Dominic Hooko
Dominic was born in the year that Ghana gained independence. He is one of eight children who made his own entertainment by recycling everyday objects into toys and he vividly recounts his days of scorpion racing! He first came to the UK to study for his Masters degree in Aberdeen in 1986 and arrived in Hull on the day after 9/11 in 2001. Dominic’s charity work with the Avenue Bicycle Project may be familiar to some as they have shipped over 1,500 bikes to Ghana and more recently nearly 500 more to Sierra Leone in response the social and medical needs created by the Ebola crisis.
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Transcription: Dominic Hooko
Interview with Dominic Hooko
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Date: November 2016
JW: First and foremost can you introduce yourself to the people that are going to be listening in to the podcast.
DH: Yeah, my name is – Dominic Hooko – I come originally from Ghana, the north western part of Ghana, a town of probably about ten thousand people called Nandom. It’s about seventy two miles – west of Wa, the regional capital. I now live and work in Hull.
JW: So can we put a year, when were you born?
DH: Year, oh dear you want to know that? I’m…
JW… or just the decade.
DH: The decade in the nineteen, the mid nineteen, called Ghana’s year of independence, if you can work that out…
JW: … OK, well that’s good…
DH: In the, in the late fifties, mid to late fifties.
JW: Right, that’s a teaser for people to go and Google isn’t it?
DH: - absolutely, yeah, yeah.
JW: So, OK – be the Ghanaian tourist board for me and tell me something about Ghana.
DH: Yeah, Ghana is one of the most hospitable, friendly nations in the world, okay let’s say in, in Africa and I’m not really joking here. Ghana is very, very friendly. Culturally there is a lot to see - in the country. We’ve got in the southern part of the Country, of course, the former slave castles in Cape Coast Elmina. In terms of – forest reserves we’ve got what we call the Kakum National Park where we’ve got, actually, one of the canopy – walkways and the ascent is well over two hundred metres in the air, sorry the feet in the air, I’ve been there about three or four times with groups that I’ve taken to Ghana. – in the north we’ve got – the Damongo Game Reserve which, I mean, I wouldn’t say is the sort the equivalent of the safari things we have in Kenya but we do have lots of wildlife that, we’ve got elephants, plenty of elephants. We’ve got – a few lions, we’ve got loads of monkeys, we’ve got loads of antelopes, different types of antelopes and I know because my cousin is one of the bosses there, he takes me then I see them and in that village where you branch off into this national park there is, - a, a claim to be one of the oldest mosques in Ghana and – again in that village we have an, a, a shrine called a Mystic Stone.
JW: Wonderful…
DH: Yes…
JW: … really great description of Ghana…
DH: …yes…
JW: …I can almost see the brochure in print.
DH: Thank, thank you.
JW: What was Ghana like for you? What, what are your very earliest memories?
DH: Memories of Ghana. Well, I grew up in the family of – one girl and seven boys and growing up in Northern Ghana – I remember, you know, lush greenery I mean the basic occupation that part of Ghana I come from, Nandom, is peasant agriculture which is still the case even as we speak and I remember, you know, long rainy seasons starting from about late March to about late October and in those days in the sixties, seventies we had what we called the double maximum kind of rainfall. That is the rain would peak on two occasions in - about – July and then again in about September, October before we entered the dry season and so I grew up – you know, having to mix going to farm with my parents with going to school of course and I went to a local primary school which is still – there today. So, I, I, I, I, I had a very, you know, wonderful childhood really – riding, learning to ride my bike at a very early age. It was this, this adult bikes called the flying pigeon. In those days you had to sort of, if you know, way back is the triangle there, you had the bike you see and learnt to go in between the triangle there and then, yes, you know pedal and you know I self-taught myself in one day and of course – a bicycle is, you know, sometimes the difference between life and death. Even now, because you can, you ride it to farm, you ride it for pleasure, you ride it to school, you ride it to hospital, you ride it to a market, its, it, it’s for porterage really.
JW: And you’re involved with a bicycle project aren’t you?
DH: Oh that. Yeah, yeah, I, because of my experience growing up in Ghana and – knowing how important bicycles are – when I came to Hull, here in – 2001 – five years ago, I got involved in the local bicycle charity project called Avenues Bicycle Project and it started by a very good friend of mine called – Chris. Chris is the co-ordinator, a wonderful man and I am the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and so far we have sent – well over thousand five hundred bikes to Ghana and – we have since last year shifted the focus to Sierra Leone because of the Nation recovering from the Ebola crisis. We thought – we should, we should help, help that country and so last, a year ago we shipped a container of nearly five hundred bicycles to Sierra Leone and we just got another shipment going to go out early next year, to Sierra Leone. Yeah, so I am involved in the Bike Project and I really,
I enjoyed doing what I do there.
JW: That sounds fantastic…
DH: Yes thank you.
JW: …really does yes.
DH: Thank you, thank you.
JW: So tell me about the young Dominic, then -…
DH: Yes the young, the young…
JW: …say round sort of, you know the - teenage years.
DH: Teenage years? Yes – the young Dominic – I, I was, I wouldn’t say I was naughty but I liked outdoor activities – back in, in the school in those days they had this subject called art and craft which involved, you know, making things out of sardine cans and tins. Well, I never did eat that sardine but I picked up the sardine cans and then picked milk cans from rubbish heaps and – you put it in fire and it, you know it opens up and then we beat it into shape to make all sorts of things. Toy cars, toy bicycles, toy aeroplanes and when that run out we used clay from the local, the rivers near Nandom. In Nandom there would harvest clay, use that to make all sort of sorts of things. Build tractors, build, you know, model human beings and so sort of things like that. I was into hunting. I’m quite good at using the catapult and then so hunting birds, you know, trapping birds and then - one silly thing we did I was very good at catching scorpions. Even now I can catch scorpions. We purposely went out looking for scorpions to race with and what you did was you opened up your rock and you’d be sure in April to find a scorpion under it and you had to have steady fingers to grab the tail and then, you know, nip off the, the, the bit that would sting you and then the rest of this was harmless and then we raced with them. So we would have little channels and poor scorpions would outrun the other and we did all sorts of things like that. We went fishing in the local rivers. We went hunting for fruits in the, in the, in the, in the Sarondi Bush nearby. It was a wonderful childhood. So, I mixed up with primary school, went to middle school in Nandom, went to secondary school called Ghana College in Tamale which was fantastic. In fact, my best years were my middle and secondary schools, absolutely brilliant. Coming from a small town in Nandom and going to Tamale where running water, electricity, tarred roads, taxis, it just was a heaven on earth then, marvellous.
JW: My ima… imagination is running overtime. The, the scorpion racing, I love that. Yes, I, I can’t imagine you do a lot of scorpion racing these days.
DH: - no, no these days no.
JW: Are you just as artistic?
DH: Yes, I am still, these days. What I do is if, if I look at a, a, a flower I like to do drawing. Look at flowers in the summer in my garden, yeah I can still draw them and paint them. That I’ll do but you, here of course would work and raising your family I’ve lost the skill of using a sharp blade or pen to cut a straw to build the things. I might nick my finger so I’ve since given that up, yeah, but a vestige of that is back in Cottingham where I live. - I keep poultry. I’ve got eight chickens which lay me wonderful eggs and that, you know, that brings me some memories of my childhood days back in Ghana. I wish I could keep goats to eat the grass rather than me using a… what do you call this, a mower but of course my neighbours wouldn’t let me.
JW: So yeah, in your - early memories there. Do you still have any of the models that you made as a teenager?
DH: - not, not, not, I, I’m, not here with me, no, I, I’m ashamed to say, no the models I don’t have but –if you want me to replace some I think I could order some of the material from Ghana, we can replace them for the History project. Yes I can do that.
JW: Sounds a lovely idea, yes…
DH: Yes, yes…
JW: … - so tell me – did you shine at school? What were favourite subjects?
DH: Oh, in school, yes. I think I, I wouldn’t say I was a bad student, in fact, - I remember from primary one I liked sitting in the front of the class. For some reason many other children would avoid sitting in the front of the class but I just loved the front table just next to the teacher’s table and – I now remember colleagues telling me that – the reason why those others sat in the back was because they don’t want to be pointed out to, you know, mental questions. The teacher comes in and says “I want to work your brain cells so let’s do mental one, plus two, minus five divided by 3.” You are given no time to think already and then you, you, you, you… but somehow I was good.
I liked maths, I liked, in fact I liked all my subjects that I did. English, maths, back into secondary in those, I think I remember doing science and I remember a very poignant lesson. I was, then in Ghana our parents drank the local drink called akepeteshie which is about 100% alcohol. It isn’t good for their lungs and their liver. A lot of them have died from liver cirrhosis and I remember my science teacher saying, “Tell your parents not to drink this thing, it’s not good”. He dipped a piece of meat in the thing, lit it up and there was this pale blue smoke and that brought it home to me. Thankfully my father never drank or smoked but one of my uncles did and he did die from liver cirrhosis.
So I was, I was quite good, I liked all my subjects, I liked all my teachers. Went to secondary school, I studied – after Form Three in those days we were asked to you know choose the subjects; English and maths were compulsory of course and we had four branches, you either went to the pure science class or into the agric-science class, into the commerce class or into the pure arts class. And I was struggling, I didn’t like the additional maths class very well, I liked, I was just about average in maths but to do the pure science you needed to do additional mathematics with chemistry, physics, biology and because then I wasn’t good in additional maths I went into agric-science class where I did my chemistry, biology with agric-science, geography and history, and then of course the English and maths. But we had a, a head teacher around the time, headmaster we called him in those days who said no, we needed to do physics in addition and so I was forced to drop history. But I came out, I’m glad to say I was in the, I got what we called in those days I was in Division One Distinction which meant that – you got at Aggregate 12 or less and – another science guy he got a Aggregate 8 and I went to the same Form in Navrongo where I did – economics, geography and government and I understand the results I got there are still a record standing there today, not blowing my horn but you just asked about the question so I thought that I should tell you everything…
JW: Please do
DH: Then I went on to university and did Land Economy and Land Economy the study of you know, the relationship between the land and you know, physical structures on the land, how to manage to the economics of the development so here in the UK they call it Estate Management but in Ghana and even now we call it Land Economy. I did that, finished the first degree and was retained as a teaching assistant back in the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi because I was the best in the class in those days and you were being groomed to be a lecturer. So I stayed there for three years, got the scholarship to come to Aberdeen University, did my Masters in Scotland, Aberdeen University, lovely, lovely place. We might talk about my experiences there and then back to Ghana. I came back in ’92 to do my PhD and then the rest is history as they put it.
JW: So tell me something about that history then?
DH: Well…
JW: Starting in Scotland
DH: Well, that was in 1986. I remember that very, very vividly. I felt like a fish out of water. I had married on the 14th of September 1986 and then exactly a week later I had, I flew out of Accra and left my beautiful, lovely wife. No time for honeymoon but I did promise her through the tears she was shedding and goodbye me at the airport that I would bring her over to the UK. And so I landed at – Gatwick it was in those days. A friend of mine met me and took me to – Redding where I stayed the night, then the following day I flew in a little, small aircraft to Aberdeen. Lovely, lovely city. Aberdeen the stark difference is that everything, nearly everything there is built out of granite so it is called the Silver City or the Granite City. And so I landed in Aberdeen, took a taxi to the department where I was made very welcome and then showed into student accommodation and the halls of residence called Hill Head which was very nice. There was heating and everything and then I , I became very complacent. After two weeks the university opened and then I was put in accommodation, a council house where there was no heating in those days and all we were shown was a fireplace and said, just told, “Go and buy coal, then you burn it”. And we thought, “What is coal, I’ve never heard of coal”. We know charcoal in Ghana. And so we went and bought this coal and we couldn’t li…we thought you could light it with just newspaper clippings and for three hours we couldn’t get this fire going. So the next day we went and protested saying, “This isn’t fair”. The university were quite nice then they put us back in accommodation where there was central heating, gas heating.
But that was the beginning. That year there was terrible snow. I was happy to see snow but the weather was so, so, so cold. In the night I couldn’t get to sleep. I was freezing. I remember I used to turn my trousers round like that, put my stockings over it, put on my big jacket, went under the duvet, even sometimes under the mattress, but I could never feel warm enough. That went on until Christmas and then thankfully my wife came over in February of 1987 and - . But Scotland is a lovely place apart from the cold which I never can get use to. Even now when I go there, I still shiver but the people are so, so friendly. The Scots are lovely people. As are the people of Hull really.
JW: Tell me about cultural shocks.
DH: Cultural shocks. Yes. It’s. I like to say ‘Hello’ to people whether if they know you or not and colour is no barrier so as I’m walking in the street I’m approaching a person I say, I’m looking into their eyes and I’m saying, want to say ‘Hello’ and you just get ignored and that was quite a shock. In the office that I shared with my colleagues, in the morning the first thing you say to anybody is, “Hello, Good morning. How are you?” People walk in and then - . The custom in Ghana is if you come into a room and I’m there, you have to say ‘Hello’ to me, but it wasn’t happening and I found that really shocking. So I turned around to say ‘Hello’ and even got ignored. And that was more worrying. And so culturally yeah, that was, that was a shock to me.
And foodwise it was terrible. I remember after 3 months when I had missed all my fufu, my tuo zaafi, the goat meat, light soup, the chicken soup and everything, this lovely couple, bless them (they are both dead now) they, I met them in church and the tradition those days was, just adopt a student for the Sunday afternoon so they took, they adopted me for that Sunday afternoon and in the car home I remember the conversation, “Oh Dominic, we’ve got – beef stew, beef soup”. I began to just drool say, “Wow this will be fine”. We got home, the table was set, I sat down and I saw bread on the table, they brought the soup in pots and when I was served it looked more like porridge than light soup. I expected to see chunks of bone and flesh, and there was nothing of the sort. So that was an absolute shock and they didn’t …I wish you could see my face collapse, literally. I couldn’t hide it. I’m a cheery person but I just couldn’t hide my disappointment so – my hostess said, “Oh Dominic if you can’t eat this please don’t worry, we’ll get you potatoes.” And so the potatoes again, we’re use to sweet potatoes in Ghana and there were these potatoes so flat, no taste, nothing. But to be fair, when I tried it, and I’m very adventurous when it comes to food. I can eat anything people are eating and so I tried the thing and I was so shocked I could taste the beef though there was no meat to eat, the bones to crack but the end of the meal I felt very good. Very good. So those are some of the cultural shocks. Clothing wise we walk in slippers, bathroom sandals these slippers and you know just get your feet cool. I couldn’t do that there because of the cold. You know. I like my jeans and I couldn’t wear the jeans because they were so cold in the morning and I discovered that corduroy trousers were the best and so up to now if I ever see corduroy trousers it dates back to that experience in Scotland.
JW: I don’t like the feel of corduroy trousers myself. What have you done to try and introduce – people in the UK to African culture?
DH: It is, it is...I am a Christian called the Evangelical Christian. Yeah I’m from the background Assemblies of God. Here in the UK it is called New Life. Any church you see called New Life Christian Church. Called New Life, the background is Assemblies of God. Pentecostal put it that way. And so – I am a very open, you know, not loud sort of person and so in church we tend to worship very vocally and that kind of thing so in terms of the church environment that is the way, we’ve taken African worship into church and I think it integrated using drums and the way we sing even local songs so that is one aspect.
Outside of church I love, my passion, is in charity work, coming from Nandom and then - going back since coming to the UK, and seeing that in primary schools that I have gone to no children progress from there to universities. I've always asked myself why and I, we were able to identify the problem, as you know, the way the teaching is done, the teachers are just not motivated that is the reason so I have gone into a charity where we have got this organisation called FREED which is about 15 years old on there, the initials stand for Foundation for the Rural Education, Emancipation and Development and through FREED we have gone out and done work in the medical and educational field. So that is one way I have introduced African culture to the people in this environment where I am now.
The way we dress can be summer you know, the flowery Ghanaian shirts and sandals, the native smock and the hat, so the way we dress and through our food, my wife is very good at cooking, she just loves to cook and so we invite people home and then we introduce them to Ghanaian food which a lot of them like and we've got a variety of dishes: jollof rice, we have fufu which of course we cannot pound but thankfully we are able to stir it and it is hot and nice, we've got rice and beans, gari and beans, all sorts of things, we've got the yam, we got plantain, we buy the black eye beans from here, which we can cook and put a bit of palm oil and put a bit of gari and it's just wonderful. So through - my life as a Christian in my work place, through the way we dress and through food we try, I or we have tried to introduce African culture to the people I meet on a day to day basis.
JW: How do you describe Hull to the people that you're still in contact with back in Ghana?
DH: Here? When I got the job to come here my pastor asked me Hull? Where is Hull? But you are in England you should know where Hull is, I don't know, I'm going for the interview I'll tell you when I come back. So I'd never heard of Hull to be fair and then I remember I used to take the train from Scotland, from Edinburgh we get to York and then I would go down to London and then others are coming to Hull from York, that was as much as I knew of Hull. So come the interview I got into Hull, I was put in – there is that hotel just – is it the Paragon? It's closed now it turned into student accommodation that is where I stayed the night.
JW: The one next to the library?
DH: The library yes, I stayed the night there and then I came to the interview. Very, very lovely people, the interview went really well and I left feeling I was going to get the job. After the interview I was shown the visitor attractions, the museum, I was shown the Museum Quarter and the Deep and I remember the Ferens very clearly, I went in there. I like going to museums and so I looked through and I did like the city and so when I tell people I'm in Hull they all go where is Hull? Is it not London? In Ghana of course when you say you are in the UK everybody thinks of London and so even if I say I'm not in London I'm in Hull and so I tell them Hull is this lovely, lovely, lovely place it is like the Agata town, that is my tribe anyway it is so friendly. And Hull, it's never dull here, I mean that is very true and so there is so much going on here and I tell my friends and my family and colleagues “Hull is the place to come to”, and I have brought I think a few of my relatives to visit and they have fallen in love with the place but keep saying, you know Aberdeen is quite easy to pronounce Aberdeen, can you take us to Aberdeen so we can see where you used to live and I do that but I say please, we're in Hull, forget about Aberdeen, this is where we are now, let's be in Hull. So I love Hull, a fantastic place.
JW: The date you came to Hull was that 2001?
DH: Yeah, I came to Hull, I came for the interview in September of 2001. I remember the eve of the interview very well and sometimes there are some events in your life you can just never forget, that was 9/11. I was on my way here, I think I did three interviews in the course of that week and the next one was in Hull. I had gone for an interview in Ealing I think it was the Borough Council. After the interview I was walking along the High Road full of electronic shops, looking around and all the TV screens in, on display they were showing this occasion and I was going “What is happening?” So that is etched in my memory. So I came to Hull the following day, did the interview, went back and then I got the job all fine and I started work on the 21st of October 2001.
JW: Have you noted any changes about Hull in the time that you've been here?
DH: Oh yes lots and lots and lots because I work, I started work in the property section, Property Services Department of the council based in Bond Street in those days and, and managing the jobs and going around the council estates I mean I did see a lot of things. The stark difference of course in terms of architecture the red brick buildings and that was, you know, a bit of a lift for me. I got fed up with the granite, grey, dank and cold but here red brick, warm, very inviting, quite different, I loved that. And so in terms of the landscape yes, shops, nearly all of the shops were open, you know, on the council estates but as time went on, you know, the economy changed and so the footprint began to change and many shops were closing in the city centre. I remember that very well of course Woolworths closing and that was a shock for me. The very shop, the first shop to close and I miss it even today it is C&A in Aberdeen. That is where I bought all my clothes, C&A closing and everything I was shocked. I still go to the Amsterdam, I shop in C&A,I have a cousin there. Then I go to Hull here council shops were closing, businesses were closing, Woolworths shut down, now of course BHS has shut and there's talk of Marks & Spencer, but I hope they don't shut the one in Hull here but we never can tell. But all in all one big change was going to the, I used to get embarrassed bringing my visitors to Hull. If I could I'd bring them in by my own car. The embarrassment came from the bus station we had in those days, It was, it wasn't very nice I tell you about that bus station. So thank God that was demolished and we have St Stephens, marvellous. When I say come and visit me and when you come don't make the point, I’m not coming to drop you by car, come and meet me at the Interchange, lovely place. The physical landscape has changed in very many good ways really and of course with the City of Culture and the environment being changed again and things being done. Yeah, Hull has changed a lot, in some ways not good but in very, very many ways all for the better. So I think the future is orange, the future is bright for Hull.
JW: Do you have children?
DH: Ah yes, the first boy Joshua is 28, he was born in Reading. In Aberdeen after one year I'd gone down to Reading where we stayed for nearly 10 months. I was there to do some professional exams for my RSCS which I never did anyway even up to now, many reasons why. And so Joshua was born on the 23rd of March in Reading and - we went back to Ghana in September/October of 1988 so, and two quickly followed in Ghana again. A boy called Gideon, he's 24 now, and then Gloria was born in 1992 of October, no August yeah. Gideon he’s 24 now and then Gloria was born in 1992 of October, no of August, yeah, August. Gideon is 4th of April 1990. 1992 August then Gloria came along and then 2 to 3 months later we all had to move back to Aberdeen for me to study. So I've got 3 children. The two boys they've all left home now. Joshua and Gideon both live in London. Joshua works for Transport for London and Gloria is in Hull, she’s left home to my sad, sadness and she lives in Hull and her room is still there; Gloria if you're listening we want you to come back, you're always welcome but we meet her all the time anyway, she's a fine, lovely girl with her partner. And so 28, 26 and 24 two boys and a lovely girl. She is doing a Masters in Hull University but works for the City Council, off Stockholm Road depot. Yeah, she works in the section that deals with transport for children excluded from school, disabled families, that kind of thing, she just loves children.
JW: What about the future for you, what is your vision?
DH: Yeah my, the future – I'm not getting younger, I'm not very, probably in a few, maybe in a decade or less I might hang up my gloves in what I do but I can't ever hang up my gloves in charity work, that will always go on and whether I decide to stay here in my retirement or relocate to Ghana my links are so wide and deep that - wherever I happen to find myself, God knows, I will still maintain my charity links. I just love doing the things we do at the hospitals, in the schools, here - collecting bicycles for underprivileged children in Sierra Leone and Ghana. Yes I love doing that and so in the future and for now I don't know what will happen but if I do retire and go out to Ghana I'll still do charity work.
JW: Some people listening to this podcast, if you could give one succinct message to them, something that you want them to take away from listening to your story, what would that be?
DH: So, wherever you are and whatever God gives you to do, do it to the best of your ability and do it for the people around you. At the end of the day whatever we do should not be about us but for the people we serve. I see myself as a servant and I, so I think the message is serve the people in whatever location or capacity you find yourself.
JW: Dominic thank you very much.
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Date: November 2016
JW: First and foremost can you introduce yourself to the people that are going to be listening in to the podcast.
DH: Yeah, my name is – Dominic Hooko – I come originally from Ghana, the north western part of Ghana, a town of probably about ten thousand people called Nandom. It’s about seventy two miles – west of Wa, the regional capital. I now live and work in Hull.
JW: So can we put a year, when were you born?
DH: Year, oh dear you want to know that? I’m…
JW… or just the decade.
DH: The decade in the nineteen, the mid nineteen, called Ghana’s year of independence, if you can work that out…
JW: … OK, well that’s good…
DH: In the, in the late fifties, mid to late fifties.
JW: Right, that’s a teaser for people to go and Google isn’t it?
DH: - absolutely, yeah, yeah.
JW: So, OK – be the Ghanaian tourist board for me and tell me something about Ghana.
DH: Yeah, Ghana is one of the most hospitable, friendly nations in the world, okay let’s say in, in Africa and I’m not really joking here. Ghana is very, very friendly. Culturally there is a lot to see - in the country. We’ve got in the southern part of the Country, of course, the former slave castles in Cape Coast Elmina. In terms of – forest reserves we’ve got what we call the Kakum National Park where we’ve got, actually, one of the canopy – walkways and the ascent is well over two hundred metres in the air, sorry the feet in the air, I’ve been there about three or four times with groups that I’ve taken to Ghana. – in the north we’ve got – the Damongo Game Reserve which, I mean, I wouldn’t say is the sort the equivalent of the safari things we have in Kenya but we do have lots of wildlife that, we’ve got elephants, plenty of elephants. We’ve got – a few lions, we’ve got loads of monkeys, we’ve got loads of antelopes, different types of antelopes and I know because my cousin is one of the bosses there, he takes me then I see them and in that village where you branch off into this national park there is, - a, a claim to be one of the oldest mosques in Ghana and – again in that village we have an, a, a shrine called a Mystic Stone.
JW: Wonderful…
DH: Yes…
JW: … really great description of Ghana…
DH: …yes…
JW: …I can almost see the brochure in print.
DH: Thank, thank you.
JW: What was Ghana like for you? What, what are your very earliest memories?
DH: Memories of Ghana. Well, I grew up in the family of – one girl and seven boys and growing up in Northern Ghana – I remember, you know, lush greenery I mean the basic occupation that part of Ghana I come from, Nandom, is peasant agriculture which is still the case even as we speak and I remember, you know, long rainy seasons starting from about late March to about late October and in those days in the sixties, seventies we had what we called the double maximum kind of rainfall. That is the rain would peak on two occasions in - about – July and then again in about September, October before we entered the dry season and so I grew up – you know, having to mix going to farm with my parents with going to school of course and I went to a local primary school which is still – there today. So, I, I, I, I, I had a very, you know, wonderful childhood really – riding, learning to ride my bike at a very early age. It was this, this adult bikes called the flying pigeon. In those days you had to sort of, if you know, way back is the triangle there, you had the bike you see and learnt to go in between the triangle there and then, yes, you know pedal and you know I self-taught myself in one day and of course – a bicycle is, you know, sometimes the difference between life and death. Even now, because you can, you ride it to farm, you ride it for pleasure, you ride it to school, you ride it to hospital, you ride it to a market, its, it, it’s for porterage really.
JW: And you’re involved with a bicycle project aren’t you?
DH: Oh that. Yeah, yeah, I, because of my experience growing up in Ghana and – knowing how important bicycles are – when I came to Hull, here in – 2001 – five years ago, I got involved in the local bicycle charity project called Avenues Bicycle Project and it started by a very good friend of mine called – Chris. Chris is the co-ordinator, a wonderful man and I am the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and so far we have sent – well over thousand five hundred bikes to Ghana and – we have since last year shifted the focus to Sierra Leone because of the Nation recovering from the Ebola crisis. We thought – we should, we should help, help that country and so last, a year ago we shipped a container of nearly five hundred bicycles to Sierra Leone and we just got another shipment going to go out early next year, to Sierra Leone. Yeah, so I am involved in the Bike Project and I really,
I enjoyed doing what I do there.
JW: That sounds fantastic…
DH: Yes thank you.
JW: …really does yes.
DH: Thank you, thank you.
JW: So tell me about the young Dominic, then -…
DH: Yes the young, the young…
JW: …say round sort of, you know the - teenage years.
DH: Teenage years? Yes – the young Dominic – I, I was, I wouldn’t say I was naughty but I liked outdoor activities – back in, in the school in those days they had this subject called art and craft which involved, you know, making things out of sardine cans and tins. Well, I never did eat that sardine but I picked up the sardine cans and then picked milk cans from rubbish heaps and – you put it in fire and it, you know it opens up and then we beat it into shape to make all sorts of things. Toy cars, toy bicycles, toy aeroplanes and when that run out we used clay from the local, the rivers near Nandom. In Nandom there would harvest clay, use that to make all sort of sorts of things. Build tractors, build, you know, model human beings and so sort of things like that. I was into hunting. I’m quite good at using the catapult and then so hunting birds, you know, trapping birds and then - one silly thing we did I was very good at catching scorpions. Even now I can catch scorpions. We purposely went out looking for scorpions to race with and what you did was you opened up your rock and you’d be sure in April to find a scorpion under it and you had to have steady fingers to grab the tail and then, you know, nip off the, the, the bit that would sting you and then the rest of this was harmless and then we raced with them. So we would have little channels and poor scorpions would outrun the other and we did all sorts of things like that. We went fishing in the local rivers. We went hunting for fruits in the, in the, in the, in the Sarondi Bush nearby. It was a wonderful childhood. So, I mixed up with primary school, went to middle school in Nandom, went to secondary school called Ghana College in Tamale which was fantastic. In fact, my best years were my middle and secondary schools, absolutely brilliant. Coming from a small town in Nandom and going to Tamale where running water, electricity, tarred roads, taxis, it just was a heaven on earth then, marvellous.
JW: My ima… imagination is running overtime. The, the scorpion racing, I love that. Yes, I, I can’t imagine you do a lot of scorpion racing these days.
DH: - no, no these days no.
JW: Are you just as artistic?
DH: Yes, I am still, these days. What I do is if, if I look at a, a, a flower I like to do drawing. Look at flowers in the summer in my garden, yeah I can still draw them and paint them. That I’ll do but you, here of course would work and raising your family I’ve lost the skill of using a sharp blade or pen to cut a straw to build the things. I might nick my finger so I’ve since given that up, yeah, but a vestige of that is back in Cottingham where I live. - I keep poultry. I’ve got eight chickens which lay me wonderful eggs and that, you know, that brings me some memories of my childhood days back in Ghana. I wish I could keep goats to eat the grass rather than me using a… what do you call this, a mower but of course my neighbours wouldn’t let me.
JW: So yeah, in your - early memories there. Do you still have any of the models that you made as a teenager?
DH: - not, not, not, I, I’m, not here with me, no, I, I’m ashamed to say, no the models I don’t have but –if you want me to replace some I think I could order some of the material from Ghana, we can replace them for the History project. Yes I can do that.
JW: Sounds a lovely idea, yes…
DH: Yes, yes…
JW: … - so tell me – did you shine at school? What were favourite subjects?
DH: Oh, in school, yes. I think I, I wouldn’t say I was a bad student, in fact, - I remember from primary one I liked sitting in the front of the class. For some reason many other children would avoid sitting in the front of the class but I just loved the front table just next to the teacher’s table and – I now remember colleagues telling me that – the reason why those others sat in the back was because they don’t want to be pointed out to, you know, mental questions. The teacher comes in and says “I want to work your brain cells so let’s do mental one, plus two, minus five divided by 3.” You are given no time to think already and then you, you, you, you… but somehow I was good.
I liked maths, I liked, in fact I liked all my subjects that I did. English, maths, back into secondary in those, I think I remember doing science and I remember a very poignant lesson. I was, then in Ghana our parents drank the local drink called akepeteshie which is about 100% alcohol. It isn’t good for their lungs and their liver. A lot of them have died from liver cirrhosis and I remember my science teacher saying, “Tell your parents not to drink this thing, it’s not good”. He dipped a piece of meat in the thing, lit it up and there was this pale blue smoke and that brought it home to me. Thankfully my father never drank or smoked but one of my uncles did and he did die from liver cirrhosis.
So I was, I was quite good, I liked all my subjects, I liked all my teachers. Went to secondary school, I studied – after Form Three in those days we were asked to you know choose the subjects; English and maths were compulsory of course and we had four branches, you either went to the pure science class or into the agric-science class, into the commerce class or into the pure arts class. And I was struggling, I didn’t like the additional maths class very well, I liked, I was just about average in maths but to do the pure science you needed to do additional mathematics with chemistry, physics, biology and because then I wasn’t good in additional maths I went into agric-science class where I did my chemistry, biology with agric-science, geography and history, and then of course the English and maths. But we had a, a head teacher around the time, headmaster we called him in those days who said no, we needed to do physics in addition and so I was forced to drop history. But I came out, I’m glad to say I was in the, I got what we called in those days I was in Division One Distinction which meant that – you got at Aggregate 12 or less and – another science guy he got a Aggregate 8 and I went to the same Form in Navrongo where I did – economics, geography and government and I understand the results I got there are still a record standing there today, not blowing my horn but you just asked about the question so I thought that I should tell you everything…
JW: Please do
DH: Then I went on to university and did Land Economy and Land Economy the study of you know, the relationship between the land and you know, physical structures on the land, how to manage to the economics of the development so here in the UK they call it Estate Management but in Ghana and even now we call it Land Economy. I did that, finished the first degree and was retained as a teaching assistant back in the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi because I was the best in the class in those days and you were being groomed to be a lecturer. So I stayed there for three years, got the scholarship to come to Aberdeen University, did my Masters in Scotland, Aberdeen University, lovely, lovely place. We might talk about my experiences there and then back to Ghana. I came back in ’92 to do my PhD and then the rest is history as they put it.
JW: So tell me something about that history then?
DH: Well…
JW: Starting in Scotland
DH: Well, that was in 1986. I remember that very, very vividly. I felt like a fish out of water. I had married on the 14th of September 1986 and then exactly a week later I had, I flew out of Accra and left my beautiful, lovely wife. No time for honeymoon but I did promise her through the tears she was shedding and goodbye me at the airport that I would bring her over to the UK. And so I landed at – Gatwick it was in those days. A friend of mine met me and took me to – Redding where I stayed the night, then the following day I flew in a little, small aircraft to Aberdeen. Lovely, lovely city. Aberdeen the stark difference is that everything, nearly everything there is built out of granite so it is called the Silver City or the Granite City. And so I landed in Aberdeen, took a taxi to the department where I was made very welcome and then showed into student accommodation and the halls of residence called Hill Head which was very nice. There was heating and everything and then I , I became very complacent. After two weeks the university opened and then I was put in accommodation, a council house where there was no heating in those days and all we were shown was a fireplace and said, just told, “Go and buy coal, then you burn it”. And we thought, “What is coal, I’ve never heard of coal”. We know charcoal in Ghana. And so we went and bought this coal and we couldn’t li…we thought you could light it with just newspaper clippings and for three hours we couldn’t get this fire going. So the next day we went and protested saying, “This isn’t fair”. The university were quite nice then they put us back in accommodation where there was central heating, gas heating.
But that was the beginning. That year there was terrible snow. I was happy to see snow but the weather was so, so, so cold. In the night I couldn’t get to sleep. I was freezing. I remember I used to turn my trousers round like that, put my stockings over it, put on my big jacket, went under the duvet, even sometimes under the mattress, but I could never feel warm enough. That went on until Christmas and then thankfully my wife came over in February of 1987 and - . But Scotland is a lovely place apart from the cold which I never can get use to. Even now when I go there, I still shiver but the people are so, so friendly. The Scots are lovely people. As are the people of Hull really.
JW: Tell me about cultural shocks.
DH: Cultural shocks. Yes. It’s. I like to say ‘Hello’ to people whether if they know you or not and colour is no barrier so as I’m walking in the street I’m approaching a person I say, I’m looking into their eyes and I’m saying, want to say ‘Hello’ and you just get ignored and that was quite a shock. In the office that I shared with my colleagues, in the morning the first thing you say to anybody is, “Hello, Good morning. How are you?” People walk in and then - . The custom in Ghana is if you come into a room and I’m there, you have to say ‘Hello’ to me, but it wasn’t happening and I found that really shocking. So I turned around to say ‘Hello’ and even got ignored. And that was more worrying. And so culturally yeah, that was, that was a shock to me.
And foodwise it was terrible. I remember after 3 months when I had missed all my fufu, my tuo zaafi, the goat meat, light soup, the chicken soup and everything, this lovely couple, bless them (they are both dead now) they, I met them in church and the tradition those days was, just adopt a student for the Sunday afternoon so they took, they adopted me for that Sunday afternoon and in the car home I remember the conversation, “Oh Dominic, we’ve got – beef stew, beef soup”. I began to just drool say, “Wow this will be fine”. We got home, the table was set, I sat down and I saw bread on the table, they brought the soup in pots and when I was served it looked more like porridge than light soup. I expected to see chunks of bone and flesh, and there was nothing of the sort. So that was an absolute shock and they didn’t …I wish you could see my face collapse, literally. I couldn’t hide it. I’m a cheery person but I just couldn’t hide my disappointment so – my hostess said, “Oh Dominic if you can’t eat this please don’t worry, we’ll get you potatoes.” And so the potatoes again, we’re use to sweet potatoes in Ghana and there were these potatoes so flat, no taste, nothing. But to be fair, when I tried it, and I’m very adventurous when it comes to food. I can eat anything people are eating and so I tried the thing and I was so shocked I could taste the beef though there was no meat to eat, the bones to crack but the end of the meal I felt very good. Very good. So those are some of the cultural shocks. Clothing wise we walk in slippers, bathroom sandals these slippers and you know just get your feet cool. I couldn’t do that there because of the cold. You know. I like my jeans and I couldn’t wear the jeans because they were so cold in the morning and I discovered that corduroy trousers were the best and so up to now if I ever see corduroy trousers it dates back to that experience in Scotland.
JW: I don’t like the feel of corduroy trousers myself. What have you done to try and introduce – people in the UK to African culture?
DH: It is, it is...I am a Christian called the Evangelical Christian. Yeah I’m from the background Assemblies of God. Here in the UK it is called New Life. Any church you see called New Life Christian Church. Called New Life, the background is Assemblies of God. Pentecostal put it that way. And so – I am a very open, you know, not loud sort of person and so in church we tend to worship very vocally and that kind of thing so in terms of the church environment that is the way, we’ve taken African worship into church and I think it integrated using drums and the way we sing even local songs so that is one aspect.
Outside of church I love, my passion, is in charity work, coming from Nandom and then - going back since coming to the UK, and seeing that in primary schools that I have gone to no children progress from there to universities. I've always asked myself why and I, we were able to identify the problem, as you know, the way the teaching is done, the teachers are just not motivated that is the reason so I have gone into a charity where we have got this organisation called FREED which is about 15 years old on there, the initials stand for Foundation for the Rural Education, Emancipation and Development and through FREED we have gone out and done work in the medical and educational field. So that is one way I have introduced African culture to the people in this environment where I am now.
The way we dress can be summer you know, the flowery Ghanaian shirts and sandals, the native smock and the hat, so the way we dress and through our food, my wife is very good at cooking, she just loves to cook and so we invite people home and then we introduce them to Ghanaian food which a lot of them like and we've got a variety of dishes: jollof rice, we have fufu which of course we cannot pound but thankfully we are able to stir it and it is hot and nice, we've got rice and beans, gari and beans, all sorts of things, we've got the yam, we got plantain, we buy the black eye beans from here, which we can cook and put a bit of palm oil and put a bit of gari and it's just wonderful. So through - my life as a Christian in my work place, through the way we dress and through food we try, I or we have tried to introduce African culture to the people I meet on a day to day basis.
JW: How do you describe Hull to the people that you're still in contact with back in Ghana?
DH: Here? When I got the job to come here my pastor asked me Hull? Where is Hull? But you are in England you should know where Hull is, I don't know, I'm going for the interview I'll tell you when I come back. So I'd never heard of Hull to be fair and then I remember I used to take the train from Scotland, from Edinburgh we get to York and then I would go down to London and then others are coming to Hull from York, that was as much as I knew of Hull. So come the interview I got into Hull, I was put in – there is that hotel just – is it the Paragon? It's closed now it turned into student accommodation that is where I stayed the night.
JW: The one next to the library?
DH: The library yes, I stayed the night there and then I came to the interview. Very, very lovely people, the interview went really well and I left feeling I was going to get the job. After the interview I was shown the visitor attractions, the museum, I was shown the Museum Quarter and the Deep and I remember the Ferens very clearly, I went in there. I like going to museums and so I looked through and I did like the city and so when I tell people I'm in Hull they all go where is Hull? Is it not London? In Ghana of course when you say you are in the UK everybody thinks of London and so even if I say I'm not in London I'm in Hull and so I tell them Hull is this lovely, lovely, lovely place it is like the Agata town, that is my tribe anyway it is so friendly. And Hull, it's never dull here, I mean that is very true and so there is so much going on here and I tell my friends and my family and colleagues “Hull is the place to come to”, and I have brought I think a few of my relatives to visit and they have fallen in love with the place but keep saying, you know Aberdeen is quite easy to pronounce Aberdeen, can you take us to Aberdeen so we can see where you used to live and I do that but I say please, we're in Hull, forget about Aberdeen, this is where we are now, let's be in Hull. So I love Hull, a fantastic place.
JW: The date you came to Hull was that 2001?
DH: Yeah, I came to Hull, I came for the interview in September of 2001. I remember the eve of the interview very well and sometimes there are some events in your life you can just never forget, that was 9/11. I was on my way here, I think I did three interviews in the course of that week and the next one was in Hull. I had gone for an interview in Ealing I think it was the Borough Council. After the interview I was walking along the High Road full of electronic shops, looking around and all the TV screens in, on display they were showing this occasion and I was going “What is happening?” So that is etched in my memory. So I came to Hull the following day, did the interview, went back and then I got the job all fine and I started work on the 21st of October 2001.
JW: Have you noted any changes about Hull in the time that you've been here?
DH: Oh yes lots and lots and lots because I work, I started work in the property section, Property Services Department of the council based in Bond Street in those days and, and managing the jobs and going around the council estates I mean I did see a lot of things. The stark difference of course in terms of architecture the red brick buildings and that was, you know, a bit of a lift for me. I got fed up with the granite, grey, dank and cold but here red brick, warm, very inviting, quite different, I loved that. And so in terms of the landscape yes, shops, nearly all of the shops were open, you know, on the council estates but as time went on, you know, the economy changed and so the footprint began to change and many shops were closing in the city centre. I remember that very well of course Woolworths closing and that was a shock for me. The very shop, the first shop to close and I miss it even today it is C&A in Aberdeen. That is where I bought all my clothes, C&A closing and everything I was shocked. I still go to the Amsterdam, I shop in C&A,I have a cousin there. Then I go to Hull here council shops were closing, businesses were closing, Woolworths shut down, now of course BHS has shut and there's talk of Marks & Spencer, but I hope they don't shut the one in Hull here but we never can tell. But all in all one big change was going to the, I used to get embarrassed bringing my visitors to Hull. If I could I'd bring them in by my own car. The embarrassment came from the bus station we had in those days, It was, it wasn't very nice I tell you about that bus station. So thank God that was demolished and we have St Stephens, marvellous. When I say come and visit me and when you come don't make the point, I’m not coming to drop you by car, come and meet me at the Interchange, lovely place. The physical landscape has changed in very many good ways really and of course with the City of Culture and the environment being changed again and things being done. Yeah, Hull has changed a lot, in some ways not good but in very, very many ways all for the better. So I think the future is orange, the future is bright for Hull.
JW: Do you have children?
DH: Ah yes, the first boy Joshua is 28, he was born in Reading. In Aberdeen after one year I'd gone down to Reading where we stayed for nearly 10 months. I was there to do some professional exams for my RSCS which I never did anyway even up to now, many reasons why. And so Joshua was born on the 23rd of March in Reading and - we went back to Ghana in September/October of 1988 so, and two quickly followed in Ghana again. A boy called Gideon, he's 24 now, and then Gloria was born in 1992 of October, no August yeah. Gideon he’s 24 now and then Gloria was born in 1992 of October, no of August, yeah, August. Gideon is 4th of April 1990. 1992 August then Gloria came along and then 2 to 3 months later we all had to move back to Aberdeen for me to study. So I've got 3 children. The two boys they've all left home now. Joshua and Gideon both live in London. Joshua works for Transport for London and Gloria is in Hull, she’s left home to my sad, sadness and she lives in Hull and her room is still there; Gloria if you're listening we want you to come back, you're always welcome but we meet her all the time anyway, she's a fine, lovely girl with her partner. And so 28, 26 and 24 two boys and a lovely girl. She is doing a Masters in Hull University but works for the City Council, off Stockholm Road depot. Yeah, she works in the section that deals with transport for children excluded from school, disabled families, that kind of thing, she just loves children.
JW: What about the future for you, what is your vision?
DH: Yeah my, the future – I'm not getting younger, I'm not very, probably in a few, maybe in a decade or less I might hang up my gloves in what I do but I can't ever hang up my gloves in charity work, that will always go on and whether I decide to stay here in my retirement or relocate to Ghana my links are so wide and deep that - wherever I happen to find myself, God knows, I will still maintain my charity links. I just love doing the things we do at the hospitals, in the schools, here - collecting bicycles for underprivileged children in Sierra Leone and Ghana. Yes I love doing that and so in the future and for now I don't know what will happen but if I do retire and go out to Ghana I'll still do charity work.
JW: Some people listening to this podcast, if you could give one succinct message to them, something that you want them to take away from listening to your story, what would that be?
DH: So, wherever you are and whatever God gives you to do, do it to the best of your ability and do it for the people around you. At the end of the day whatever we do should not be about us but for the people we serve. I see myself as a servant and I, so I think the message is serve the people in whatever location or capacity you find yourself.
JW: Dominic thank you very much.