KUKURANTUMI - Road to Accra

King Ampaw, Director

Talk about Ghana in the eighties, right after the revolution, and you got it and more in this movie! Made in the 80s, Kukurantumi, Road to Accra tells a true-to-life story of the mass migration of people from the villages all over Ghana to Accra. Accra was the bustling glamorous modern city which fed into the deception of its being the land of milk and honey – a major thrusting issue this movie sought to highlight.

A road story, this movie tells the story of a lorry driver, Addy, who carries passengers to and from his village, Kukurantumi, and the supposedly glamorous city of Accra. His lorry belongs to an Alhaji who seems to be the meanest and miserly boss one can ever have. Addy soon loses his job because of the meanness of this boss, and refuses to go back to farming in Kukurantumi, because his job as a driver in Accra had earned him some status in his village. To go back would be a shameful step down the ladder. He manages to buy, on credit, a broken down lorry from a rich man called Mensah, which he fixes up, painting the appropriate words “No Time to Die” in the back.

The story of Addy, the lorry driver, is intertwined with two other tales, making the plot quite complex and interesting to follow: The love story between Bob (played by David Dontoh, this being the very first movie he ever acted in) and Abena (Daughter of Addy), and the desperation of Abena to move to the glamorous city of Accra and be a part of the story of the wealthy ‘Accranians’.

Commencing with the love story, Abena and Bob seemed to be very much in love, however, as with every love story, there are serious conflicts they have to overcome to achieve happiness in themselves. Abena’s father, very grateful to Mensah, promises his daughter to the rich, much older man. They come all the way from the city only to have Abena storm out in anger and tears at this blatant disregard of her feelings. Pouting, she persuades Bob to run away with her to Accra, which drives the story to yet another interesting turn.

In Accra, they go to live with a friend of Abena’s who is a prostitute and who has in the past, tried persuading Abena to try making money herself by sleeping with men willing to pay. With such a person as a patron, who seemed to be living the very good life, wining and dining in expensive nightclubs, wearing the fashionable styles of the time, poor, vulnerable, star struck Abena could not help but be seduced. Her enticement became a driving need, and that driving need successfully pushed away any innocence she had, including her “love” for Bob. Instead what replaced this was a deep yearning for wealth so much that she would sell her body for it. She eventually became the mistress of Mensah, a man she who she initially refused in her purity, for clothes, hair, make-up, and the general symbols of  ‘living the life’ in Accra.

King Ampaw, director of this phenomenal movie, brings the reality of the ugly Accra to life in this movie through the character of Addy, who struggles to make ends meet dividing his small salary with his two greedy creditors, Bob who joins China Wall queues of unemployed seeking jobs in Accra, women who have to resort to using their bodies to feed themselves, a great aerial view of a developing, crowded city struggling to get on its feet.

The story does not resolve its issues properly, however, it could be because, till date, resolutions have still not been reached and the problem of mass poverty in Accra not been dissolved.

Though a movie released in the eighties, its message still speaks of our times, unearths and tells the stories of kayayee, beggars on the street, street hawkers, hustlers in various forms and from all over Ghana who have to perform various forms of magic everyday to stay alive in Accra.

 Kukurantumi, Road to Accra is a masterpiece in quality storytelling, portraying the complexity of human lives, internally and externally in its weaving of solid plots, conveying factual messages and in that inspiring a redressing, introspection and reassessment of life.