“What is your real name?” I asked him.
They laughed.
“Let me introduce you formally,” said Anokye, “Captain Ekem Ferguson, U. S. Marines, also known as Crash. Professor Kofi Boafo. Boafo, as you know, means ‘helper.’ Kofi was once professor of electrical engineering at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, for which reason he is also sometimes called Kofi Kanea (that is to say ‘Kofi Light,’ or ‘Kofi Electricity.’) He is also known, to his embarrassment, as Mansa (which is a girl’s name, the name of a girl whose part he played years ago in a play at the boys school he attended) and sometimes as Saman (which is an anagram of Mansa and which means ‘ghost,’ a title conferred on him by his friends to honor his skill as a detective.) Like many Asante, he is a man of many name
