neurologist, New York, US), Gabby Yaw Asare Otchere-Darko (Barrister & Solicitor, Accra, Ghana), Dr. Leticia Otchere-Darko (Anaesthesiologist, Assistant Professor, Yale Medical School, US) , Miss Becky Otchere-Darko (ICU & Research Nurse, London, UK), Mrs. Daisy Okyere (Attorney, Houston, US) and Dr. Josephine Otchere-Darko, (Physician and Public Health Specialist, Johannesburg, South Africa). He also left behind 19 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren. 
 
Barima Okyere Boateng was a very loving, generous and caring father, husband and friend and he will be deeply missed by all who were privileged to have known him. Till we meet again…