Former National Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC), Bernard Anbataayela Mornah, has recounted the times he went through while growing up in his village of Sankana in the Nadowli-Kaleo District of the Upper West Region.
This is the first time the Nkrumahist is detailing his life story and how hard things became for him to the extent that he had to devise his own means of survival to cope with the hunger at the time.
Detailing his struggles with Ohenewaa Kesse Boahen on CTV, monitored by MyNewsGh.com, the youth activist and by far one of Ghana’s serial demonstrators disclosed that he had to hunt and cook lizards for a meal.
“I had to go round with a cane looking for lizards, hunt lizards and go and roast or cook it and use that as my meal to survive” he disclosed to the shock of the hostess and reiterated “I ate lizards to survive”.
“When you get the lizard, you look for millet and go to the grinding stone to mill the millet and mix the stock of the cooked lizard with the millet. We call it ‘kankale’; then you eat it”, he explained.
“It was an experience but that shaped my growing up”, he said, adding: “You can understand the humanity in me that when it comes to suffering, I went through it, I lived it and, so, when I see people, I can feel what they are going through and that is how come I’m so passionate when I’m making my national conversations because I lived these circumstances”. He stressed.
Regarding his approach to studying, he revealed that he never had the privilege of studying with electricity or even locally made lanterns. Instead, he had to rely on the illumination provided by the moonlight.
“My mother will not give you her ‘Bobo’ lamp to study because she will complain that the oil may finish. So you have to read with the moonlight and when it enters the clouds, you sit and wait for it to come out. I had to be reading very fast when the moon was up”, he recounted.