Publisher's Synopsis
Agbetikpo is a quaint little village on the outskirts of Battor. It is on the Aveiyime-Kpong stretch. In that enclave, you would find villages and townlets like Kanyakope, Memordzi, Sikor and Volivo. Agbetikpo is the home village of my paternal grandparents. It became a place I would visit every week day-except Sundays- from June till September 2008 when I got a pupil teaching job. It became a place I would visit every weekend from September 2008 till August 2011 when I left for teacher training college at Akatsi. It became a place I would visit every mid-semester break and vacation from August 2011 till April 23, 2012.
At Agbetikpo, my father cultivated a mango plantation. Because the mango plants were still young and had not started fruiting, we grew corn, cassava, sometimes pineapples or whatever my father decided to grow. There were times when I worked alone on a portion of the farm while my father was at the other end. There were days when together with my kid brother, Makafui, we trio worked side by side- our heads bent over hoes, ridding our farm of the hydra weeds that raided our land.
It was in these moments; the blessed company, the hearty laughs and the witty conversations with my father and brother, or, the uninterrupted quiet- save for the birds- of a solo farm worker, that the poems came to me. In this solitude, I soliloquized. I spoke- and was spoken to in apostrophes. Agbetikpo was a surreal place. A cocoon from the din of the bustling world. My writing pad was the vast and verdant arable land. The poetic verses were in tandem with the tempo of my hoe. The rhythm and rhymes were in line with the crops of our field. Agbetikpo was a womb which incubated my poetry. It was the theatre in which my words were birthed. It was the podium on which I did my best renditions and received my loudest applause- in eardrum-shattering silence.
Agbetikpo was more than a place. It was a man. The man Robert Kwaku Adjor. The man who taught me the meaning of tenacity by being a sterling example. The man who told stories spiced copiously with humour. The man who loved to sweat and was the epitome of 'work and happiness'. The man who preached real sermons and was sharp and direct as a straight arrow. The man who doled out priceless nuggets of wisdom and life experiences generously. The man who sowed in the scorching sun and worked in the whipping rain.
