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| Flag of the Aceh Sultanate |
For the next few months, Kwabena assisted Thepen in training Acehnese soldiers to use modern weapons acquired from Singapore and particularly Penang, while learning Acehnese customs and language.
As months passed, news began to thicken of another Dutch invasion. In October, Aceh prepared itself for another round of do-or-die fighting. One day, Kw noticed that Thepen was missing from the training session and had to take over the role himself.
Kwabena sought them out but couldn’t find them in their quarter which appeared disorderly. After hearing whispers that Thepen and Swendsen were under detention, he found them in a prison cell.
K: What happened?
T: We are being banished, as soon as they can find a boat for us.
K: But why?
S: Because we have violated the law of God.
K: How?
Both of them fell silent and said nothing more. Kwabena noticed how Thepen held Swendsen’s hand tightly.
He reached inside his pocket and produced two necklaces with wooden Osram ne nsoromma pendants similar to the one that saved his life, and showed them to the two.
K: Here. I have been meaning to give you these to pay for the helps you have given me these several months. I made them myself and hope that they would protect you as well.
Surprised, Thepen and Swendsen looked at each other and then at Kwabena.
S: How did you know?
K: I have caught glimpses of how you two looked at each other, and I knew it was more than comradery or friendship.
T: And you’re not disgusted by it?
K shook his head: Why would I? We also have people like you where I come from, including a childhood friend of mine. They are laughed and sneered at, but I am not one who would deny anyone the ways they live their lives.
The two received the necklaces through the bars and put them around each other’s neck.
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| Osram ne nsoromma (Moon and star) adinkra symbol |
K: Is this why you are outcast by the European community too?
T: Yes. As soon as they found out, no one would not give us works or any kind of support. But we always stay together.
K: I am jealous. That’s something I hoped for me and my wife too.
S: You must miss her a lot. How long has it been?
K: It’s been six years since I was sent off by the Ashanti king to the Dutch as their army recruit. It was a form of banishment.
T: But most Gold Coast soldiers in Java are peoples from other tribes enslaved by the Ashanti. I thought you’re Ashanti yourself.
K: I am. But even within the Ashanti Kingdom, there are factions. And I was young and stupid.
I am a nephew of General Asamoa Kwanta. Upon the death of King Osai Kwaku Dua in 1867, according to the tradition, the princes of the blood were allowed by custom to take the life of any subject. Prince Buakji Asu killed my brother, Yaw, who he thought was having an affair with his wife.
As my uncle gathered men preparing for revenge and the whole Kumasi was approaching a civil war, I made a hasty decision and tried to kill Asu himself. I managed to kill a few of Asu’s men but was caught and kept as prisoner. To make peace, the new asantehene Kofi Karikari intervened and send Asu to pay for his crime at my uncle’s hand, and I was sent off to the Dutch as ‘recruit’ among the slaves. That’s the last time I saw her.
T: When will you get to see her again?
K: After paying off the debt of my ‘recruitment’ I will be free to return. The contract is for fifteen years, but I know she will be there waiting for me.
S: I don’t know if you know this. While in Penang, I heard from the British that they are preparing for war with Ashanti. This time they are going to send the bloody-handed Wolseley to Cape Coast.
K: They can’t fight jungle wars away from the firing range of their gunboats. I am sure they will be humiliated again as they were in ‘63. If it were not for the death of the previous king, Cape Coast would have been razed to the ground already.
T: What was the cause of that war?
K: Gold. A traitor called Jamin escaped to Cape Coast with gold that belonged to our king, but the British refused to turn him over. Jamin must have promised them access to the source of the gold.
T: Of course, all European powers want the gold of the famed Gold Coast. That’s why the Dutch king invited Ashanti King to send his sons to study mining in Holland so that he would return to help with the Dutch gold-mining venture.
K: Prince Kwasi Boachi is a traitor. His father the king sent him to study in Holland, but he chose to come to Java instead of returning to Ashanti.
T: Well, the Dutch must find him useful to get their hands on Acehnese gold too. That’s why they keep here, although they would never give him a high position over white engineers.
S: Not just the Dutch, the French also. Our “friend” Roura also has his eyes on it to compensate for his loss in the pepper trade.
At that point, the chief entered and told Kwabena to leave. Soon Thepe and Swendsen were taken out of the cell and led to their boat ….
That was the last Kwabena saw of the two unlucky lovers.
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| Ashanti prince Kwasi Boachi |
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Things happened much more quickly in the following weeks. Having become a laughingstock in British Penang and, to a lesser extent, in Europe for their defeat, the Dutch were determined to heap revenge on Aceh. The news spread across the whole archipelago, causing fear in Batavia of widespread uprising. To reclaim colonial authority, they returned to Aceh with twice many troops.
Lucky for them, the second invasion was more successful than the first. The colonizer managed to storm the Sultan’s kranom and occupy the capital. As the Achenese fighters retreated to their jungle strongholds, Kwabena pleaded with the chief to be taken along with them but was refused. Perhaps they were afraid that he would slow them down, or they were still not sure about his loyalty.
So Kwabena reconciled with the fact that he must go back to the Dutch side but how would he explain his survival from the first invasion to the advancing Dutch force? After racking his brain in a pinch, he came to a workable solution. He would have to be found a prisoner in jail, and tell them that he was spared because he lied to the Acehnese that he was an Ottoman subject...
The Dutch soldiers who found Kwabena alone in prison were surprised and amused at the story of his survival. While the Dutch began to take control and establish themselves in Aceh’s capital, Kwabena was sent back to Batavia for investigation. Fortunately, his story was believed. A low rank soldier like him could not have betrayed anything to the Acehnese anyway, so they concluded and reinstated him in service.
Armed with a “veteran” status, his fluency in Dutch and intelligence, Kwabena quickly earned the trust of high-rank Dutch officers and soon found himself as a personal guard at the office of the Governor of Batavia. It was during this time that he stealthily taught himself to read with archived materials in the office.
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| Third Anglo-Ashanti War 1873-4 |
For a few years he had heard nothing of the Gold Coast. Dutch recruitment in the Gold Coast ceased after they left the territory to Britain. Therefore, there were nobody to carry news from faraway Africa. Kwabena was, however, still confident that Ashanti, abandoned by their former ally the Dutch at the mercy of their long-time enemy Britain would prevail against Wolseley’s troops.
Just when he finally managed to convince himself out of worries. News arrived from his brother Yaw who managed to pay a Dutch sailor on a British ship to bring Kwabena heart-breaking news from home.
The sailor told Kwabena that Wolseley’s troop managed to reach Kumasi and burned down the Ashanti capital, after failing to capture King Karikari. Most of the populations safely escaped to surrounding towns. However, conditions were difficult, and his delicate wife Kisi, who Kwabena left in Yaw’s protection, succumbed to jungle diseases two years earlier ....
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| 1874 Burning of Kumasi by Wolseley's troop |
At first, Kwabena refused to believe what he heard, but the sailor gave him Kisi’s pendant which is identical to his. For weeks, Kwabena wept for his wife. Now his life has nothing to hope for and no one to return to. For all of this, Kwabena blamed it squarely on the Dutch.
No longer able to serve the Dutch, he leveraged his basic knowledge of Acehnese language to take employment with the French colons-explorateurs who, after the defeat of the Franco-Prussian War, were returning to Aceh on “scientific” expedition which was only a thinly-veiled exploration of exploitable Acehnese gold. The existence of gold in Aceh was already known in Europe. Some believed it to be potentially as rich as the Californian and Australian goldmines.
One day, Kwabena finally met Edouard Roura, the French sea captain well known to the Acehnese and a friend of their regent Habib Abdul Rahman. Roura had heard of Kwabena’s story and took interest.
It’s from Roura that Kwabena heard about the true intentions of these “exploration” as expounded by Brau de St.-Pol Lias, one of Société de Géographie Commerciale’s loudest proponents, in writing thus:
“… the true way to study a country seriously is to support exploration upon colonial establishments which allow it all the length of time, all the continuity which it must have, all the security which it must enjoy; just as the way to harvest all the fruits of exploration is to have the exploration radiate from these establishments, to place, behind the explorers, colonists of which they are the avant-garde, who can profit from their discoveries, take root where they have penetrated, and push them yet further afield.”
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| Tuanku Mohammad Daud Syah II (c. 1903) the last Sultan of Aceh from 1875-1903 |
For them, the Society is meant as a way for France to return to its “traditional place of honor” among nations by forging a new vigor in the fires of overseas adventure. Colonization would be their effective spring where the powers of the French people would be refreshed. It was not only the need to dispose of excess manufacturers which demanded that France acquire colonies, but the “problems of excess talent, education and leadership.”
For Kwabena, these French “pioneers” were no less disgusting than the British that they hated (and the only reason they hated the British was because they refused to participate in their idea of “patriotism of race”.) Therefore, Kwabena took no small amount of joy in delivering two of them, Wallon and Guillaume, to the hand of an Acehnese lord on their fake expedition to “buy pepper”.
During another expedition by the French, Kwabena met with another Acehnese lord who recognized immediately as the chief who had spared his life six years earlier and was now serving under Teuku Imam Muda of Teunom.
Faintly, Kwabena started to see a way to avenge Kisi’s death. What is a better way to spend what has been saved of his life than to fight for Aceh whose fate exactly mirrored that of Ashanti -- abandoned to fight the Dutch by their former ally Britain? How many lived would be spared from the pangs that he felt?
After the French expeditions failed, Kwabena went to the army headquarter in Banda Aceh had become an established center of Dutch administration in Aceh, and was quickly reinstated as a corporal of an African company.
In November 1883, when Kwabena heard the news of the S.S. Nisero crew being taken hostage by Teuku Imam, he knew his time has come ….
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| Dutch map of the Kraton, 1874 |
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Soon after fulfilling their ultimatum by bombarding Teunom port and burn all the huts and plantations within a day’s walk, the Dutch troop returned to their ship without the hostages who had been taken further inland. They also found that an African corporal was missing ….
Holding upright his rifle whose tip was tied with an Acehnese flag he had secretly made and carried, Kwabena ventured alone deep into the unknown jungle where untrained eyes would see only foliage and mud. But Kwabena had learned those many years ago how to read imperceptible paths taken by Acehnese soldiers.
Six hours later, he was found, tied up and taken at gunpoint by some Acehnese fighters to their hideout. Having been told of a black devil soldier, the chief laughed when he saw Kwabena.
Chief: This time you came with the correct symbol.
Kwabena smiles: Yes, chief. I know that my pendant alone would not protect me this time.
Chief: Holding our flag won’t save you either, Dutch soldier.
K: You are wrong, Chief. The flag is just a friendly gesture. But I have something else that will show you which side I am on.
Chief: What do you have? Where is it?
Kwabena taps his forehead: In here. Over the past three years, I have been in and out of almost every civil and military building in Banda Ache. Let me show you…
With a stick, Kwabena started to draw some shapes and lines on the ground. After he finished, he sticks the flag right in the middle.
K: Chief, this is how you win this war…. Maps…
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