Appendix

Misc

Recollections in Hospital - short

(2001.01.01)

Must write something. But what?

My period as A.G. terminated on 24th September 1979, when the civilian administration under President Hilla Limann took over in ceremony in Parliament followed by a Grand parade at Black Star Square. No one quite understood why Uncle Ben Firdjoe and I danced round in the Square that day. We both felt it was an achievement to have in our various ways kept JJR to the planned handover.

I soon started rebuilding my legal consultancy. At home, with the introduction of my cousin, Nee Quartey, who was still Chief Executive of VRA, to the head of Impregillo~[* check spelling differs earlier/elsewhere ]~ and after an interview, I got a consultancy with that company. It was then about to build the dam at Kpong. So there was some active work to do. Through my old student Alex Odame Labi(?),~[* name check ]~ who was in-house lawyer to Social Security Bank (SSB), I got some work from that bank. In both cases, I worked with Kwame Tetteh, the younger brother of my old friend from Oxford days and the AG's Office. Kwame, was no doubt a very good lawyer, who with more experience was going to reach the top, as he indeed has done. But he had one irritating habit: he never returned any telephone calls. His philosophy, apparently, was that if you needed him, you would call again. He and I also co-operated by my preparing briefs for him to use in the appellate courts.

Right from the beginning, I adopted the system of charging fees by the hour. I did one for my friend Johnny Quashie-Idun, which he told me he exhibited to his colleagues in Chambers as to how such briefs should be written. But he never came back. Perhaps my fees were too high. Perhaps the chambers used my brief as a proto-type for future briefs. But perhaps not.

In one thing I was lucky. I had been used to the efficient standards of Patience Dixon-Caesar, the Secretary that I had when I was DPP and later took in 1966 to the Attorney General's private office, where she has remained, it seems, for ever. But the secretary I have in my consultancy, Victoria Amegatcher, was also good. Apart from Victoria, I had Ebenezer Tetteh, the driver I acquired when I became a judge in 1966, and who as remained with me since, to do the old chores in addition to his duties as chauffeur.

[Continue with writing on Snellingen/ Erik Sande]

2001.01.02

The first visit by Rolf and myself to The Gambia was to establish contact with personnel in Government, other partners in the construction of the proposed hotel, banks and business people. There were several visits often that when negotiations were done, contracts drafted and signed, site visits and general oversight of the construction were our main tasks. All this time, we continued to widen and deepen local friendships. The Gambia is a lovely place, with lovely people. A distant uncle of mine who had once served there as a magistrate, described them as treacherous people. I do not know what experience led him to this conclusion. But his warning put me on guard against any such manifestation. To some extent, I think that although they were naturally friendly people and I have not met a more openly friendly people other than Ghanaians in Africa, they also had an undercurrent of reserve against foreigners whom they do not know well.

The Gambia was trying at this time to increase the potential of the country as a tourist destination. A small country like a tongue on either side of the Gambia River, its economy formally consisted of exporting groundnuts and of the hardy “ndaura”(?)~[* check name ]~ cattle which have an in-bred resistance to the tsetse fly, so dangerous to cattle in other parts of West Africa. Hence its concern over developing tourism as an additional foreign exchange earner. The Government was actively involved in this development, granting fiscal and financial concessions as well as incentives e.g. by way of participation, in the establishment of infrastructure, especially in hotels, in the country. The Government itself was the owner of the biggest business hotel, the Atlantic, which had its share of tourists in Banjul, the capital.

My visits to The Gambia over the period of the construction of the hotel were frequent. It was named the Senegambia after the brief flirtation, then at its height, of neighbouring “big brother”, Senegal which, except for the Atlantic coast, surrounded The Gambia, and The Gambia itself.

On my return to Accra from my first visit to The Gambia, I found Stella's niece, Veronika (whom we have always called by her nickname “Misi”) visiting us. Misi has always looked more like Stella than she does her immediate family. Her arrival was a typical Misi experience. She had written to us about her coming but we had not got the letter. There was no one at the airport to meet her and she arrived at Accra Airport without knowing exactly where we lived. That did not worry her one bit. She jumped into a taxi and told the driver, “Please, take me to the place where the judges live.” By then, I had long left the Cantonments area, where most of the judges could be found, to our own home in Ablenkpe. The taxi driver was equal to the challenge. He replied, “I know”. He drove her to the house, formerly occupied by Chief Justices on the Inner Road, only a hundred yards down the road from the “Bing house” which was the house we occupied before we moved to Ablenkpe. Justice Mills-Odoi was the current occupant of that house. By good fortune, he was in. As Misi walked in, he was on the telephone on the other side of that huge sitting room. Mills-Odoi waved her to a seat and continued on the phone. When he had finished, he came to Misi with arms outstretched to welcome her. “Hello”! he said, “I know your mother.” Of course Mills-Odoi was thinking of Stella as the mother. Misi told him her problem. He immediately summoned a daughter and gave directions to her to take Misi to our house. The daughter only knew Fred Apaloo's house in Ablenkpe. But it was agreed that she would take Misi that far, from where she could ask for directions onward.

2001.01.03 Of course, from Justice Apaloo's house, she found ours. But when she got there Stella was not in. It was 1st July and Stella had been invited by the Canadians to mid-day drinks to celebrate their national day. Misi discovered that she did not have local currency to pay for the taxi. Again luck was on her side. Our cook-steward, Paa Kofi, who had been with us since 1968, was there and he managed to pay off the driver.

Paa Kofi must have recognised the striking resemblance between Stella and Misi and immediately made Misi comfortable in the guest room. When Stella returned from her cocktail party, to her great surprise, there was her niece, asleep in the guest-room bed, with our own normally unfriendly dog, Bessie - she bit Stella's sister, Inger, when Inger was trying to be friendly on her visit, - lying quietly on the floor beside her. Misi's letter did arrive but after Misi.

I have seen no one else, probably except myself, endowed with so much luck. Is it because we were born under the Libra sign, two days apart?

Take, for example, another incident. We were visiting her parents on a Sunny summer's day in their summer home in Kimito. On such days, both hosts and guests sit in the garden, far from the noise of the telephone. For some reason, Rainer wanted matches and went into the house to fetch some. He came back several minutes later convulsed with laughter. Did we hear the telephone? None of us had. He said just as he got inside the house, the telephone rang. It was Misi ringing from Spain where she had just arrived and found that she had left behind in England the address of the place where she was booked to stay. Fortunately, her father had it and gave it to her.

Despite this apparent disorganisation, Misi is a joy to be with. I was met at the Airport on my return from my first trip to The Gambia by Stella and Misi, driven by Ebenezer. In the car, I confessed that I was returning to The Gambia in two weeks' time to continue with work there. Stella, not wanting another parting so soon expressed displeasure. But Misi immediately said “Why not?” That is part of his work. My path was smoothened considerably by that intervention.

I was away when Misi returned to Finland, via Nigeria. I understand the return journey provided its excitements with bureaucracy. She had, I believe, over-stayed her visa. She survived.

Through work with Erik Sande, I made a modest sum in foreign exchange, evidence of which was required by the British High Commission in order to grant Ralph a student visa to England. It was so modest that the UK High Commissioner interviewing me asked how I intended to finance Ralph's education after the first year. I replied that I hoped to continue working for my client and make more. With the help of Brian Simpson, he had got a place at Keynes College in the University of Kent at Canterbury. The news came so late that I could announce it only at my 50th birthday dinner to which I had invited all the old Ladies I loved, my mother, Auntie Marion, Auntie Mary Acolatse and the not so old Naawaa Torto. Ralph left a few days later.

2001.01.04

By now, our thoughts were very much on the education of the girls, Tossan and Juliet. Tossan we had taken away from my old school, Achimota, which by now was suffering from shortages and fallen standards. We went to see her for me to say good-bye because I was going away on one of my trips abroad and found that she had a boil on the leg and had had no attention from the hospital or house-mistress for a whole day, although she had a high temperature. We took her away from the school that day and put her back into the Ghana International School. She and the other children had all gone there although my belief, now proved to be misguided, that my children should be educated in the Achimota School that I had gone through, made us put all of them for some time through Achimota.

With Ralph taken care of for the first year at Canterbury and prospects of further money coming from work with Arne Sande A/S to ensure support for the rest of his University life, we turned to making provision with any extra money for the girls. We went into educational insurance schemes which would help us minimise the fees for further education abroad, first for Tossan, then for Juliet. Tossan was finishing her “O” Levels at GIS in 1981. As there was no further course for the “A” Levels at GIS at the time, we thought that we should send her abroad for her “A” Levels.

But what would happen to Juliet when both Ralph and Tossan were away in England and she was the only one with us? She was the most sensitive of our children, and the one most unsettled by coups, sporadic and unexplained gunfire evidencing apparent violence. She was the one most obviously disturbed by my overnight detention after the 1979 Rawlings coup. How were we going to manage her with Tossan, who often gave her comfort, gone? Juliet had been put down for Achimota, due to my disbelief in its deterioration, and she went there for a few weeks at one of the worst times in the history of education in Ghana. Because of the depreciation of the cedi, teachers were not able to manage for a week on their month's salary. To meet this situation, they began to take on several employed positions with the result that they were not present in the classes at which they were expected. Juliet was at Achimota for two weeks without seeing a teacher. They just went and sat in the class and were expected to read on their own. But no one could read because there was an awful din from classmates wanting to talk. Juliet, by virtue of the fact she was born in February was three years behind Tossan although in actual age, she was only two years and two months younger. So, jokingly, I proposed to her that, if she could do her “O” Levels in two years instead of three, we would send her to school in England at the same time as we sent Tossan. Of course, she did promise to try.

We were able to think in these terms because work in The Gambia was progressing satisfactorily. I travelled there often on Ghana Airways West Coast flight - Accra; Abidjan; Monrovia; Conakry (sometimes); Freetown; Banjul. Each was the capital of a West African State. Abidjan used the CFA franc; Monrovia used the dollar; Conakry used its own equivalent of the franc; Freetown had its own currency and Banjul had the dalasi. There were Ghanaian women traders always on these flights. Often in first class. Most of them did not look college trained. I used to marvel at their grasp of these various currencies and the exchange rates between which they discussed expertly and with ease.

My travel on behalf of Arne Sande A/S was not confined to The Gambia. Erik Sande invited Stella and myself to visit Bergen, in Norway in about September 1980, ostensibly to discuss progress of the Senegambia Hotel project. The contracts for the construction had been completed. We started off with a stylish dinner at the Hotel in Bergen where we had been put up, with Erik, his wife, Agnethe; Rolf Bjorvik and wife Ranveigh; his finance man at the time, Ole Kulseth and wife. Erik really put up a show for our benefit. Next day, we were given a tour of the city from a small aircraft. We also visited one of their two summer houses near Bergen. We did discuss business in Africa. But we had other interests to look at. Erik had already embarked on his expansionist phase. Arne Sande, was the name of his father who had built the construction business which bore his name, and Erik now heads and practically owns. When Arne Sande died, clearly to leave the company completely in the hands of his only son, he left 80% of the equity to Erik, 17% to Erik's mother and one percent each to his three daughters. Mrs. Sande Snr. was not interested in the management of the company and left things to Erik. Erik, therefore, had almost 100% control of Arne Sande A/S which, when I met him in Bergen, was the sixth largest construction company in Norway. During our visit, Erik celebrated the acquisition of a Ford car dealership, Mathiesen Auto, to his empire. It was then and at later social meetings that I met a Norwegian lawyer, Jan Greve, who was to play a major part in Erik's later life.

By anything that I had been close to, the Sandes were a rich family. Erik used to tease his wife, who had a reputation of being a millionaire, in her own right, that she was the capitalist of the two.

How do I describe Erik? A tall, clever and confident man, of enormous charm, almost ten years younger than me. A man of extremely generous instincts. But a man of mercurial temper, which could flare without much warning, especially against a subordinate whom he felt was not acting up to scratch at any particular time. Such outbursts could be embarrassing. In our long relationship, however, he sounded off like that only once against me. For a very long time after that, he was so apologetic over the incident that, it too, was a bit embarrassing.

Right from the beginning, he invited Stella myself and our children into their home. He treated me like an elder brother (from whom he would take comments which he would not otherwise take from others). His arrangement from now on was to organise a meeting in Bergen with him in the summer, then lend me and Stella and family a car to drive to Finland for our holiday, returning the car on our way back.

Erik involved me closely in his next acquisition venture. He acquired the largest construction company, Selmer A/S, several times the size of Arne Sande A/S, in a bold move which surprised the industry at the time. Selmer A/S was as much a company built by one person as was Arne Sande A/S. At the time of its acquisition, it was owned 83% by the daughter of the founder and 17% by a nephew, Lawrence, who had for years before the daughter was born, worked for and had the expectation of succession, a fact which was altered by the birth of the daughter. The daughter and husband were interested in disposing of the holding but wanted to be certain that it did not fall into the hands of the cousin, Lawrence. Assured that Erik wanted the company for himself and was not an agent of Lawrence, they decided to sell. Erik wanted the deal kept as secret as possible. So he got me and Olav Snellingen to draft the sale agreement. Suddenly, Erik controlled the largest construction empire in Norway. (mention almost immediate acquisition by Selmer of 50% of Furuhomen - second largest?)

(2001.01.07) Eventually, he was advised that to complete the deal what he needed was a lawyer in Oslo. So he got Lars Kristensen, who took over our work, but had little to add.

At this time, Erik was thinking in international terms - he was going to have a holding company on the board of which Olav and I would be, as well as one American whom I did not know but was well known in financial circles over there. Olav got grand ideas. He thought and he played a crucial part in persuading the Selmer daughter and husband to sell to Erik, that he was anointed to be the Managing Director of this holding company. That irritated Erik immensely because he himself expected to take on that role. He made this clear at a meeting we had in London. But what put Olav and Erik apart had nothing to do with business. It was to do with what Erik thought was interference with his time with his children. He was, however busy, keen on devoting a certain minimum of early evening time to his three boys, Arne, Erik and Haakon. It was this time which Olav chose to phone and discuss business. Olav was incapable of saying anything in a few short sentences. So Erik gradually got weary of these phone calls and asked Olav not to call again.

With Erik in the hands of Norwegian lawyers with little international exposure, one is not surprised that the international umbrella company was heard less and less about. When Selmer A/S was bought, the umbrella company formed was Selmer-Sande A/S, a Norwegian company.