Ways of Remembering the Basel Mission’s Activities in Osu and Akropong

My research journey to Ghana in early 2024 started a semester prior, in the university classrooms of Basel. What caught my attention was that we were not only going to have a closer look at the critical colonial aspects of the work of the Basel Mission (BM) in Ghana but also at what Ghanaians think of their historical heritage and the activities of the BM in their country. The excursion to Ghana in January offered a unique opportunity to talk to people whose lives are entangled with the BM’s history and to get to know their viewpoints. Together with Saleh Mohammed Saleh and Catherina Deeg, I interviewed people from Osu, a city quarter of Accra, and people from Akropong to find out more about their memories of the BM. The most surprising result for us was that many people we talked to addressed the legacy of the BM in a very positive way. The people we interviewed were the district minister of the Presbyterian Church in Osu, Rev. Erasmus Mensah Laryea, two schoolgirls from the Presbyterian Senior High School in Osu,[1] and four descendants of Theophilus Hermann Kofi Opoku, who live in Akropong. What all these people have in common and what is important to note here is that they are all – in one way or the other – part of the community of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG) and thus the history of the BM has a personal meaning for them. From our experiences in Ghana and the various conversations we had with people, we can assume that outside of this circle of community members of the PCG and scholars who devote themselves to the history of the BM, knowledge about the mission is thinly spread. This contribution aims to provide insights into the above-mentioned peoples’ entanglement with the BM’s history, into how they remember the mission, as well as their personal reasons for remembering it in this way.

So let us start with the district minister of Osu. One of the questions we asked Rev. Laryea was if he ever speaks to people of the Osu congregation about the BM and, if he does so, how he thinks these people perceive the mission. He told us that people talk to him about the BM because he, as a minister of the Presbyterian Church, is an indicator of the BM’s historical presence in Osu. For that, it is important to know that the roots of the PCG can be traced back as far as the nineteenth century to the BM’s activities in Ghana. Rev. Laryea noted that what people usually associate with the BM were its core values. Among these are “discipline, hard work and moral excellence”.[2] So, he said, if you know that a person belongs to the PCG, you also know that they are morally upright and hard-working. He added that people of older generations who live in Osu even call the PCG the Basel Church.

From left to right: Sina Ritter, Rev. Erasmus Mensah Laryea, Catherina Deeg, and Saleh Mohammed Saleh.
From left to right: Sina Ritter, Rev. Erasmus Mensah Laryea, Catherina Deeg, and Saleh Mohammed Saleh.

Furthermore, he informed us that he was brought up in the context of the BM, that he has been a Christian for a long time, and that he thinks life without God is meaningless. That is why for him it is an important task to influence the next generation. He has been teaching in Presbyterian schools for 32 years. Education has also played an important role historically, he added, since without education it would not have been possible to make people understand the Christian faith and live by it. When asked what he would recommend to the young generation about the BM he says they should learn their values like discipline and moral integrity. If they learned these values wherever they found themselves, they would live by them and be successful in their lives.[3]

The second person we talked to was an 18-year-old schoolgirl at the Presbyterian Senior High School, Osu. The school is only a short walk from the district minister’s office and the church. We learned that she is a business student and lives on the school campus because her home is too far away to commute to the school. On weekends she has time to visit her family. She herself is a member of the PGC and her family’s history is connected to the BM. Every Sunday after the church service she sits together with her relatives, and her grandmother tells stories about the BM. That’s how she knows that her great-grandfather sold land to the Basel missionaries so they could build a church on it. By telling her granddaughter about the BM, the grandmother of the schoolgirl keeps the memory of the BM alive.[4]

Our last interview was held with four descendants of Theophilus Hermann Kofi Opoku (1842–1913), a local Akan linguist and missionary who helped to translate the Bible into the Twi language. When asked if they sometimes talk about the BM with people inside or outside their family, Theophilus O. Addy, the great-great-grandson and namesake of Theophilus Opoku, answered that usually people in Akropong were taught about the BM in school. When they discuss the BM with others, they talk about what the missionaries brought in and how they helped the people in the Akuapem area. One aspect in which the area particularly benefited from the mission, he emphasized, was education: “You will never see anybody in the region who hasn’t been to school.”[5] Education is still one of the priorities of the Akuapem area today. Also, Theophilus O. Addy added, the missionaries brought a different system of trading and several unknown goods.

He further mentioned that his family members know the history of the BM and remember it because their great-great-grandfather was part of the mission. This fact requires them to know about the BM. To transmit knowledge is part of keeping up with the legacy of Theophilus Opoku. Some other people may not be interested, but because his family had a share of his legacy, they continue to remember and celebrate it. Audrey Poku-Duah, another one of the four descendants who we interviewed, mentioned that they celebrated the centenary of their ancestor’s death twelve years ago. The celebration brought almost all the family members together.[6]

These three stories tell us a lot about how people in Osu and Akropong still remember the BM, with their lives entangled in various ways with the historical legacy of the mission and its activities. The district minister grew up in a BM context. He knows a lot about the history of the PCG and wants to transmit its core values to younger generations. The schoolgirl of the Presbyterian Senior High School is knowledgeable about the BM even though she belongs to a younger generation. The memory of the BM is kept alive by her grandmother. The descendants of Theophilus Opoku are proud to be a part of the former missionary’s family and feel required to keep his legacy alive. What all the interviewees have in common is that the BM is an important part of their memory and that this memory is passed on in numerous ways.

Portrait Sina Ritter
About the author:Sina Ritter

I am a master’s student in history and sociology at the University of Basel. I travelled to Ghana on the 2024 excursion program. My main interest during the trip was to learn more about what Ghanaians think of their historical heritage and the activities of the Basler Mission in their country.