GHANA STUDIES / Volume 11 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 2010 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 47 HARD WORK, DETERMINATION, AND LUCK: BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES OF A NORTHERN GHANAIAN ELITE1 CAROLA LENTZ Introduction There was a school around and I saw the pupils walk to school and back every day, so I was very interested in it ... I wanted to become a doctor because I wanted to treat people and also because you don’t sweat like how a farmer would sweat on his field ... I wanted to be someone who is different from the people in the village... I said I wouldn’t follow the cows and I wouldn’t go to farm. So my father had to send me to school ... Because I was already decided, he couldn’t change my mind, so he said “o.k. I have to give you the freedom to do what you want” ... He thought I would refuse to go to school on the way, so he allowed me. ... If you agree to whatever the people say, they wouldn’t mind you. But if they tell me that I shouldn’t go to school and I don’t listen to them and I say I want to go, they will allow me to go. —Interview with Matthias A., Berlin, 28 June 19892 The above quotation is taken from one of the biographical interviews with highly educated men from the Upper West region of Ghana which I began 1. This paper is part of a larger research project that I am conducting jointly with Andrea Behrends (Department of Anthropology, University of Halle) who explores the biographies of educated Dagara women while I concentrate on the men. Earlier versions of the current paper on narrative strategies have been presented by Andrea Behrends and myself jointly at a panel during the African Studies Association annual meeting of 2004 in New Orleans, and by myself at the Fourth Rhetoric Culture Conference at the University of Mainz in 2005. Many thanks go particularly to Andrea Behrends for all the discussions and joint efforts that went into the arguments of these papers. Due to time constraints, however, we have decided not to co-author this article, and I shall therefore present solely my analyses of male biographies and not include material on Dagara elite women. For the particular predicaments of women, see Behrends 2002a and 2002b. 2. All names have been anonymised with the exception of a few cases in which I have been able to get an authorisation from my interview partners for the quotes used in the text. 48 Ghana Studies • volume 11 • 2010 conducting in the late 1980s in the context of a larger research project on the history of ethnicity, migration and elite formation in this relatively underprivileged rural backwater area. At the time of our first interview Matthias was still a university student and had just won a scholarship to study in the Soviet Union. He was determined to “go the whole way,” as he put it, and was convinced that one day he would enter the ranks of the well-paid professionals and belong to the leaders of his people. When I met him again in early 2007 in Accra, he had long since successfully completed his studies in Russia, despite the political turmoil, university reorganisation and anti- foreigner unrest that accompanied the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He was now working as an engineer, after initial difficulties in finding adequate employment after so many years abroad, and he was optimistic that with his qualification and perseverance he would eventually make his way into his company’s top ranks. Matthias’ narrative about his school days is a typical example of the stories, ideas, and arguments which my interlocutors presented when they wanted to explain their educational careers or account for the “failure” of their “less fortunate brothers and sisters,” as they often called their village kin that had never had formal schooling. Matthias comes from a Dagara peasant background and was the first highly educated member of his immediate family. Compared to earlier generations of educated Dagara men and women, however, he can be regarded as...