The problem with being ‘peripatetic’

Don’t worry, if you don’t know the meaning of “peripatet­ic”.

I didn’t know either.

Until I became – “peripatet­ic”!

I first encountered the word when I visited the United States in 1968. I had been invited to participate in a “Foreign Jour­nalists Programme” that took place annually at the University of Indiana (Bloomington).

Indiana in autumn (or what the Americans call ‘The Fall’) was a sight to behold. Bloom­ington was close to a vast forest, and as one drove a few miles away from the University, one encountered the most amazing colours in the foliage of the trees that stood close to the roadside. And beyond…and far yonder.

The scene under the skyline was like the deliberate creation of a very good human art­ist, not a beauteous tapestry accidentally woven by Mother Nature and stretched over the landscape.

One could discern leaves that were in the process of changing colour from green to a kaleido­scope of other colours – gold­en brown, interspersed with purple and/or lilac; a golden sheen shining through shades of red! Just beautiful beyond words.

As someone born and bred in a green “rain forest”, known as Kwaebibirem, I’d always thought myself blessed to have been exposed to the beauty of luxuriant vegetation from a young age. Indeed, I would have laughed at anyone who told me I would ever be “envious “of the beauty in a forest situated somewhere else in the world. But, then, I went to Indiana, and at the best time of year to be compulsorily disillusioned.

Kwaebibirem alone could offer to the appreciative eye the beauty of foliage? I was robbed of that bit of boasting. I became humbler.

Mottos penned on the sign­boards of Ghanaian passenger lorries ran through my mind: thick “Dade bi twa dade bim’ (iron pass iron!); “travel and see!”; “aboa bi akum King Kong”! (Some worse monster has laid King Kong low!) etc.

One of the requirements of the journalists’ programme of which I was a participant, was that one should go and work on an American newspaper for a month or two. Before I left Accra, a friend at the informa­tion section of the US Embassy recommended to me, a newspa­per in Palo Alto, California. He said I’d love Palo Alto.

But the director of the programme, Mr Floyd Arpan, suggested that I go, instead, to Louisville, Kentucky – to work with the prestigious Louisville Courier-Journal.

He told me that when I got to Louisville, I should go and see “the peripatetic Assistant to the Executive Editor, Mr John Herchenroeder.”

That left me with two prob­lems: to my shame, I didn’t know what “peripatetic`’ meant, and I also didn’t know how to spell “Herchenroeder!” But I wasn’t going to let down African journalists by admit­ting to an American organiser of an international journalists programme!! That there was anything in the world I didn’t know!

However, there was no Goo­gle in those days! So I had to wait until I was able to go to a library to look up “peripatetic” in a dictionary.

And there it was: “travelling from place to place.”

Oh, so Mr Herchenroeder didn’t stay at one place whilst working for the paper? Suppose he wasn’t around when I got to Louisville?

Fortunately for me, he was at post when I arrived at the Courier-Journal.

As for that hard-to-pro­nounce name of the guy, no sooner had I begun to try and pronounce it than the recep­tionist took over and finished the job for me. Obviously, his name was a well-known slayer of tongues at the paper! And so it should: he’d been acting as the paper’s pointman who dealt with readers’ complaints – a position that was later for­malised and was to cement his name into history as America’s first “Newspaper Ombudsman” (who arbitrated settlements of complaints between the news­paper and its readers.

I found Mr Herscheroeder at his desk, and he was a very big man with a personality that was friendly and welcoming.

He promptly arranged for me to attend a function to be ad­dressed by the wife of Mr Hu­bert Humphrey, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. At the gate I said I had been sent by the Courier-Journal.

The man in charge of ad­missions asked me: “Who at Courier-Journal”?

I replied: “Mr Herschenro­eder!”

He let me in. I heard him mutter: “Anyone who can utter that name without batting an eyelid must be authentic!”

Yeah — America in election year can be fun. I don’t think even Trump can ruin the current election, try though he might!

BY CAMERON DUODU

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