ELIZABETH ARABA MENSAH-BONSU

Teacher and headmistress of Cape Coast who taught three generations to stand tall

The bell at Wesley Girls' High School rang, in Elizabeth Mensah-Bonsu's years, five minutes earlier than the timetable said. Nobody ever discovered who adjusted it, but every girl who passed through the school learned to be early.

Born in Anomabu in 1932, Elizabeth was the daughter of a fisherman and a Methodist class leader, and she entered Wesley Girls' in 1946 on a scholarship that her church congregation topped up with coins collected on Sundays. After teacher training at the Presbyterian Women's Training College in Aburi, she returned to Wesley Girls' as a teacher in 1955. For twenty-one years she taught English and Religious Studies, ran the school's debating society, and was housemistress to hundreds of boarders who now include doctors, ministers and a judge.

In 1971 she took a degree at the University of Cape Coast as a mature student, with three young children in tow, and in 1977 she became headmistress of Anomabu Methodist Girls' School, where she remained for fifteen years. She taught that a woman should never apologise for being the cleverest person in the room, only for being late.

She married Kobina Mensah-Bonsu, a land surveyor, in 1957, and was widowed in 2001. Her daughter Esi became a surgeon, her son Yaw a minister. She loved banku with grilled tilapia, the Methodist hymns of her childhood and the sound of the Atlantic from her veranda.

She died peacefully at home in Cape Coast in April 2020, as the country entered lockdown. Only a handful of family could gather for her burial, but thousands of former pupils watched the thanksgiving online. She leaves her children and seventeen grandchildren.

“Never apologise for being clever. Apologise only for being late.”