The man who went up an uncertain hill

Rev. Sidney Nesbitt Pearson January 18, 1916 — January 24, 2003 By Harold Ofori

Deep in the intricate country of the mind I took a twisting path that led me stumbling To a wind-racked hill. Those thickets, briary, tough to break And swampy sometimes underfoot Were well behind me now Lost to sight and for the moment Lost to mind. The hill I had reached was high enough To look on distances that dropped away fold upon fold Melting far to the Westward into a dim horizon They beckoned me. And my feet, so heavy as I had begun to climb the hill Were now uplifted to lighter pace, What land is this, I asked, in taking breath, What lies behind that seventh fold? Take heart, I told myself, Go farther on.

Donald Adams The Seventh Fold

This photo depicts the meeting at Sofoline that started it all. The Asantehene took him to a closed military hospital and suggested that the wards might be converted into dormitories and classrooms and the store rooms could be converted into rooms for the staff. The site of the actual hospital - modern day Sofoline - was very limited so the King gifted the surrounding land to the school to enable it to have reasonable grounds for expansion. The only problem with that was that this additional land was all bush and would have to be cleared before it could be used by the school. In this photo, the Reverend was overwhelmed by the size of the vegetations he had to clear.

In the 1940s, when Ashanti King Sir Agyemang Prempeh II (reigned 1931-1970) was looking for a creative mind to set up a school for the Ashanti Kingdom of Ghana, he found it in the British humanist Sidney Pearson (1916-2003).

In his early 20s, having decided on a career in teaching and theology, Pearson was instructed by Presbyterian Scottish Missionary to go to a country he had never heard of and manage a school - which was yet to be built. He attended a meeting in Scotland in 1938 when he was an English teacher in Northern England. At this meeting, he was urged by a Minister to "consider West Africa."

The late Rev. Pearson, whose last church before his retirement was St. John's Methodist Church in Arbroath, went to the erstwhile Gold Coast in 1938 after having obtained a degree in English from Durham University. He went to answer his calling at a time when there were only 9 schools of secondary education in the entire country, with 20,000 pupils competing for admission into them. The one thousand brightest children in the nation were selected by the nine schools while the remainder were sent home to pursue other options. King Prempeh II, whose immediate predecessor Prempeh I had spent 30 years in an exile politically widwifed by Britain, drew a gloomy picture of the state of education in the country and decided that something had to be done.

Enter Reverend Pearson.

What followed next was an extraordinary friendship and partnership between the all-powerful King Prempeh II and the 22-year old English man.

When His Majesty took him to a barren piece of land on a hill in Kumasi (the Ashanti capital) to show him the site for the school, Pearson shuddered at the virgin forest that stood waiting to be cleared up. “Here it is,” the King said. Pearson replied, "but it's a field with a little wooden building." The King smiled and answered, "Yes, you're here to build the school. Don’t you know Reverend that you’re here to build the School?" "All I could do was just stand there with my hands on my hips thinking what have I got myself into," Pearson recently recounted before his death.

PEARSON ARCHIVE

Headmaster at Funeral

Interview

Photos

A legend passes

Funeral arrangements

Service for Rev. Pearson

Press Release

What they said

His apprehension about this uncertain hill notwithstanding, Rev. Pearson decided to “take heart” and “go farther on!.” He recruited architectural geniuses from Britain to design a campus on a land so vast that it is believed to occupy the same acreage as the Biblical city of Jericho! And it is not even the bucolic nature of the campus, which ranks second only to God’s-created Eden that stuns tourists visiting Ghanaian President J.A. Kufuor’s alma mater (Prempeh College), but it is rather the concave-shaped buildings and the invigorating architectural masterpiece that provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and magnanimity and myriad-mindedness of man.

A statue of Rev. Sidney N. Pearson on campus. The inscription reads: "Rev. Sidney N. Pearson, MA, Cantab. First Headmaster (1949-52). Donated by the Pioneer Students (1949-52). Unveiled by Rev. Sidney N. Pearson on 4th Dec. 1999."

There in Kumasi, he inhaled the imaginative and inspiring mysticism of popular African belief and stories which is the most distinctive feature of the Ashanti people, and amidst a primal nature of mountain and forests he became captivated by a passionate endeavour to ensnare its very soul.

The imperative “go farther on!” was to him no empty axiom, for when he came nearest to invective, this phrase seized hold of his imagination and fed his innate and sturdy spirit. He was widely criticized for matriculating many pupils in the school. The royal boys school which he opened with 50 boys and 4 teachers in February 1949 had grown to 500 by the third year. When the myopic natives carped him for that, he decided to go farther on!

The education world he entered, when he settled in Ashanti in 1938 as a staff of Wesley College, did not offer him much rewards financially, but it did at least offer him fellowship among pioneers, which to a far-seeing youth seems particularly dear. It was filled with weariness and optimism toward the spirit of the times which had prevailed just before, namely that of the restoration of the Ashanti Confederacy by Britain following the return of King Prempeh I (reigned 1888-1931; exiled in the Seychelles Islands from 1896-1924) and the struggle for an independent Gold Coast nation. Throughout his life he spoke of his discussions with the future President Kwame Nkrumah and his likely presidential advisor Kojo Botsio with such admiration.

The young futurist got so close in his intimacy with the Ashanti culture that not only could he determine the time of the day by such natural signs as the tempo of the astral, he could walk into the Manhyia Palace (the Ashanti Royal Palace) and break bread with his comrade the King. And from such cosy communion with the King and with the thud of morning and nighttime, his memoir received many of its intensely charming facets! His Majesty could tiptoe out of the palace to visit his friend on campus at any odd time in the night!

Rev. & Mrs. Pearson on campus. The school operated on the ethos of ‘the family’ to which everyone belonged including the wives of staff members, labourers and everyone else associated with the school.

At this time in Kumasi - "the most beautiful city in the whole of West Africa - a Garden City built by the Ashantis themselves" (colonial governor T.S.W. Thomas, in his "Papers Relating to the Restoration of the Asante Confederacy") - his wife's popularity was only surpassed by the King's. The affectionately named “Awuraa” (“Gentle Lady”), another missionary whom he had met for the first time in Accra in 1939 and married in 1941, was so pleasant, it is believed that even the unborn exalted her! The Pearsons, more than all, were the delight and thrill of the people of Ashanti at that time. Being fascinated, they fascinated. And how dare anyone, if he could, fail to strum with the stage effects and ceremonies, by which they lived? Along with His Majesty's amity, they were easily great. There was a transcendent magnetism to them whatever virtue was in the Ashantis. How they flung wide the doors of existence! What questions they asked of them! What an understanding they had with the populace. How few words were needed! Their first born, Keith, is also unique in that he was the first white baby born in Ashanti (in 1944).

In fact, so much was Rev. Pearson ingrained in everything Ashanti that when His Majesty decided to name the school Ashanti Secondary School, the young Reverend furnished a good-natured raison d'être for the more inspiring Prempeh College, because having kids walking around with "A-S-S nametags" was portentious, if we could say it above the breath here.

Ghanaian President John Kufuor visited his alma mater to pay tribute to Rev. Sidney N. Pearson when the octagenarian returned to Ghana. Here Kufuor shakes hands with the students at a time when he was running for the nation's highest seat.

Fixing his salary at 350 pounds per anum, he paid his staff about twice that amount and recruited the best University graduates and paid them an even higher sum. And year-by-year, The Kings College of Ghana continued to flourish.

But sadly, the good Reverend could not stay to enjoy the fruits of his labour. On the Christmas eve of 1952, after serving as Headmaster for only 3 years, his heart collapsed. Upon receiving a very bleak diagnosis for a seemingly untreatable heart condition which had been a thorny problem for him throughout all that autumn, he was sent home to die in Britain. But again, the imperative “go farther on!” which had served him so well in Africa, became even more de rigueur as the retired Rev. Sidney Pearson continued to live. He showed his doughty spirit by living into the new millennium and seeing Prempeh College turn 50.

Not only did he outlive his friend the King, he outlived his successor to the throne - King Opoku Ware II (reigned 1970-1999). When Rev. Pearson first went up that uncertain hill with King Prempeh II, it was the then heir-apparent Opoku Ware II (then Mathew Opoku), who levelled that shrubbery on the nerve-racking site of the future school. Then a surveyor by profession, he prepared the land for the architects.

And here was a man who was not expected to live that long, outlasting everyone!

The Late Rev. S.N. Pearson (left) and son, Keith, at the Prempeh College Golden Jubilee ceremony in December 1999. This was his first visit since his Silver Jubilee visit of 1974.

An omnipressent humanity coordinated his faculties in all aspects of his life. Whoever walked from Osei Tutu House to Ramseyer, without finding that the founding Headmaster had there revealed under masks which are no masks to the intelligent, the importance of friendship and of love, and of creativity and of cooperative-learning; the perplexity of conjectures and opinions in the most brilliant of boys? What sage had Rev. Pearson not outseen by his development of that marvellously inscrutable masterpiece?

Though the buildings have a splendour which tempts the eye to pause on them for their invigorating appearance, yet the plan is so loaded with meaning, and so linked with its foregoers and followers, that not only is the logician readily satisfied, but each sightseer is also anxious of the perception of previous visitors. Did the Englishman reveal to a notary or any historian the genesis of that delicate creation?

At the Prempeh College Golden Jubilee ceremony in 1999, the current Ashanti King and Patron of the College, H.M. Nana Osei Tutu II (reigned 1999 - present), himself a former student of the school, honoured Rev. Sidney Pearson at the Palace for his contribution to the advancement of education in the former British colony. Besides a royal stool, which the current King gave him as a token of his appreciation, a figurine of him is well placed on the campus. Furthermore, a yearly memorial lecture (Pearson-Osae Appreciation lecture) is held at the British Council in Ghana’s capital in his honour; this year's Speaker was Ghana's Finance Minister, Mr. Osafo Marfo. One of the residence halls on campus – the much-coveted Pearson House – perpetuates his name.

At the Manhyia Palace, the new Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and his elders hosted the Reverend and Keith. The King gave him a small wooden stool as a gift and said, "I know I don't have to explain the significance of the stool to you, Reverend."

Though he suffered another heart attack a few weeks ago and had been very frail, he celebrated his 87th birthday on 18th of January, 2003. He suddenly took on the morning of Friday, January 24 and was taken into Ninewells Hospital in Dundee and as the day wore on his condition deteriorated. He died peacefully at 17.45 hours GMT, January 24, 2002, survived by his daughter Wendy and son Keith.

A documentary about his life is in the works for which he completed his part of the filming and interview before his death. His life was long and extraordinarily full: his career diversified and eminently rewarding. Among his deepest satisfactions was following the progress of the Prempeh College Old Boys at the College's website - www.prempeh.org.

Not only do most of the royals attend this famous school, above all, the school attracts international clientele: Asians, Lebanese, Americans, British, Iranians, and Brazilians. The King's College, as it is famously called, can also be called "the Doctor's School," since it has produced more physicians in its 53 year history than any other school in Ghana. Furthermore, nearly all Ghanaian university Vice-Chancellors are Prempeh College old boys; the only University without a Prempeh boy as its head has one as its Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In fact, to list the achievements of Prempeh alumni will be tantamount to cataloging everyone who did something marvellous in Ghana. Also because of the motto Rev. Pearson gave the school - Suban ne Nimdee (Knowledge & Integrity) - Prempeh boys are the best behaved boys in the whole nation. And that also explains why no murderous dictators or coup makers or nation wreckers have come out of that famous school, although Prempeh has produced her share of quislings here and there. Prempeh men are some of the most tactful anywhere!

Prempeh people can be forgiven if they haughtily claim that Ghana goes only as far as Rev. Pearson's school would take it. For this reason, Prempeh boys are known as "Amanfoo" ("Countrymen!"), because they make up the nation.

These high points have proven the man who went up the uncertain hill to be right: the paradise which could be reached by humanity with such kindness and schooling, Ghanaians have now the advantage of enjoying. It is not too much then to call such a life's work great.