Author's Note:
"This is a work of fiction. While inspired by real histories and philosophies, all characters and events are imagined."
Chapter 1: What If?
There was a strange smell in the classroom that morning. Not the usual chalk-dust and teenage sweat. No. This was different. A blend of damp uniforms, kerosene from the food seller outside, and the sour tension that floats just before something irreversible is said.
K.B. sat near the window, second row from the back, the wind teasing the frayed edge of his collar. His shirt had been washed too many times. The thread was beginning to give up. He tugged at the edge quietly as the teacher paced across the front of the class, shoes clicking like a judge walking through a courtroom.
"Social Studies," the teacher announced with an unearned importance. Mr. Osei. Bald, bitter, and always holding a piece of chalk like it owed him money. "Today we debate: What is Africa's greatest challenge?"
He drew a map on the board—lazy lines, over-exaggerated Ghana, shrunken Congo, no Madagascar. Africa, as taught to children who must not know its true shape.
"Alright, let's hear it. You, Abena."
Abena stood. Bright-eyed, fast-talking. "I think Africa's biggest challenge is corruption. Leaders who eat before the people eat."
A few nods. Mr. Osei nodded too. "A very popular answer. You. Kwaku."
"Dependency," Kwaku replied. "The white man still holds our purse. Look at the CFA franc!"
Murmurs of agreement. Mr. Osei smiled. "Excellent point. We are mentally and economically colonized."
Then he pointed. "Kwabena. What about you?"
The class went quiet. K.B. looked up slowly. His voice was never loud, but it had a way of sticking. Like a small nail in bare foot.
He blinked once.
"What if," he said, "Africa was one country?"
The silence was loud.
"What?" Mr. Osei asked, arms crossing like doors shutting.
K.B didn't back down. He sat up straight. "I mean... all these borders. They were drawn by Europeans. Not by us. What if we erased them? Made one currency, one government, one army. One Africa."
The class erupted. Some laughed like they'd just heard a joke about a goat marrying a lion. Others muttered. A few just stared.
"You want Ghana to share power with Nigeria?" someone sneered.
"Will we all speak Swahili then?" another boy asked.
"Imagine Zuma and Kagame sitting together," a girl in front chuckled. "Unity will kill us before it saves us."
Mr. Osei walked to the front, slowly. He wiped the board clean as if scrubbing out K.B.'s words.
"Sit down," he said. "Before you embarrass yourself further."
K.B. didn't move.
"I said sit down."
He sat, but not out of obedience. Something inside him had already stood up. Something taller than him. He stared at the map on the board—the blank space where countries used to be.
Why do we defend lines we didn't draw?
Why are we more loyal to borders than to brothers?
Why do we fear unity more than we fear hunger?
He didn't know yet. But he would.
Break.
After class, the corridors buzzed like a busy hive. Laughter followed him. But no one said it to his face. Not even when he walked past the seniors near the water tank. Only sideways glances. That Ghana boy. The mad one who wants to marry Africa to herself.
He reached the back of the school near the old generator shed. Uncle Sarpong was there, as usual, sweeping nothing in particular with a broom that had no spine.
"You shook the hornet's nest today," the old man said without turning.
"I just asked a question."
"Questions like that make men disappear in this country."
K.B. sighed. "Is it wrong to imagine a better Africa?"
The janitor chuckled, dry and scratchy. "The problem is not imagining it. The problem is surviving the imagining."
K.B sat on the wooden crate. The sun was too hot. The shade smelled of rust and spilled oil. He looked at his hands. Brown, dusty, trembling slightly.
"I don't want to be laughed at again."
Sarpong turned to him. Eyes that had seen coups and cries.
"Then stop dreaming," he said. "Or... start reading."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a book so old it had its own scent—pages browned, corners curled.
Africa Must Unite – Kwame Nkrumah.
"I read that when I was your age," he said. "And it nearly got me expelled."
K.B. took it like it was something sacred. A relic, a weapon, a truth wrapped in ink.
"Was he mad too?" K.B asked.
Sarpong grinned. "The best ones always are."
Home.
Evening crawled across the roofs like an old woman looking for her slippers. The house was quiet, except for the clink of pots from the kitchen. His mother hummed an old Ewe song. Not for joy—just habit.
"Your teacher called," his father said from the porch, without looking up.
K.B. stood still. Bare feet on cracked tiles.
"He said you were trying to lead a revolution in class."
K.B. said nothing.
"You think politics is a joke? You want to be gunned down like Sankara? Or dragged like Gaddafi?"
Still, he said nothing.
The man stood. Military posture. Retired but still rigid. "Focus on your books. Get into the army. Or something useful. No one feeds their family with ideas."
"But what if the idea feeds a continent?" K.B whispered.
His father didn't hear—or didn't want to.
Later that night, he sat on the porch, flipping through Nkrumah's book. The words bit and burned. Not because they were old. But because they were still true. All these decades, and the dream still lay like a sick man under the bed.
He looked up at the stars. Ghana's sky was too big to be trapped in one country.
Inside, his phone vibrated.
Unknown number. One message:
"You're not the first to think it. But you could be the first to try."
— The Oracle.
His heart froze. The Oracle? The blog he had found three weeks ago? The one nobody admitted to reading?
How did they find him?
Who were they?
Why him?
Why now?
He didn't know it yet, but this message was the start of everything. The first thread in a web that would stretch across borders, across languages, across lives. He would lose people. He would bleed. But right now, all he knew was one thing:
He wasn't alone.