by Maya Angelou
I said nothing.
Sheikhali turned and spoke to me directly. “I will marry you, for you are a good woman. In Mali the women will teach you to be better. If you are intelligent enough, you will learn enough. Because of me, you will be respected. But you must lose this White woman way of …” He said a word to Mamali, who translated. “Impatience.” Sheikhali continued, “Your father will come from America and we will talk.” For a second I tried to imagine Bailey Johnson, Sr., who was at least as proud as Sheikhali and as stiff as a penguin, leaving his perfectly furnished home in San Diego, California, to come to Africa, which he thought was populated by savages. It was impossible to picture my fastidious father even considering a prospective son-in-law who had grown up sleeping on the ground, surrounded by cattle.
I said, “I can’t marry you. I can’t go to Mali. Thank you, but … I can’t.”
He turned quickly to Mamali and spoke in Fufulde. Mamali dropped his eyes. When he spoke it was with regret.
“If you say no again, I will stop trying. I am a man, not a boy to be played with. This last time, will you …?”
“No. I cannot.”
Sheikhali stood a mile above my head and smiled. His even teeth glistened.
“You are still a good woman, but you are not so intelligent. You are a functionaire. Only a functionaire.” He spat out the words, turned and followed by Mamali, left the restaurant.
In French the word for civil servant did not sound as lifeless as in English.
Each morning Ghana’s seven-and-one-half million people seemed to crowd at once into the capital city where the broad avenues as well as the unpaved rutted lanes became gorgeous with moving pageantry: bicycles, battered lorries, hand carts, American and European cars, chauffeur-driven limousines. People on foot struggled for right-of-way, white-collar workers wearing white knee-high socks brushed against market women balancing large baskets on their heads as they proudly swung their wide hips. Children, bright faces shining with palm oil, picked openings in the throng, and pretty young women in western clothes affected not to notice the attention they caused as they laughed together talking in the musical Twi language. Old men sat or stooped beside the road smoking home-made pipes and looking wise as old men have done eternally.
The too sweet aromas of flowers, the odors of freshly fried fish and stench from open sewers hung in my clothes and lay on my skin. Car horns blew, drums thumped. Loud radio music and the muddle of many languages shouted or murmured. I needed country quiet.
The Fiat was dependable, and I had a long weekend, money in my purse, and a working command of Fanti, so I decided to travel into the bush. I bought roasted plaintain stuffed with boiled peanuts, a quart of Club beer and headed my little car west. The stretch was a highway from Accra to Cape Coast, filled with trucks and private cars passing from lane to lane with abandon. People hung out of windows of the crowded mammie lorries, and I could hear singing and shouting when the drivers careened those antique vehicles up and down hills as if each was a little train out to prove it could.
I stopped in Cape Coast only for gas. Although many Black Americans had headed for the town as soon as they touched ground in Ghana, I successfully avoided it for a year. Cape Coast Castle and the nearby Elmina Castle had been holding forts for captured slaves. The captives had been imprisoned in dungeons beneath the massive buildings and friends of mine who had felt called upon to make the trek reported that they felt the thick stone walls still echoed with old cries.
The palm tree-lined streets and fine white stone buildings did not tempt me to remain any longer than necessary. Once out of the town and again onto the tarred roads, I knew I had not made a clean escape. Despite my hurry, history had invaded my little car. Pangs of self-pity and a sorrow for my unknown relatives suffused me. Tears made the highway waver, and were salty on my tongue.
What did they think and feel, my grandfathers, caught on those green Savannahs, under the baobab trees? How long did their families search for them? Did the dungeon wall feel chilly and its slickness strange to my grandmothers who were used to the rush of air against bamboo huts and the sound of birds rattling their grass roofs?
I had to pull off the road. Just passing near Cape Coast Castle had plunged me back into the eternal melodrama.
There would be no purging, I knew, unless I asked all the questions. Only then would the spirits understand that I was feeding them. It was a crumb, but it was all I had.
I allowed the shapes to come to my imagination: children passed tied together by ropes and chains, tears abashed, stumbling in dull exhaustion, then women, hair uncombed, bodies gritted with sand, and sagging in defeat. Men, muscles without memory, minds dimmed, plodding, leaving bloodied footprints in the dirt. The quiet was awful. None of them cried, or yelled, or bellowed. No moans came from them. They lived in a mute territory, dead to feeling and protest. These were the legions, sold by sisters, stolen by brothers, bought by strangers, enslaved by the greedy and betrayed by history.
For a long time, I sat as in an open-air auditorium watching a troop of tragic players enter and exit the stage.
The visions faded as my tears ceased. Light returned and I started the car, turned off the main road, and headed for the interior. Using rutted track roads, and lanes a little larger than foot paths, I found the River Pra. The black water moving quietly, ringed with the tall trees, seemed enchanted. A fear of snakes kept me in the car, but I parked and watched the bright sun turn the water surface into a rippling cloth of lamé. I passed through villages which were little more than collections of thatch huts with goats and small children wandering in the lanes. The noise of my car brought smiling adults out to wave at me.
In the late afternoon, I reached the thriving town that was my destination. A student whom I had met at Legon had spoken to me often of the gold-mining area, of Dunkwa, his birthplace. His reports had so glowed with the town’s virtues, and I had chosen that spot for my first journey.
My skin color, features and the Ghana cloth I wore made me look like any young Ghanaian woman. I could pass if I didn’t talk too much.
As usual, in the towns of Ghana, the streets were filled with vendors selling their wares of tinned pat milk, hot spicy Killi Willis (fried, ripe plaintain chips), Pond’s Cold Cream and anti-mosquito incense rings. Farmers were returning home, children returning from school. Young boys grinned at mincing girls and always there were the market women, huge and impervious. I searched for a hotel sign in vain and as the day lengthened, I started to worry. I didn’t have enough gas to get to Koforidua, a large town northeast of Dunkwa, where there would certainly be hotels, and I didn’t have the address of my student’s family. I parked the car a little out of the town center and stopped a woman carrying a bucket of water on her head and a baby on her back.
“Good day.” I spoke in Fanti, and she responded. I continued, “I beg you, I am a stranger looking for a place to stay.”
She repeated, “Stranger?” and laughed. “You are a stranger? No. No.”
To many Africans only Whites could be strangers. All Africans belonged somewhere, to some clan. All Akan-speaking people belong to one of eight blood lines (Abosua) and one of eight spirit lines (Ntoro).
I said, “I am not from here.”
For a second fear darted in her eyes. There was the possibility that I was a witch or some unhappy ghost from the country of the dead. I quickly said, “I am from Accra.” She gave me a good smile. “Oh, one Accra. Without a home.” She laughed. The Fanti word Nkran, for which the capitol was named, means the large ant that builds ten-foot-high domes of red clay and lives with millions of other ants.
“Come with me.” She turned quickly, steadying the bucket on her head and led me between two corrugated tin shacks. The baby bounced and slept on her back, secured by the large piece of cloth wrapped around her body. We passed a compound where women were pounding the dinner foo foo in wooden bowls.
The woman shouted, “Look what I have found. One Nkran has no place to
sleep tonight.” The women laughed and asked, “One Nkran? I don’t believe it.”
“Are you taking it to the old man?”
“Of course.”
“Sleep well, alone, Nkran, if you can.” My guide stopped before a small house. She put the water on the ground and told me to wait while she entered the house. She returned immediately followed by a man who rubbed his eyes as if he had just been awakened.
He walked close and peered hard at my face. “This is the Nkran?” The woman was adjusting the bucket on her head.
“Yes, Uncle. I have brought her.” She looked at me, “Good-bye, Nkran. Sleep in peace. Uncle, I am going.” The man said, “Go and come, child,” and resumed studying my face. “You are not Ga.” He was reading my features.
A few small children had collected around his knees. They could barely hold back their giggles as he interrogated me.
“Aflao?”
I said, “No.”
“Brong-ahafo?”
I said, “No. I am—.” I meant to tell him the truth, but he said, “Don’t tell me. I will soon know.” He continued staring at me. “Speak more. I will know from your Fanti.”
“Well, I have come from Accra and I need to rent a room for the night. I told that woman that I was a stranger …”
He laughed. “And you are. Now, I know. You are Bambara from Liberia. It is clear you are Bambara.” He laughed again. “I always can tell. I am not easily fooled.” He shook my hand. “Yes, we will find you a place for the night. Come.” He touched a boy at his right. “Find Patience Aduah, and bring her to me.”
The children laughed and all ran away as the man led me into the house. He pointed me to a seat in the neat little parlor and shouted, “Foriwa, we have a guest. Bring beer.” A small Black woman with an imperial air entered the room. Her knowing face told me that she had witnessed the scene in her front yard.
She spoke to her husband. “And, Kobina, did you find who the stranger was?” She walked to me. I stood and shook her hand. “Welcome, stranger.” We both laughed. “Now don’t tell me, Kobina, I have ears, also. Sit down, Sister, beer is coming. Let me hear you speak.”
We sat facing each other while her husband stood over us smiling. “You, Foriwa, you will never get it.”
I told her my story, adding a few more words I had recently learned. She laughed grandly. “She is Bambara. I could have told you when Abaa first brought her. See how tall she is? See her head? See her color? Men, huh. They only look at a woman’s shape.”
Two children brought beer and glasses to the man who poured and handed the glasses around. “Sister, I am Kobina Artey; this is my wife Foriwa and some of my children.”
I introduced myself, but because they had taken such relish in detecting my tribal origin I couldn’t tell them that they were wrong. Or, less admirably, at that moment I didn’t want to remember that I was an American. For the first time since my arrival, I was very nearly home. Not a Ghanaian, but at least accepted as an African. The sensation was worth a lie.
Voices came to the house from the yard.
“Brother Kobina,”
“Uncle,”
“Auntie.”
Foriwa opened the door to a group of people who entered speaking fast and looking at me.
“So this is the Bambara woman? The stranger?” They looked me over and talked with my hosts. I understood some of their conversation. They said that I was nice looking and old enough to have a little wisdom. They announced that my car was parked a few blocks away. Kobina told them that I would spend the night with the newlyweds, Patience and Kwame Duodu. Yes, they could see clearly that I was a Bambara.
“Give us the keys to your car, Sister; someone will bring your bag.”
I gave up the keys and all resistance. I was either at home with friends, or I would die wishing that to be so.
Later, Patience, her husband, Kwame, and I sat out in the yard around a cooking fire near to their thatched house which was much smaller than the Artey bungalow. They explained that Kobina Artey was not a chief, but a member of the village council, and all small matters in that area of Dunkwa were taken to him. As Patience stirred the stew in the pot, which was balanced over the fire, children and women appeared sporadically out of the darkness carrying covered plates. Each time Patience thanked the bearers and directed them to the house, I felt the distance narrow between my past and present.
In the United States, during segregation, Black American travelers, unable to stay in hotels restricted to White patrons, stopped at churches and told the Black ministers or deacons of their predicaments. Church officials would select a home and then inform the un-expecting hosts of the decision. There was never a protest, but the new hosts relied on the generosity of their neighbors to help feed and even entertain their guests. After the travelers were settled, surreptitious knocks would sound on the back door.
In Stamps, Arkansas, I heard so often, “Sister Henderson, I know you’ve got guests. Here’s a pan of biscuits.”
“Sister Henderson, Mama sent a half a cake for your visitors.”
“Sister Henderson, I made a lot of macaroni and cheese. Maybe this will help with your visitors.”
My grandmother would whisper her thanks and finally when the family and guests sat down at the table, the offerings were so different and plentiful it appeared that days had been spent preparing the meal.
Patience invited me inside, and when I saw the table I was confirmed in my earlier impression. Ground nut stew, garden egg stew, hot pepper soup, kenke, kotomre, fried plantain, dukuno, shrimp, fish cakes, and more, all crowded together on variously patterned plates.
In Arkansas, the guests would never suggest, although they knew better, that the host had not prepared every scrap of food, especially for them.
I said to Patience, “Oh, Sister, you went to such trouble.”
She laughed, “It is nothing, Sister. We don’t want our Bambara relative to think herself a stranger anymore. Come, let us wash and eat.”
After dinner I followed Patience to the outdoor toilet, then they gave me a cot in a very small room.
In the morning I wrapped my cloth under my arms, sarong fashion, and walked with Patience to the bath house. We joined about twenty women in a walled enclosure that had no ceiling. The greetings were loud and cheerful as we soaped ourselves and poured buckets of water over our shoulders.
Patience introduced me. “This is our Bambara sister.”
“She’s a tall one all right. Welcome, Sister.”
“I like her color.”
“How many children, Sister?” The woman was looking at my breasts.
I apologized, “I only have one.”
“One?”
“One?”
“One!” Shouts reverberated over the splashing water. I said, “One, but I’m trying.”
They laughed. “Try hard, sister. Keep trying.”
We ate leftovers from the last night feast and I said a sad good-bye to my hosts. The children walked me back to my car with the oldest boy carrying my bag. I couldn’t offer money to my hosts, Arkansas had taught me that, but I gave change to the children. They bobbed and jumped and grinned.
“Good-bye, Bambara Auntie.”
“Go and come, Auntie.”
“Go and come.”
I drove into Cape Coast before I thought of the gruesome castle and out of its environs before the ghosts of slavery caught me. Perhaps their attempts had been halfhearted. After all, in Dunkwa, although I let a lie speak for me, I had proved that one of their descendants, at least one, could just briefly return to Africa, and that despite cruel betrayals, bitter ocean voyages and hurtful centuries, we were still recognizable.
The worthy Otu dropped his customary aplomb and rushed nimbly into the kitchen.
He whispered, “Madame, Nana’s driver is here. Madame, I didn’t know you knew Nana. His driver has come to get you. He is waiting in the car. It’s Nana’s Mercedes outside.”
He was shaken by excitement
and awe and the dual assault made him accusatory.
He peered discourteously into my face, “Madame,” [the friendly title “Auntie” was forgotten] “do you know the Nana?”
“Yes.” I gave him the answer dryly, shielding my own surprise.
One evening, months before, I had met the chief at Efua’s house and had spoken to him about Guy’s entrance into the university.
Although Conor Cruise O’Brien was then head of the University of Ghana, Nana Nketsia had been the first African Vice Chancellor, stepping down for O’Brien at his own decision.
The Ghanaian academic system, following its British model, accepted students who had completed a Sixth Form, which was equal to an American two-year junior college course. Guy had only completed high school, but I explained to the Nana that at home he would be qualified to enter our best institutions. My argument, assisted by the pathos of a mother appealing for a sick and hospitalized son, won the day.
Weeks later I was informed that Guy would be accepted if he passed an entrance examination. I had not seen the Nana since that first meeting, but I had heard much about him. He was an Ahanta Paramount Chief who, in ancient times, would have had absolute power. The modern Nana was fiercely political. He had been the first Ghanaian chief to be arrested for resisting British colonialism and had been educated in Britain, coming down from Oxford with double firsts, equal to the American summa cum laude. He was an adviser to President Nkrumah and Ambassador Plenipotentiary. Along with those staggering credits, Nana was handsome.
If Otu was shocked by the unheralded appearance of the Chief’s driver, I was stunned.
I waged a small war in my closet, selecting and rejecting what was to be worn to a chief’s house. As I walked outside, Otu, who had become a stranger, stood at sharp attention, his arms at his side, his eyes down.
“Good evening, Madame.” As if I didn’t have sufficient nervousness, he transferred his tension to me, and I barely greeted the driver who held the car door open.