I survived on lizards, studied with moonlight – Mornah recounts his childhood struggles

Bernard Anbataayela Mornah, a former national chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC), has related his childhood experiences in his hamlet of Sankana, which is located in the Upper West Region’s Nadowli-Kaleo District.

For the first time, the Nkrumahist is sharing his life story and describing how difficult things got for him to the point where he had to create his own means of survival in order to deal with the hunger he was experiencing at the time.

The youth activist and undisputed leader of Ghana’s serial protestors, Ohenewaa Kesse Boahen, revealed on CTV that he was forced to hunt and fry lizards for food.

“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.

He said that he had to study by moonlight and never had the luxury of using electricity or even locally produced lights.

“My mother will not give you her ‘Bobo’ lamp to study because she will complain 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 is up”, he recounted.