One by one the other small countries in Africa followed suit and gained their freedom from the French, the Portuguese, as well as the British, but the Gold Coast was the first. Nkrumah was a well-educated man. He had degrees in economics, sociology and theology, but he was also a visionary, a dreamer, and he saw in his mind the whole of black Africa united - one big happy family. He was not, however, a practical man; he did not have his feet op the ground. The obstacles in the way of his dreams becoming reality proved insurmountable and by the time he was toppled from power, the country was in a worse mess financially and economically than it had ever been before.

This is all history now. I was in the Gold Coast when independence was declared and I listened to a radio broadcast Nkrumah made to his people the following Christmas Eve, which in view of what was to happen is worth repeating:

"My first objective", he said, "is to abolish from Ghana poverty, ignorance and disease. We shall measure our progress by the improvement in the health of our people; by the number of children in school and by the quality of their education; by the availability or water and electricity in our towns and villages; and by the happiness which our people take in being able to manage their own affairs. The welfare of our people is our chief pride, and it is by this that my Government will ask to be judged."

Well - fine words! A magnificent statue to Nkrumah was erected outside Parliament House in Accra, showing him standing with right hand upraised to acknowledge the plaudits of the admiring populace, and on the front of the plinth was engraved - "Kwame Nkrumah, founder of the Nation". On the side was a high-flown exhortation to passers-by "Seek ye first the political kingdom and all other things shall be added unto it" - and where they got that from I do not know.

Many special stamps were issued, commemorating the first anniversary of independence, the second anniversary of independence, stamps showing Ghanaian flowers, Ghanaian birds, pictures of the Volta river, obscure and puzzling dates such as "Africa Freedom Day" (15th April, 1959), '"Founders Day" (21st September, 1960), inauguration of Ghana Airways (July 1958), inauguration of the Black Star Shipping Line (1957), Conference of Independent African States (1958), and so on, and they nearly all had on them the happy, smiling face of Kwame Nkrumah. One of the issues even showed a picture of Abraham Lincoln, with the words "Abraham Lincoln - l50th Birthday Anniversary", and a soulful-looking Nkrumah posed in front of it, gazing up to Heaven.

But - the bubble burst and Ghana was in for many years of chaos, until a certain amount of stability was regained. Needless to say, Nkrumah's statue no longer adorns the street in front of Parliament. He was disgraced and exiled, but there is no doubt at all that the landslide which began in 1949 and resulted in the de-colonization of Africa was started by Kwame Nkrumah.

However, this was all to come, the good and the bad. During the strike in 1950, all the mine vehicles at Marlu were allocated a European driver on a 24 hour shift basis, to get people around, and J.R. also drove the camp bus, which had its windows covered in wire mesh to guard against the possibility of rocks being hurled at it. But I don't recall our lives being very much upset, being so far up country and with plenty of provisions in the U.A.C; We tried to explain to Kwasi and Kofi the implications of the strike, but to them Kwame Nkrumah was beginning to be "Our leader", and already he could do no wrong. We did think that when he was put in prison we should hear no more of him, but that was our mistake.

Kwasi at this time began himself to have delusions of grandeur, and trouble was brewing between him and Kofi. Most of the cook-boys employed in the European bungalows had several small boys to assist them in their work around the house, to do things like the cleaning, washing, ironing, etc., and usually the work was divided up pretty evenly. But our Kwasi considered himself a cook and nothing else, and these other tasks were rather beneath his dignity. He did most of the shopping, under Madame's instructions, brought it home, cooked and served it, cleared it away, then had his daily bath under the cold water tap behind the kitchen and was away off home, leaving the unfortunate Kofi to do everything else. I began to see Kofi walking round the house with the broom and mop, or with piles of ironing, his lower lip sticking out further and further as his grievances piled up. Things finally came to a head. He came to me one day and said he was sorry, Madame, but he wanted to go and work for someone else. So we had to let him go. He became small boy to Fred and Peggy Stokes, who had a more accommodating cook, and was apparently very happy working for them.

I suppose one answer would have been for us to replace Kwasi, but J.R. was loathe to do this. Kwasi had been with him since he first arrived on the Coast, he was a good cook, clean and honest - he just didn't get along with small boys. If the truth was known I believe he had been quite happy working for my husband while he was still a bachelor, with no Madame to oversee his work, but of course now that I was on the scene there was more work for him to do and it was not so easy for him to get his "perks". All the cooks expected to have a few perks, such as sugar, salt, soap and other dry provisions to take down to their houses in Bogoso village, and so long as they didn't take too much, most Europeans turned a blind eye to this. It was something I had to get used to, and J.R. didn't care how much soap Kwasi took so long as he kept himself clean.

We struggled along with Kwasi, and small boys came and went. I went down to Paddy's bungalow one morning for coffee and we commiserated with each other on the problems or servants. Paddy was from Cape Town, with an English mother and a South African father of Boer extraction. She was a charming girl, well brought up with perfect manners, but without doubt the most idle person I have ever met. As she herself said "My mother never had to do anything in the house, and I don't see why I should". And she never did. .

If one called on Paddy at any time of the day, one could be reasonably sure of finding her stretched out on a chair, smoking, perhaps reading a magazine, but never doing anything constructive like knitting or sewing. She couldn't knit or sew. This was before it was discovered that smoking could kill you, and most people smoked like chimneys. J.R. and I were amongst the few non-smokers on the mine. Paddy was always glad to see people, and indeed, with no home-making skills she must have found time hanging very heavily on her hands.

"Have a ciggy!" she would say, holding out the cigarette box, before settling down for a nice, lazy afternoon of chatting. She was quite aware of her own limitations, but absolutely incapable of changing herself. Perhaps she didn't want to.

When I arrived down there on this particular day, I actually found her on her feet. She was standing at the open door of her bedroom, gazing in.

"My bedroom looks like a cave" she said when she saw me. "What do you think?"

I stood beside her and looked in, and I couldn't help laughing because she was right. The bedroom walls were distempered a dark, shiny green, the curtains were green with spots on and the bedspread an uninspiring khaki. One had the impression of a gloomy cavern under a mountain, perhaps inhabited by dwarves or goblins.

"Maybe this is where the little men live", I suggested. "But, seriously, if you don't like it, get Dickie to have it painted a different colour - cream perhaps, or peach.

She said she would, but I don't believe it was ever done. It wasn't as if she would have had to handle-the paintbrush herself, as the Company painter would have done-it, but I think the effort of organising it was just too much for her.

My lasting memory of Paddy is of one afternoon a few weeks later when I went down to borrow a loaf of bread and found her standing an the back doorstep, looking agonised, while her cook and sundry small boys chased a chicken round and round the back yard. She and Dickie were expecting the Climas's and the Chief Surveyor and his wife for dinner that evening, and this was dinner - still running around on two legs.

"Oh, please God, please God, let them catch it!" she was pleading, hands clasped together in front of her as the chicken clucked and flew in all directions, always evading the outstretched hands of the boys, who, judging by their ecstatic grins, regarded this as prime entertainment for a boring Saturday afternoon. I escaped up to my bungalow' promising to send down Kwasi and the current small boy to lend a hand. At 3 p.m. the chase was still going on, but to cut a long story short, the chicken was finally caught and cooked in time for the evening meal. Whether it made good eating was never revealed.

One point I did make to J.R. quite early on in my first tour was the peculiar taste of the drinking water. Try as I would, I couldn't seem to make a decent cup of tea, and it even looked odd - a dismal grey instead of a healthy brown. This was because of all the chlorine which was added to it. One of J.R.'s additional responsibilities was that of controlling the domestic water supply to the mine and to Bogoso village. On the mine property there was a filtration and chlorination plant, which produced the drinking water for something like 10,000 people. The plant consisted of a sand filtration unit which extracted sediment, etc., from the water, after which any further microscopic matter was precipitated chemically out of it, and then' it was re-filtered and chlorinated. J.R., like Michael Donnelly, was a firm believer in over- rather than under-chlorination, and there were certainly no casualties either on the mine or in the village from anyone drinking the water, at least while we were there.

In addition to all this, each European bungalow had its own small water filter, and all drinking water was first-run through the filter and then boiled, before being used. And after a time one even got used to the horrible taste.

J.R. was also appointed by the Gold Coast Government as an analyst to the Gold Coast Police Force. His task was to examine various substances obtained from suspected gold thieves, and provide sworn affidavits at suspects' subsequent trials. The theft of gold in several forms was almost a hobby amongst native employees, when on occasions it was possible for them to illegally obtain gold from the mine properties. It says a lot when one learns that the possession of mercury in its metallic form was strictly illegal, and the only source of this was from amounts stolen from the mines. Mercury, having the property of absorbing gold into itself, was used to rub into various crushed rocks in underground or surface workings, after which it was heated in a retort and driven from the amalgam in the form of gas, leaving metallic gold behind. On other occasions, J.R. was called on when the local Coroner was not available, to determine whether or not noxious substances had been administered to natives found dead. Over a period of some twelve years, both in the Cold Coast and Tanganyika, he was called in as the expert witness in around six hundred Court prosecutions, covering a variety of offences.

As January became February, and February melted into March, the Harmattan gradually ceased to blow and the days became increasingly humid and sticky with the approach of the rains. I began to find it more and more difficult to do anything at all during the afternoons. Even lying on the bed was not comfortable - the sweat poured off me and I stuck to the sheets, the only relief being to run a tepid bath and stretch out in it. This relief was only temporary as the effort of getting dried and dressed again made the perspiration break out once more, and I ended up just as hot and sticky. I used to wonder how the men managed to work in these conditions. We had ceiling fans in our bungalows and in the offices, but these only pushed the hot air around and did not help very much. I don't know if air conditioning had reached the Coast in 1950, but if it had it certainly hadn't arrived in the bush.

Each day in the later afternoon the sky grew black with storm clouds and thunder could be heard in the distance, but it was usually late in March before the first drops of rain fell - "half crown drops" we used to call them when I was a child. The first time this happened I was so relieved that I rushed outside to feel the welcome coolness on my hands and face, but was sent indoors again very rapidly by the most vicious flash of lightning I had ever seen, followed immediately by a deafening crash of thunder. The lightning which accompanied these storms was quite frightening. It was forked and blue, and it crackled, and when the ground was wet you could hear it sizzle as it landed. I barely had time to stuff my fingers in my ears before the thunder crashed down again, and then came the rain, pelting onto the corrugated iron roof with a noise which almost drowned out the thunder. For the first time I was glad we didn't live on Top Hill, which was really exposed to the elements with no protection at all.

Once the monsoon was really established, it rained most of the day and night for weeks on end - steady, unrelenting rain which soaked you to the skin if you were unwise enough to go out without an umbrella. Mackintoshes were no good as the humid heat caused one to perspire even more, so if we did go anywhere it was in a mine car to another bungalow or to the Club. The weekly cinema shows had to be held indoors, which was of course nothing like so pleasant as sitting out under the stars.

Early one evening in March, a large party from Marlu set out in the usual armada of cars to visit the mine at Bremang, about eight miles away, where their amateur theatrical society was presenting "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney". Any kind of entertainment during the rains was enthusiastically welcomed, and like most amateur productions, this one was made more interesting because we knew most of the people taking part. There were however no budding Oliviers among the cast and the noise of the rain on the tin roof was at times so loud that it completely obliterated the words the unfortunate actors were trying to put forth, so the food which followed the show was all the more appreciated. Not to mention the dozens of bottles of Club beer (the local brew) which were consumed both during and after the performance.

Afterwards, the prospect of a long, dark, very wet drive back to Marlu was somewhat daunting, but we did finally set off - J.R. and I with Len and Eve Hammonds. We could not see any sign of the other three cars or their occupants, but concluded, sensibly, that they were either ahead of us or lagging behind and there was no point in waiting around to find out. It was every man for himself in conditions like this. J.R. took the wheel and we sloshed away down the flooded red laterite road, skidding and bouncing over the potholes, the wheels sending up clouds of spray and windscreen wipers working overtime. The road was not only wet but for mile upon mile completely deserted and the blackness all around seemed as thick as glue as we crawled along, praying that the car would keep going long enough to get us back to our own little piece of civilisation in the midst of the unfriendly West African bush.

We were well on our way, and hopes were high that over the next low hill we should be able to see the distant lights of the mine, when things started to go wrong. We rounded a bend and there, straight ahead, we could see two circles of moving light, one above the other, and could hear male voices shouting. We stopped, puzzled and apprehensive, and as the lights came nearer we were able to make out the figure of a man walking towards us through a lake of water, waving a torch which was reflected beneath him. As he came closer and more of him was revealed, we saw it was Vic Jones, wearing only his underpants. Further away was a partly submerged black hump, with other waving figures beside it, much splashing and several voices raised in song.

"Sorry folks", said Vic, "road's flooded and the truck's floating. I'm afraid we're all stuck here until the water goes down".

We climbed out of the car to investigate this calamity. Standing there in the rain, peering ahead, it was obvious that what he had said was true. The mine truck ahead was flooded well into the engine compartment and was not going to move again until some other vehicle came along from the direction of Marlu with a tow rope. We did have a rope and pulley blocks in the boot of our car, but they weren't going to be much use on this side of the flood. We could see that various bodies, well under the influence of Club beer, were cooling themselves off by diving over the sides of the truck into the water and singing Army songs. These were some of the unmarried men from Marlu, and they were determined to enjoy themselves on their night out, even if the evening was not turning out quite as planned.

The only thing we could do was to get back into the car and wait for help to come, or the flood to drain away. There was no other road we could take to get home, and the prospect of returning to Bremang did not recommend itself to anyone, especially as we could not have been more than a couple of miles from Marlu. As we turned to crowd into the car, Eve began to yell and slap at her legs, and I also became aware that all was not well. I lifted my long skirt to see what was biting me, and in the light of the torch observed hundreds of small red ants fleeing from the edge of the water and going straight up our bare legs.

The next few minutes were quite chaotic. Eve and I stood there hitching our skirts up round our waists while our husbands beat the invaders down with their hands, and Vic, holding the torch, laughed so much that he dropped it. The little red beasts packed a nasty bite, too, which made us hop around, cursing loudly. In the midst of the confusion, two other cars pulled up behind us - the rest of the Marlu contingent - and the sight that met their eyes was no doubt described and enlarged upon at many another social evening up and down the country.

Eve and I were past caring. Soaked to the skin, bitten to pieces, all, we wanted was to get back to our own bungalows and soak in a hot bath for an hour, but we had a good two hours to wait before the water went down sufficiently for any of the cars to get across. The truck was towed the rest of the way home with its engine and petrol tank full of water, and never had the lights of home looked more welcoming than they did to my husband and me as we crawled up Assay hill at two in the morning.

The ants were the most prolific of the insects we were likely to encounter daily. There were, as well as the brown "sugar ants" which attacked the food in the bungalow, red ants, white ants, black ants, soldier ants (the big ones), and on occasion they seemed to put their small, heads together and plan a route march across country, for no obvious reason. It was like an army on the march when this happened.

One evening shortly after this theatrical outing, when J.R. was having his usual leisurely pre-dinner bath in the bungalow, with books on hand, and a cup of tea, and music from a small radio in case he should be bored, Kwasi came rushing into the living room, very excited.

"Madame!", he cried, "de ants dey come!"

Whatever could he mean? One look at his rolling eyes and agitated features convinced me that something odd was happening, so I went to the side door to have a look and the sight that met my eyes stopped me in my tracks.

We had a large overhead light which illuminated the stretch of ground between the bungalow and the kitchen, and I could now see that approaching from the back was a two foot wide solid stream of black ants, climbing all over and round each other, with the large soldier ants keeping the lines straight at the sides. There was no deviation from this dead straight line as they came inexorably on, but I was mighty relieved to note that as far as I could tell the angle of approach meant that they would just, but only just, miss the outside wall of the bungalow. Anything in their path, like lizards or large insects, were devoured as the column marched over them, leaving nothing behind but the skeletons. If the bungalow had been in their path, they would have continued right over and into it.

As it was, I could see that the next large object to be negotiated was the Assay Office, a hundred yards away. I therefore prised J.R., protesting, out of his bath and quickly into shorts and shoes, for him to fetch some tins of kerosene from the office, surround the stream of ants with the liquid, and so divert them away from the buildings and out into the bush. Kwasi was unwillingly coerced into helping, unwillingly because he had already been generously bitten by the ants on his bare feet when he first stumbled into their path.

A few days later Kwasi's feet suffered again.

It was a wet evening and we were sitting in the bungalow before dinner when he came bursting in, once more very agitated.

"Masse!" he said to J.R., "power dere for path!"

It took us some time before we could understand what he was getting at. He led us outside to a spot between the back of the bungalow and the side hedge, pointed to the wet ground and said, once again, "power dere!"

He always spoke of electricity as "power", but J.R. said there wasn't any power there and he must be imagining things. Still, he kept on complaining, and next day we had some of the Power House boys along to dig up the patch and find out what, if anything, was wrong. Sure enough, they discovered that there was an electric line running under the patch and it was shorting out at one point, causing "the power" to come up through the sodden ground and electrify Kwasi's wet feet. The fault was quickly dealt with but it was some time before Kwasi could be persuaded to cross that piece of ground again.

Of such minor things was our life constituted during the rains. Cricket came to a halt, people stayed put in their offices and houses and parlour games such as Monopoly and Mah Jong flourished. The Bridge enthusiasts of course kept on playing and those keen on golf managed a game two or three times a week, even in the rain. J.R. and I frequently played in the rain, and in fact I, as a very mediocre player, played better when it was raining. The rain splashing up all around it seemed to make that tiny white ball a larger target and easier to hit.

But, nevertheless, as the weeks went by one tended to become depressed by this long period with only sporadic glimpses of the sun. Everything was damp all the time, particularly shoes, and anything made of leather was inclined to grow a fungus if not kept in a dry place. I once carelessly put on a pair of shoes which had been left outside the drying cupboard for some time and contracted a kind of Athlete's Foot, a complaint which was very prevalent in that climate and extremely difficult to get rid of. It was at this time of year that you started to hear grumbles from those coming up to leave time, that this was their last "tour", they were going to find better jobs as soon as they arrived home and the Gold Coast had seen the last of them. Most people did, however, come back. Jobs were not all that easy to come by in England, and in any case austerity still reigned there and viewed from the grey country the Gold Coast didn't look so bad.

J.R. was overdue for leave now, but we had to wait for his replacement to arrive, and we also did not want to depart until the rains were on the way out, so that we could relax in sunny weather on the ship. I had never traveled anywhere by ship, unless you count the half-hour trip across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, or a jaunt on a paddle steamer down the Thames, but this would be different. This would be a real cruise!

I looked forward to it with great enthusiasm, and towards the end was even counting the days. We would be travelling down to the Takoradi docks by the railway, which was bound to be a more comfortable journey than on the bumpy red road which we had come to know so well. The railway line ran from Kumasi in Ashanti to the north of us, down through Insu, our nearest station, to Tarkwa and then on to the coast. Our tickets would be first class, and I was told that the seating was quite luxurious for Africa, being only four armchair type seats to a compartment.

My small hand sewing machine was put to work to run up some mammy cloth tops and skirts, my swim suit anxiously examined for moth holes, and I was assured by J.R. that anything else I needed could without doubt be found either in Takoradi or on board ship. Most of the mining staff went home on leave by ship, to give themselves a much-needed holiday.

To our delight, we found that Fred and Peggy Stokes were to travel on the same ship with us, so that when we at last boarded the train at Insu, we were all in great spirits. Doug, Doris and Tommy came to see us off, and to choruses of "You lucky people!" we waved them a happy goodbye and turned our faces towards Takoradi.

It was the end of September, and by the time we docked in Liverpool it would be almost twelve months since I had left England.