Author's Note:
This is a work of fiction. While inspired by real histories and philosophies, all characters and events are imagined.
CHAPTER 2 – Shut Up and Sit Down
The sun was no longer gentle when it returned the next morning. It came back angry, flinging heat into windows, cracking paint off the walls, waking tired chickens too early. There was no breeze in the classroom, and the only fan on the ceiling hung there dead, as if it had been waiting for an excuse to stop trying. The desks were too close, the air was too thick, and K.B. sat with his hands under the table like a boy caught stealing something invisible—his own voice.
Mr. Osei hadn't said anything when he entered. He just walked straight to the board, picked the chalk like a man picking a weapon, and wrote: When a nation forgets its place in the world, it becomes a danger to itself.
No one dared to ask what he meant. But the whole class knew. It was a warning. It was a shot fired without sound. And it was aimed at the back row, second seat from the window.
K.B didn't flinch.
But his heart—ah, that was another matter. It was running, fast and heavy, like a goat that smelled blood in the grass.
He watched the dust spiral from the teacher's chalk like a tiny storm that couldn't decide which way to spin. The laughter from yesterday had already cooled into a thicker kind of silence—the type that doesn't speak but watches. A silence that turns people into spectators. Nobody wanted to be near the boy who had opened his mouth too wide. Nobody wanted to share in the punishment, whatever form it might take.
And yet… wasn't it just a question?
Was it so wrong to ask if we could be more than just cut-up pieces of land pretending to be sovereign?
Was it a crime to wonder?
"Kwabena Adusei," the teacher said, without turning.
"Yes, sir."
"Stand up."
He stood. Slow. Careful. His chair scraped across the cement floor like something being dragged to execution.
"What you said yesterday. Say it again."
K.B swallowed. His tongue was dry. His throat had forgotten how to be water.
"I said… I asked what if Africa became one nation."
"And why did you ask such a foolish thing?"
The question wasn't even laced with curiosity. It came sharpened. Designed to draw blood.
K.B looked down. Then up. Then somewhere in the middle, where truth often hides.
"Because the borders were not ours," he said. "They were drawn by colonizers. If we made them, we can erase them."
Laughter again—but it was thinner now. Fewer joined in. Some just stared. A boy beside him shifted his chair away. A girl near the front scratched her arm hard, looking anywhere but at him.
"And what makes you think Africans want to be united?" the teacher pressed.
"Because we are already one in our pain."
That silenced the laughter.
Mr. Osei turned now, arms folded like a man who'd heard enough prayers. "Do you even know what you're saying? You think Nigerians want to share their oil with Zimbabweans? You think Congolese want to sit in the same parliament as Rwandans? You think Morocco and Mali want to be in the same room? Or Ghana with South Sudan? You think we will all drop our languages, our flags, our identities—just because a teenage boy with big ideas read one Nkrumah book?"
K.B didn't move. He didn't speak.
"You're playing with fire," the teacher continued. "You think this is about dreams. This is about blood. This is about war. This is about what cannot be undone."
K.B felt something rise inside him, not anger, not pride—something older, deeper, shaped like memory.
"But wasn't Ghana once made of kingdoms that didn't trust each other?" he asked. "Weren't we once divided too? And didn't we come together?"
Silence. Just breathing now. Just the ticking of a cracked wall clock above the board that hadn't worked since the term started. It said 7:32. It was already past nine.
Mr. Osei walked slowly to K.B's desk.
"Sit down," he said.
K.B sat.
"Shut your mouth," he said.
K.B shut it.
"And don't speak again in this class unless I ask you to."
The chalk hit the board again, harder this time. Writing nonsense equations about trade routes and policy structures, trying to bury the moment in dust.
After class, the hallway parted like a sea of fear. No one walked beside him. The bell rang but it felt fake. The air smelled of palm oil, floor polish, and cowardice.
In the toilet, someone had written on the wall:
"Mr. One Africa"
Big mouth, small brain.
He stared at the words. Not angry. Just quiet. He traced the letters with his eyes, as if they were sacred. Then he took a pen from his pocket and wrote beneath it:
"Every country was once an idea too."
He walked out.
He sat under the mango tree behind the science block, alone. The leaves above danced a little in the wind, but the fruit was still too green to fall. From his pocket, he pulled the book Uncle Sarpong gave him. The pages smelled like old sweat, woodsmoke, and wisdom.
He flipped to a random page.
"We face neither East nor West. We face forward."
He closed his eyes.
Why do we mock the dreamers?
Why do we train our children to memorize the chains and fear the keys?
Why is the past only taught to be feared, never understood?
Why does the idea of togetherness feel more dangerous than the bombs that divide us?
Footsteps.
It was Ama. Quiet girl. Sat near the front. Always carried a purple pen. Her voice barely reached her own ears when she spoke in class.
She stood there for a moment, hugging her books like they were armour.
"I thought what you said was brave," she whispered.
K.B looked at her. He didn't know whether to thank her or warn her.
"They'll come for you," she said. "I think they already have your name on a list."
"What list?"
She shrugged. "There are always lists."
She walked away before he could say anything. Her braid swung behind her like punctuation.
When the bell rang again, he didn't go back to class.
He walked toward the janitor's shed. The door was open, but Uncle Sarpong wasn't there. Just the sound of a transistor radio playing an old highlife song. A breeze moved through the doorway like someone entering without legs.
On the wall was a map. Hand-drawn. Africa with no borders. Only rivers, mountains, roads. It looked naked. It looked whole.
Pinned next to it was a photo—black and white, worn at the corners—of a younger Sarpong, standing beside a man K.B couldn't recognize. Both wore dashikis. Both were smiling like they had just escaped something terrible.
There was a note under the photo, written in faded blue ink:
We were told it was impossible. We tried anyway.
K.B touched the edge of the map. His finger paused over Kinshasa. Then Cairo. Then Accra.
He didn't know where to begin. He only knew he had to.
Back home, his mother was waiting by the door, arms crossed, face tight. Not angry. Not surprised. Just… ready.
"Your headmaster called," she said. "Again."
He nodded.
"Your father is angry."
He nodded again.
"I am not," she said.
He looked at her, eyes burning.
She sighed and opened the cupboard. From inside a rice sack, she pulled a leather folder. Dusty. Tied with a string.
She handed it to him.
He untied it slowly. Inside were yellowed pages. Old newspaper cuttings. Speeches. Diagrams of alternative flags. Sketches of Africa without lines.
"Your brother had a name for it," she said. "He called it The Dandelion Network. Said the seeds would spread."
K.B couldn't speak.
She looked at him like she was looking through time.
"Be careful. But don't stop."
Outside, night came like a blanket pulled over a fevered child. The wind whispered things it wasn't supposed to know. Somewhere, in a room far away, someone else was reading the essay he wrote. Someone was marking his name. Someone was loading the first bullet—not into a gun, but into a story that was about to explode.
And he?
He sat with the papers in his lap, feeling the weight of ideas heavier than bullets.
Because words don't kill.
Not always.
But they start the fire that burns the house down.