Complete Analysis and Synopsis of Amma Darko Faceless
The work, Faceless by AmmaDarko hinges on the victimization of the female folk by the domineering influence of masculinity. The patriarch society which the work presents to us shows great imbalance in the way and manner the females fare in the story vis-a-vis their male counterparts. With focus on the heroine of the work, Fofo, we realise how the spate of poverty in the society where the woman is left to provide for her children, forces mothers to push their young girls into the streets.
In Sodom and Gomorrah, young girls and boys of Fofo’s age are seen trying to survive all by themselves. Some are seen to pay for the day hours while others pay for night hours. Some engage in hawking, stealing or prostitution as a means of survival. Fofo is seen sleeping out late at night in front of a kiosk, so that; she will meet up an appointment for a job. Right there in the middle of the night, Poison suddenly came upon her forcefully and abused her sexually. After being freed from the stronghold of Poison, Fofo decides to pay her mother a visit, but not without the company of her friend, Odarley.
In her mother’s room, Fofo gets informed that Baby T, her elder sister’s body is found dead at a site in the market, Agbogbloshie. She tells her mother of Poison’s unwholesome act on her and that she has decided to leave town. MaaTsuru has been in a cold war with Fofo and is handicapped with words to change Fofo’s mind. Odarley feels that Fofo has shot her out of her mind and affairs, when Fofo tells her that she will be on her way to only God know where.
Complete Analysis and Synopsis of Amma Darko Faceless
On the other hand, the Adade’s family is presented with Kabria in her usual routine of taking care of house chores and taking her children (Obie, Essie and Ottu) to school. For her, this is a herculean task which her husband intuitively believes is her sole responsibility. Not minding the inquisitive nature of her last two children, Kabria is able to meet all the cooking and get to work in her car called Creamy. Kabria works for MUTE, a non-governmental organisation with Dina as the boss.
Her colleagues are Vickie and Aggie. On a particular day, Kabria got to work late and Dina got sad about it. To compensate for her late coming, Kabria decides to shop for Dina in Agbogbloshie. At the market, Kabria held about the death of a young girl and her body left in front of a kiosk; and that instance when she decides to find out the reason why people were gathered at a spot, a young boy swiftly steals her purse from her but caught up with by some members of the crowd surrounding her.
Kabria intervenes to save the boyfriend the wrath of the mob and quickly takes him out of their mist. At the car park, to Kabria’s amazement she realises that the young boy is a girl disguised as a boy. She tells Kabria that she knew the dead girl and that she was her sister. Recovering from the shock, Kabria tells her to show up at the same spot the next day. Kabria returns to her office and tells her colleagues what she had seen. Dina decides to give kabria a chance to work on the case. The next day, Kabria repeats at the market just as she has told the young girl. After waiting for a long time, Kabria sees the girl and feels pity for her as she takes her to her office, MUTE. In the office, it is agreed that Dina takes her home as she is a divorcee and has nobody to cater for, and they discover that she bears the name Fofo.
Complete Analysis and Synopsis of Amma Darko Faceless
After recuperating from the beating she had received for speaking with a stranger, Fofo demands to have Kabria around before she can speak about herself and her dead sister. Through flashback in her words, Fofo reveals that due to the helpless situation her mother finds herself by marrying Kpakpo, a jobless and evil schemer, whose only inheritance is the one room he got from his father. Kpakpo rents his room out with the condition that he lives with his tenant.
This has been working for him until he met with one whose brother is a soldier and he forcefully asks Kpakpo to vacant the room paid for by his brother. Kpakpo deceives MaaTsuru and makes her to fall in love with him. Before MaaTsuru could unravel the fact, it was too late and she decided to accept her fate of taking Kpakpo as her second husband. Kpakpo’sprsesence in their home is the beginning of crisis as Fofo’s two elder brothers disappeared from the house as they could no longer tolerate Kpakpo making love with their mother in the same room they sleep.
On this particular day that MaaTsuru was away and her children had to sleep in the room with just Kpakpo, Kpakpo saw it as an advantage to do his bidden. He abused Fofo’s elder sister, Baby T, sexually that night, while Fofo watched secretly. Fofo innocently tells Onko of what Kpakpo did to Baby T in great confidence as she and others have taken him to be their moral confidant.
Onko takes the opportunity to also abuse Baby T sexually. This gets MaaTusru infuriated that she goes to confront Onko. He pleads and offers some money to stop to case, and also makes MaaTsuru to understand that he knows of Kpakpo and Baby T. Due to the complication surrounding the matter, MaaTsuru falls into Kpakpo devilish advice to send Baby T to Mama Broni to get her a job. Unknown to MaaTsuru Baby T is introduced to prostitution in connection to Poison, who stands as the kingpin of the prostitution business.
After series of investigations by MUTE with the help of Sylv Po, a radio presenter, it is discovered that Baby T did not die at the market but that her killers brought her to the spot to distract any further trace. Kabria and her team pay several visits to MaaTsuru, Naayomo, Onko’s workshop, Poison, Mama Broni, a native doctor and the police station, among others, to unravel the secret behind Baby T’s death.
Complete Analysis and Synopsis of Amma Darko Faceless
When questioning Poison, he reveals that Mama Broni knows better. He says that Onko had come to request for a particular girl of his, and that he was ready to pay any amount to have her. When asked who the girl was, he said Baby T. Poison reveals that Baby T had refused to accept Onko as a client, but was compelled by him. He says that Baby T stays in Mama Broni’s place as a special worker, who he treats well. However, he states that the death of Baby T is an accident as she fell into a fight with Onko, who stabbed her with a knife.
On realising this, they decided to take her wounded body to the market place, so that, it may be assumed that she was killed there. But before the investigation team could get to Onko, he had committed suicide, and Mama Broni confesses that she had been the one calling in on the radio programme to make the presenter believe that the dead girl is not Baby T but someone else. So at the end of this revelation, Fofo is fully recuperated and is sent to learn a vocation which will empower her to survival financially in future. This is done by the help of MUTE and Kabria in particular.
Themes in Amma Darko’s Faceless
Adversity and Female Reconfiguration in Amma Darko’s Faceless
Adversity and female reconfiguration are what our female gender is passing through even in out today’s society, Darko points that even when it happens that both boys and girls find themselves on the street, the living condition of boys is far better compared to the living condition of girls, because girls are more exposed to dangers. For instance, on the street, Fofo was about to be abused by two boys, one of them known as Poison, the street gang. The cry uttered by Fofo proves her vulnerability. We learn through the narrator’s comment that: “Fofo let out a cry and began to flail her hands and legs widely in the air.
One huge muscular hand came down hard upon her mouth and suppressed the sounds from her throat. The other restrained her flailing hands and legs” (Darko, 3-4). Later, Fofo, herself, reports to her friend Odarly that Poison tried to rape her: “The person I said [Poison] tried to rape me, that was him” (Darko, 8). What is more, the economic condition of married women seems to be even more vulnerable than the condition of the street girls. Fofo speaking of her mother, when her friend Odarley asks her what she is looking for upon visiting her mother, reacts: “Am I a dreamer? She and me who needs money more?”(Darko, 8). The truth of the matter is that despite Fofo is a street girl, her married mother has more economic problems than she has.
Fofo further laments the living condition of her mother within marriage and adds: “…I don’t like coming to see you because I don’t like what I feel when I come to see you…” (Darko, 25). This “…what I feel when I come to see you…” uttered by Fofo is, further, made more explicit: “If he [Fofo’s father] returned today you would let him in and probably get yourself pregnant by him again, won’t you? Why? Mother, why? What life have you been able to give those of us you already have?” (Darko, 159).
Through another character, in the novel, Darko, aesthetically, supports Fofo’s viewpoint. During a radio interview, with Sylv Po, a woman reacts: “I want to know if I can apply any existing law to legally prevent our parents from having any more children after the one presently carried is born” (Darko, 182). That is, no child should be brought into the world without means of providing for him or her physically, financially, psychologically and even emotionally.
In fact, in faceless, the marginalization of women is a daybreak when it comes to the choice between a boy and a girl child. Though, the prayer on the lips of many African married couples is that God gives them children, they may have preference over a boy child or else a boy child is very special. Such attitude is even known to children. Ottu, the only son of Kabria out of the three she mothered, once says: “Mum, do you know that I cut short your problems by coming as a boy and earned you respect?” (Darko, 13).
What is more, as the mother, herself, is surprised of her little child analysis; Ottu was able to report a similar case from another family: “You see [speaking to his mother], my friend’s grandfather said that had my friend not come as a boy, she, being my friend’s father’s mother, would have insisted and ensured that my friend’s mother continued to bear more and more children till she born a son” (Darko, 13). In addition to the above, when a married couple is not blessed with a child or children, the blame is on women as if procreation is not a result of a joint action between a man and a woman.
A woman who is not fertile is most often divorced. In Faceless, Dina, the Boss of MUTE, experienced such pain: “Dina was a graduate of the University of Ghana. Her marriage to her campus boyfriend shortly after her graduation, ended in divorce after four turbulent years of childlessness” (Darko, 38). Also, though school is an important socio economic and political ladder, girl children do not have the opportunity to go to school. School is a reserve of men who grap the benefit. It is at the tender age that girls are involved in the street life. Though, thanks to education, men are able to work and earn salaries, one is tempted to question what the salary is worth as they, most often, spend their salaries on beers: “After work, Adade [kabria’s husband] normally met with friends at a drinking spot to socialize over bottles of beer” (Darko, 14, emphasis mine).
The so-called socialization is celebrated while the kids are on the street at the mercy of all kind of dangers. That is certainly why, Darko creates a character such as Kabria. Through Kabria, the writer does seem to tell women that even though they are married, marriage is not a profession and that men are not banks to rely on. Kabria once said to her husband, who asks her whether she receives salary from her work or not, that: “Don’t get sarcastic with me” Kabria retorted. “If I had had the time to study further as you did, I would also have been reaping the benefits today in terms of a better salary. But I was busy making babies then” (Darko, 15).
The fact that women do not have salaries does not mean that they do not work. They work often harder than men do but their works are penniless. In Faceless, a report once alleged that the “African woman worked for an average of sixty-seven hours a week as opposed to fifty-five for the African men” (Darko, 56). Darko is critical of such situation that debases women. Since women do not go to school, they have little chance to do office works. Therefore, poverty greatly affects them.
When, in Faceless, Kabria asks a blind woman the reason why the little girl of eight years old, guiding her, is not going to school, the blind woman responds: “If people like you won’t give me money, how could I send her to school?” (Darko, 2013:37). In the novel, it is said that Fofo does not only know poverty but she even sees it. This is an indication that poverty is even personified. Poverty often drives women to the expense of reason and the situation involves them in prostitution, as a survival strategy: “They [the girls] had no idea at all about the extent of self-damage. Sex, to them, was just a convenient means of survival” (32).
What is more, they are not even able to conduct the sex business freely because they are often raped. They are raped by street gangs and often by relatives. Darko informs us that, for many girls, “rape was their first sexual experience” (Darko, 32). For instance, at sixteen years old, Baby T. was raped both by her own uncle, Onko, and by her stepfather, Kpakpo. However, as poverty is a rule but not an exception, Onko bribes Maa Tsuru, Baby T.’s mother, to keep silence and threatened Baby T. not to tell anybody: “three times he did it, and left her bleeding on his bed. ‘Better tell no one!’ he warned” (Darko, 139).
Accordingly, Christine (16) observes that “…majority of women assume ‘silence is golden’ because they lack the confidence or education to deal with male dominance.” Worst of all is that often men tend to marginalize women without reasonable evidence. Rightly, a saying goes on that “If one does not need one’s dog, one accuses it of rabies and kills it”. In the context of a relationship between a woman and a man, the latter often takes even a dream for granted. For instance, during a radio interview with Sylv Po, Ms. Kamame says:
We met a woman whose husband had left her, after several years of marriage, with six children. He claimed he had a vision from God in which it was revealed to him that his wife was an adultress, that he had fathered none of the six children. One week later, he announced another vision. This time, he said God had revealed the new woman he should marry to him. The new woman turned out to be a young member whom everyone knew he had been eying since she joined the church. The man was an elder of the church. No one challenged him. How was the woman to afford paternity tests to debunk his absurd allegations? (Darko, 2013:110).
The marginalization of women has reached its summit because even beating a pregnant woman is worth celebrating, at least for some men. For instance, MaaTsuru was pregnant of Kwei for the third time. However, as Kwei was not happy of the pregnancy, he attempts to make her abort by giving a ‘sound’ beating. Not only that, Kwei returns to friends and tells them, as we learn from the narrator’s comment, that with “ immediate effect, they had better start calling him Dr. Kwei, because he had singlehandedly and very cost effectively terminated an unwanted pregnancy” (Darko, 2013:124).
Moreover, when ‘Dr. Kwei’ learned that MaaTsuru was safe and as well as her baby, his reaction was: “How had MaaTsuru and the baby inside her survived his pounding?” (Darko, 2013:124). In the end, as opposed to the naming tradition, the baby was never honored with a Kwei’s family name at birth: “she went first by the name ‘Tsuru’s baby’; which evolved to ‘Baby Tsuru’; and then, to ‘Baby T.’” (Darko, 2013:125). From the recollection of the above evidences, from the novel, the society is very hypocritical.
It is so to the extent that even when the campaign against AIDS was launched, the sensitizers tend to focus on the use of condom rather than abstinence. In the novel: “Sylv Po’s female studio guest was on and complaining about the AIDS prevention campaign not driving home the message of abstinence and faithfulness with the same intensity as the use of condoms” (Darko, 32). Yet, such hypocritical attitude would not help develop a nation. (Umeh , 168) supports that “A society which sets double moral standards for its adult population based on sex and gender is setting up the society for perpetual condonement of discrimination against the weak.”
In the novel under analysis, Obea, one of Kabria’s daughter, rightly recalls her social studies teacher who once quoted John F. Kennedy, the former president of the United States of America, saying that: “The future promise of any nation can be directly measured by the present prospects of its youth [both men and women]” (Darko, 75). As the marginalization of women is made explicit through the reading of Amma Darko’s Faceless, then who does the author, aesthetically, hold responsible for?
Abject Poverty and Child Development in African Society: A Case Study Of Faceless By Amah Darko
In Faceless, poverty and child development is something one can see by one’s eyes and touch with one’s fingers. It is something concrete, touchable, physical and material. In Faceless, Amma Darko presents through simple words what is the compound yard of poor people where Fofo, if she did not decide to leave for the streets of Accra, should be living. Darko describes then a situation which is common to any Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) where poverty is present and touchable:
Just a few years back, and Fofo could have been one of the numerous screaming children, scrambling with the sheep and goats and chickens for space to play and exist in the common compound. Fofo could have been the girl in the tattered brown underpants with the diseases red hair and a protruding stomach carried on legs that were as thin as two dried sticks. Or the other in the flour sac underpants with a body ravaged by rashes and whose nose seemed to never stop running. Maa Tsuru’s family home was a home of many faces. (62)
Darko wants the reader to recognize the active and evident poverty of people like Maa Tsuru that leads them to urge their children out to the streets. She portrays the victim of this sado-masochistic system in pain: “MaaTsuru broke down. She began to cry again. Don’t talk to me like that, Fofo, she sniffed, “Just because I made a lot of mistakes in life and I am poor doesn’t make me less your mother. So don’t talk to me that way” (63)
Darko continues and gives another reason of people urging their children to leave and go to street: “Hunger is a foe and it is overpowering. When it pushes you, you go. It was the same with Baby T.” (64)
Poverty drags Maa Tsuru’s arms and legs bound to accept money made from what only Amma
Darko knows as “Backpass”. Though feeling great innocence and compassion about her girls’ house leaving and what else they may be enduring in the streets, that means body-merchandizing. MaaTsuru seems not to know where the notes being given by Kpakpo are coming from, but she accepts. This means she approves of it. Darko gives us the point of view of common people when their children are ‘fetched’ by “big Madams” from big cities to work for them for fortune.
She justifies their innocence about the situation by saying “While her mother is stuck somewhere in poor village thinking that her daughter who was taken by this ‘kind and considerate’ relation to the city to help her ‘get on in life’ was probably at that moment, learning how to join the seams of a kaba together, the daughter may indeed be busy building a clientele of her own” (65)
The idea of ‘Good Morning Ghana’ in Faceless is Darko’s creation. This show is the voice of the voiceless, the face of the faceless. She wants all the Ghanaians to be informed about what is going wrong in the city. The new Ghana is full of social plights and unsolved problems. Nobody has to be off. Thus, Darko has called for Sylv Po and Ms Kamame, the specialist of street-children whose non-governmental organization had done a study of the phenomenon in Accra a few months before. She has beeninvited by the GMG producer.
On the day of the show, she explains, explains and confirms that poverty is not only the core cause of the condition. She goes on, “because there are some very poor parents we encountered, who in spite of their situation were not allowing their children out onto the streets.” (66) According to Ms Kamame, street-children issue has other sources which will be discussed in the following lines. Interestingly, one of the cause is family disintegration and lack of care which is to be discussed in the below lines.
Family Disintegration and Lack of Parental Care in Amah Darko’s Faceless
In the contemporary African countries, the lack of moral values, supportive norms, pauperization, suffering and violence, material ambitions and sexual drive fuel all this disintegration. In Faceless, Darko explores a great number of situations of parents’ carelessness in fiction. She pinpoints the situation that leads Fofo’s mother to let her children go to the streets:
A woman like Fofo’s mother, whose ‘village’ happens to be inner-city Accra, is more likely to lose her sense of onus rather speedily when pushed by joblessness and poverty and the non-existent male support. Her physical and emotional detachment from her children is made less difficult in the harsh conditions of the inner city life. She let go Fofo and her sister out onto the streets with virtually no guilt at all because her psyche had accepted the situation with ample ease.(6)
In that novel, we find another reason why women tend to hallucinate when faced with a crisis.
Society does not offer possibilities for women to vent their frustrations. By this way, Darko gives opportunity to the reader to live directly the real situation of street-children in the new Ghana’s suburbs, Sodom and Gomorrah. The story carried on is not just imaginative but authentic and prevailing that exposes the abandonment, sorrows and danger met by these children because of the irresponsibility of their parents and community. African society accepts insidiously those women in some extended family become “the only caretaker of the child’s emotional or physical or financial needs”. Or all three combined. That means .performing the tasks to two.” Hers and the absentee father.”(68)
This is a situation of a real burden to be carried by only one person “Maa Tsuru”. It is the image of a traditional African family where women’s role is to bear, to care for children, to contribute as mothers particularly in food provisioning and household management. This is the least they can provide to fuel male-dominance world. This presentation of women is mostly sloppy and biased and women have to cope with till it changes. Though are some serious
Points of resistance. The sobriquet ‘Dr. Kwei’ was given by himself just after he finished beating his pregnant wife. Darko informs Ghanaian society that the only way her male characters prove their dominance is violence and abuse. They have no human compassion. The miserable Kwei “pounced on her like a cat on an unsuspected mouse and began a vicious pounding spree. He pounded Maa Tsuru with his fists, landing the blows anywhere and everywhere and on every part of her pregnant body…Kwei grinned Maa Tsuru began to bleed. Then he returned to AgbooAyee and told all there that, with immediate effect, they had better start calling him Dr. Kwei…”(69)
The novel ‘’ Faceless’’ portrays the exploitation of the masses or women by the capitalist class or men in the society (community) the novel tries to exposes the object penury and disenfranchisement that constitutes, social reality of majority of Nigerians (Africans) the author tries to mock at some top government officials (leaders) who devote themselves in exploiting the masses (women) in the society (community) in most societies today, injustice is seen as the order of the day. The wealth of the state (community) is no longer shared equally and also use for the community development, while the rich become richer, the poor become poorer.
This is exemplified by the character of Kpakpo and Onko who are in the exploitation class as well as Maa Turu ,Baby T the heroine of the novel and her mother Maa Turu is been trapped by poverty in to making uncomfortable choice. Baby T engages in selling `her body in prostitution so as to make a living for herself and probably for the family, this represents a great irony because prostitution represent evil. And the act of selling it advocates that nothing positive is a waiting. Similarly, Maa Tsuru, after many years of loneliness, allows another man, Kpakpo into her life and they cohabit in their one room dingy apartment.
The grown up boys who could not withstand the noise that emanates from the lovemaking between Kpakpo and their mother humbly leaves the apartment and Maa Tsuru bluntly fails to look them. Maa Tsuru becomes pregnant and has a premature labour which forces her to stay away from home. Kpakpo who would have acted like a step father to the two young girls, abuses the opportunity as he orders Baby T to his apartment, undress her, abuse her tender breast finally fingers her.
Despite the pretence of being asleep, fofo sees all that happens. She relates the incidence to onko thinking that Kpakpo had slept with her sister. When fofo confront Baby T the next day, baby T reveals that KpaKpo did not sleep with her but fingered her. Maa Tsuru returns without birth still does nothing about the incidence. Onko capitalizes on the report made by fofo to him and rapes Baby T. Maa Tsuru could not understand why Onko, a person the children look up to as the one deflowering her daughter.
Maa Tsuru confronts Onko on the despicable act of raping her daughter. However, Onko offers her a huge amount of money and ask him to keep it a secret since if it becomes a case, the name of Kpakpo who started the fingering would be mentioned too. Maa Tsuru overwhelmed with shame takes the money which she needed the most and shamefully walks away. Onko assures that he would be giving her a lot of goodies if she behaves well. Three weeks after recovery from the bleeding from her private parts Onko starts to make further advance to Baby T again.
The advances infuriate Maa Tsuru and she decides to send Baby T away from Onko’s reach. Kpakpo who happens to be her step father, introduces her to one Maa Abidjan, a returned prostitute who no recruits younger girls to work in bars and as house helps. Through Mama Abidjan, they get to know Maami Broni who opts faint idea of where her daughter works threatens Mama Abidjan with a police but Mama Broni visits her the next day and reveals that Baby T now works with poison, a street lord. Poison threatens Maa Tsuru that if she makes trouble; they will come for her younger daughter fofo.
Maa Tsuru gets to know that the poison has been sending envelopes (money) to them of which Kpakpo has been intercepting. Maami Broni decides to be bringing the envelopes herself. Hoever, Maami Broni breaks the news that fofo he disappeared for three days and the corpse found at the kiosk in the market was her. Again, fofo explains to Dina and Kabira who sit in the living room about herself, her mother and how she starts live on the street. She reveals that her street life starts with begging and gradually graduates to stealing and pick pocketing.
These vices she explains come after she drops out from school in class two, the same with Baby T (the one whose body was found on the street). Another aspect is the aspect of Onko associating the crumbling of his business to the incest he commits. He seeks solution from a native doctor who demands the public hair of the lady she sleeps with.
Onko coincidentally, meet Kpakpo at AgoAyee spot and tys him so as to locate Baby T. Kpakpo reveals Baby T’s where abouts and Onko geos there to get one of the most vital parts of the ingredients needed to rejuvenate his business. However, Baby T flatly refuses to sleep with Onko. Poison beats Baby T so as to force her have sex with Onko but Baby T stands her ground. The total refusal infuriates poison, as he brutally beat Baby T to comma. Baby dies as a result of the beating. She was carried to a Kiosk of the market place. Onko later hangs himself, a reward for his atrocities.
Finally, Vickie and Kabira agree to go to the police station to seek some pieces of information about fofo’s family and Maa Tsuru her mother but all is in vain as the police fail to meet their demand. Vickie and Kabira make their way to Naa Yomo’s family’s house where Maa Tsuru lives.
Nna Yoma engages them in a chitting chatty about her famil background and the reasons everyone in the compound seems to be avoiding her since the visit of the ‘’evil man’’ to her. Maa Tsuru since then has locked herself in her room. Their attempt to get Maa Tsuru to talk proves abortive as she cries and laments over the conceived ‘’curse’ placed on her, and refuse to open her door. In their confusion, Vickie and Kabira returns back to Naa Yomo for an exploration on what might be this curse that was placed on Maa Tsuru.
Naa Yomo explains that Maa Tsuru was born thirty five years ago by a woman who was impregnated by her lover before her puberty rites and initiation into womanhood. The lover however, denied the pregnancy and even denied over seing Maa Tsuru’s mother. The denials culturally and traditionally was unacceptable and because of that, the young lady placed a mortal curse on the man and his generation (of Maa Tsuru is one) forever. The woman died immediately after giving birth to Maa Tsuru, still cursing both father and child.
CHARACTERIZATIONS/CHARACTERS IN FACELESS
Baby T: Baby T is the third child of Maa Tsuru. She is sexually abused by her mother’s live-in lover, Kpakpo. Confused and betrayed, she confides in a family friend and co-tenant, Onko, who takes advantage of her trust and rapes her. At the advice of Kpakpo Baby T is sent out to Maami Broni through Mama Abidjan to become a comfort woman. She is murdered by poison when she refuses to sleep with Onko who is plotting to get a strand of her pubic hair for the cleansing of his contaminated blood. Baby Ts body is dumped behind a blue Rasta Hairdressing kiosk Salon. The discovery of her dead body triggers Fofo to seek justice for her.
Maa Tsuru: Maa Tsurus mother is betrayed by the young man who impregnated her. She rained curses on him and all his descendants as life drains out of her in giving birth to the baby who will later be known as Maa Tsuru. Maa Tsuru grows up labeled as a cursed person. People distance themselves from her in her family house, where she also resides. After having two sons and two daughters with Kwei, he abandons them. Her two sons leave as soon as they are able to fend for themselves, thereby escaping the nightly moans coming from Maa Tsuru and her new live-in lover.
Kabria: Kabria is the backbone of her family. She multitasks as a mother, wife and social worker. Kabrias husband, Adade, an architect, contents himself with his work, joining co-workers to drinking spots to release tension and returning home for dinner. Their constant argument about Creamy, Kabrias stubborn hand-me-down VW Beetle, does not get in the way of a stable marriage because kabria handles the situation discreetly. Kabrias children; Obea, Essie and Ottu are all in school. Each childs character is a force to reckon with, but Kabria takes care of their needs almost single-handedly. Kabria plays a crucial role in the unravelling of the mystery behind the murder of Baby T. She takes an interest in Fofos case and manages to get her organization, MUTE, to delve into it. Kabria is Fofos foil character as her family life presents a sharp contrast to Fofos and her street companions.
Fofo: Fofo is the fourth child of Maa Tsuru. She leaves home when she can no longer put up with her mother’s excesses. She sets out to find justice for her sisters murder when she gets to know that Baby Ts mutilated body has been found at Agbogbloshie. In a twist of fate, she runs into Kabria who works with a non-governmental organisation named MUTE which functions as an interventionist and alternative library for every social, gender and child issues. MUTE takes an interest in Fofos case and determines to find out what led to Baby Ts death. With the help of Sylv Po, the reporter from Harvest FM, they work their way into a syndicate led by Poison, the street lord that trades in child prostitution, drugs and all manner of street crimes.
Poison: Poison was an innocent boy who ran away from home to escape the constant abuse of a drunken stepfather. He got himself caught up in a bad company. He ended up as a messenger in a brothel while working his way up by bullying, raping and murdering and is now known as Poison, the street lord―a clear case of a victim turned into a victimiser. He is the one that killed Baby T and ordered for her body to be dumped behind the Rasta Hairdressing Kiosk Salon at Agbogbloshie.
Kwei: Kwei is an unemployed mason who still lives with his mother when he should be on his own fending for himself. His relationship with Maa Tsuru is not accepted by his mother as she sees her as a cursed woman. Kwei does not listen to his mother; rather, he gets Maa Tsuru pregnant. He leaves for a greener pasture, leaving promises of a better life when he returns, and so is not around when his first child is born. However, he comes back with tales of woe and disappointment.
He gets Maa Tsuru pregnant the second time and abandons her. He comes back after the birth of his second boy empty-handed, but looking like a changed man. Somehow, he manages to warm himself back into the arms of Maa Tsuru. He impregnates her yet again, but this time he becomes fed up with Maa Tsurus fecundity. He gives her the beating of her life with the sole purpose of aborting the baby, but fails. The baby is named Baby T even in the absence of her father. Kwei comes back the third time, lures Maa Tsuru into his arms, gets her pregnant and disappears for good, leaving Maa Tsuru with four children to cater for. Kwei represents the theme of parental irresponsibility
Kpakpo: Kpakpo is another character that exemplifies the theme of parental irresponsibility. He is small in stature, but full of fraud and deceit. He makes a living by tricking people; he copllects rents from them without providing accommodation. Because of this, he is always trying to hide from his creditors. Kpakpo takes advantage of Maa Tsuru promising her love and warming his way into her bed, and bearing two sons with her. He becomes a leech on Maa Tsuru, sucking her and her children dry. He is the first to molest Baby T one night when Maa Tsuru is away as a result of pregnancy complication. He is the one that suggested sending Baby T away to Maami Broni to cover up the shameful thing he did to Baby T. Kpakpo later abandoned Maa Tsuru with their two sons.
Onko: Onko lives in the same compound with Maa Tsuru, Naa Yomo and other tenants. Everyone in the compound sees Onko as a kind man, especially the children who usually cluster around him. After Baby T is molested by the live-in lover of her mother, she confides in Onko, but he takes advantage of her and rapes her. Onko is confronted by Maa Tsuru, but knowing that she needs money more than any other thing, he offers her a sum of money she could not reject, pretending that he is sorry. However, Onko continues to eye Baby T. This new situation is too much for Maa Tsuru to take, so she decides to take the advice of Kpakpo to send Baby T away.
Sylv Po: He is a radio presenter that works with Harvest FM. He anchors a programme named Good Morning Ghana (GMG) which he uses to educate people on the social problems of the society. He works in collaboration with many agencies to fight against child abuse and other social ills. He is interested in the story of Baby T, and together with MUTE, he traces the murder of Baby T to Poison, the street lord.
The Styles in Amma Darko Faceless
Style/Language: The novel is divided in into three unequal parts book one being the biggest. The story is narrated with the eye of God point of view. This is why the pronouns such as: he, she, they, it, his, her, etc., are predominant. The story is quite conversational as characters can be seen in face to face interactions. The writing is brilliant with simple, easy to understand Ghanaian English, interspersed with the vernacular, giving the reader a feel of Ghanaian culture and what makes her tick. The narrative style is straightforward, drawing the audience in, building tension as the author takes us through dizzying moment of intrigue and suspense to reveal the hidden truth behind the murder of Baby T.
Monologue: This is a long speech made by a character in a story especially when he or she is alone. This device is amply used by Amma Darko to portray the frustrations of Kabria caused by Creamy, the 1975 VW Beetle handed down to her by her husband, Adade. Creamy is an old, rickety car that has seen all kinds of weathers and need to be changed. It frustrates and embarrasses Kabria that she is seen on several occasions talking to it. One time, the car stops in a traffic and Kabria begs it not to disappoint her.
Flashback: This is a device used to recall past events during current events to help us understand the present. We get to know about Maa Tsurus passed through a flashback provided by Naa Yomo. We equally get to know Poisons past through flashback. With this we understand what makes Maa Tsuru and Poison behave the way they do. We even sympathise with them, knowing that they are victims of circumstances.
Anticlimax: This is the arrangement of the events of a story so that they appear in descending order. The story of Faceless begins with the death of Baby T followed by the gradual unfolding of other events that cause her death. So the story starts from where it should end.
