Peggy Cripps - Ghana

Ghana

Much to her surprise, Joe was already at home in Kumasi, when she arrived, having flown back urgently on the death of his granduncle, Yao Antony, whom he was to succeed as head of his branch of the nobility of the Ashanti people. She traveled to Kumasi on Christmas Eve 1952, where she was reunited with her fiancé, and met his family, for the first time, with him, on Christmas Day. On New Year’s Eve she attended the Watch Night Service at the Wesley Methodist Church in Kumasi, worshiping for the first time in the church which was to celebrate her funeral more than fifty years later. She also visited the campus of what was to be Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, then a one-year old teacher’s training college, for the first time; a campus where she was to send her children to primary school and where, at the age of 84, in the last year of her life, she received an honorary degree of doctor of letters, to her great delight.