Author's Note:
This is a work of fiction. While inspired by real histories and philosophies, all characters and events are imagined.
CHAPTER 3 – The Janitor
There are men in this life who wear silence like a second skin. Not because they have nothing to say, but because the world has already forgotten how to listen. Men whose voices became dangerous before they even learned how to raise them. And when the country does not know what to do with a man's truth, it gives him a broom.
Uncle Sarpong was sweeping again.
But it was not the kind of sweeping meant for dust. It was ritual. It was how he marked his place in time. Stroke by stroke. Push, pause, push again. As if he was brushing away the years, or pushing back memories that kept trying to crawl out from beneath the tiles.
K.B watched him from the corner of the corridor. There was something sacred about the way the old man moved—slow, deliberate, eyes half-closed like he was talking to the ground.
"Morning," K.B said, even though it was almost afternoon.
Sarpong didn't answer right away. He finished one final sweep, then leaned on the stick like a tired prophet leaning on his staff.
"I see they didn't kill your tongue," he said, not smiling.
"Not yet."
"Then come."
They walked without speaking. Past the back water tanks, past the rusted iron beds dumped behind the dormitory, past a blackboard leaning against the wall with a faded phrase still chalked across it: Discipline is the bridge between goals and achievement.
The janitor's room was more of a shrine than a storehouse. Books stacked in uneven towers. Old newspapers folded like clothes. Posters of Patrice Lumumba, Nyerere, Nkrumah, Sankara, all curling at the edges like they were tired of waiting for relevance. A transistor radio muttering lowlife jazz in the corner. The room smelled like groundnuts, old dreams, and kerosene.
"You've woken something," Sarpong said.
K.B didn't sit yet. He stood near the doorway, unsure if he had the right to step deeper into the room.
"I just asked a question."
"No. You challenged a structure."
The old man sat on a wooden stool, hands shaking slightly as he poured warm tea from a flask into two small tin cups.
"You think these borders were drawn by mistake? You think they weren't calculated? Do you know what it means for a people to be divided before they even understand they're one?"
K.B took the cup. His fingers trembled a little. He hoped the old man didn't see.
"Do you believe it's possible?" K.B asked. "One Africa?"
Sarpong chuckled, a dry sound that cracked somewhere near the ribs.
"Belief is cheap," he said. "It's survival that costs."
The silence stretched. The tea was too hot to sip. K.B stared at a photo taped to the wall. Sarpong was younger then—shirtless, fists raised beside a group of students with banners written in red ink: Pan-African Youth League – 1979. The fire in their eyes could light a city.
"What happened to them?" K.B asked.
The old man looked away. Sighed.
"They happened to themselves. And the rest—State Security happened to them."
K.B swallowed hard.
Sarpong stood, walked to a box under the bench, opened it, pulled out a folder. The edges were burnt. Inside were old pamphlets, hand-drawn maps, notes written in tiny script.
"We used to meet in places like this," he said. "Back rooms. Empty churches. Burial society halls. We believed unity was near. Then the arrests began. Then the bribes. Then some of us... gave up."
He placed the folder in K.B's hands.
"But one boy," he said, "he never gave up. Even when they broke his legs. Even when they made his wife lose her job. He wrote a constitution. A whole one. For the United States of Africa. Handwritten. 53 articles. He died before it was printed."
K.B opened the folder. Inside was a copy of that constitution—tattered, faded, bloodstained.
"My brother had something like this," K.B whispered.
"Then maybe he was one of us."
The wind outside shifted. Someone passed near the window. A teacher. Voices. Then silence again. The school was always watching, even when its eyes were closed.
"Do you know what happens to boys like you?" Sarpong said suddenly.
K.B looked up.
"They get famous for a moment. Then they get buried forever."
The old man walked to a shelf and pulled out a brown envelope.
"Unless... they learn how to disappear while still being seen."
He handed the envelope to K.B. Inside was a list. Codenames. Contacts. Numbers. Across Ghana. Nigeria. Kenya. Senegal. Cameroon.
"The Dandelion Network," Sarpong said. "Scattered. Quiet. Waiting."
K.B traced the names with his finger. Some names had Xs next to them. Some had stars. Some just... faded out.
He wanted to ask questions. So many. But the words stayed stuck.
"Why me?" he said at last. "Why now?"
The old man smiled, faintly.
"Because the soil is ready again."
Back in the corridor, K.B walked with the folder under his shirt, his hands trembling. Not from fear. Not entirely. But from knowing too much, too fast.
He passed students who no longer looked at him. He passed teachers who suddenly had other things to do when he walked by. He passed the blackboard again—Discipline is the bridge between goals and achievement—but someone had scribbled a new line beneath it in pencil:
But whose goals?
He felt it then. Not just being watched.
Being marked.
He walked home slowly that day, taking the longer path past the market, the mosque, the kente weavers. He stopped once to buy roasted plantain from a girl with tired eyes.
"You're that boy, eh?" she asked quietly. "The one from the news?"
"What news?"
She shrugged. "You asked the wrong question. They said you want to bring war."
He said nothing. Just took the plantain, handed her a coin.
Before he left, she said:
"Ask again. Loudly. For all of us who can't."
At home, the lights were off. The air was too still. His mother sat outside, peeling cassava with a knife that had seen too many meals.
She didn't look up.
"They called your father today."
He nodded.
"They said you're being watched."
He didn't speak.
She stopped peeling. Looked at him. Her eyes were soft, but tired. Like someone who had survived too many storms but forgot how to sing about sunshine.
"Don't die," she said. "If you must fight, don't do it with your body first. Do it with your mind."
He wanted to ask her why she sounded like she knew exactly what would come. But he didn't.
Because somewhere inside him, he already knew.
That night, in the quiet of his room, with the fan creaking like a voice afraid to wake the dark, he opened the folder again. He read the names. He memorized the contacts. He studied the constitution. He underlined a sentence:
A united Africa is not a dream. It is a return.
Then he took out a pen. On the last page, he added his own article. Just one line.
Article 54 – Youth shall not ask for permission to change the world.
The pen ran dry after that.
Outside, the wind shifted again.
But this time, it smelled like rain.