We arrived at a flat surface, where the trees grew sparse. I caught my breath and marvelled at how far up we had travelled. Kwame laughed and said it was a baby hill. We continued walking on a small trail and, below us, the trees appeared like green cotton. I had to admit it was beautiful. The sun hit its highest point. Richard asked for a break. We had packed fruits and boiled plantain, which Richard asked me to serve the porters, who had dropped their packages, sprinkled water on their bodies and were seated on the grass. I wondered what was going through their minds. Would these boys, some of them no older than me, carry things for the rest of their lives? It was the big lesson Aminah taught me. She said we had to keep dreaming, and once a dream became real, to make new dreams. My first dream was to find Husseina. And when we found each other, I’d dream bigger. I was beginning to read Richard’s language—he said once I got better, I could even go to the big town, Accra, and work for his people.
After travelling for about three days, we arrived in Abetifi, which, to my dismay, sat in the bowl of a mountain range much higher than the one we’d come from. Did the mountains ever move and fall in on themselves? What if a strong wind came and knocked them down? I wasn’t assured about this new place.
“Welcome back to Abetifi,” boomed a voice, and Richard, his white shirt now stained dusty red, rushed towards another white man, who was wider, taller and bearing an impressive rectangular beard. They folded each other in a hug that made me think of two elephants colliding.
Richard waved me over and my mouth grew dry. Behind the man came a mix of black and white people, and they were all teeth. This was the first time I saw a white woman. And there were two of them. One wore yellowish hair that strangely scraped her shoulders—my hair stood up and proud and only touched my shoulders when I braided it. The other had her hair rolled into a ball, so I couldn’t study it, and she looked older and dragged one of her legs. She was maybe mother to the other one. They both had breasts like my mother and sister. The woman with hair to her shoulders was slim with skin shaded almost orange. She looked unhappy. Or sad more like. The older one, who shone happiness and joy, came and placed her hands on my shoulder.
“Welcome, Hassana,” she said, and I exhaled in relief.
I hadn’t realized just how much I’d needed to be around women. Wofa Sarpong. Dogo… In Kintampo, except for Ma’Adjoa, the women had rejected me—mostly because I kept to myself—and even Richard had made me hold my breath. I missed my mother, grandmother and sisters.
In Richard’s language, children surrounded me, singing, “Welcome, Hassana! Welcome, Hassana.”
My chest burst open and I cried. I hadn’t expected to. The tears just fled from my eyes. The woman holding my shoulder drew me to her and patted my back. Then she led me into the biggest house I’d ever seen.
That evening, Richard broke my heart. He said he was staying three nights then heading for Accra. When I said I would go with him, he said in Kintampo it had been fine for me to stay with him because it was a village. In Accra, it would look bad if he made me live with him. Some might call me his slave—or worse, his prostitute. I didn’t know what a prostitute was. He’d said it in hushed tones. He said in Abetifi, I would be taken care of, I would learn to improve my reading and writing, and it was the best place for me. He would leave me with a Bible, to have something to remember him by. I was hurt because this seemed to have always been his plan. Even if I hadn’t told him about Husseina, I grew convinced he would have brought me here. When he said goodbye, it was as if he planned to see me again, but I knew it would be the last time we’d see each other. My hand lay limp in his. That night, my sadness brought Husseina’s dreams to me. I could always tell which ones were hers, because they were of places I’d never seen before.
I stand on a small mass of land surrounded by water. Water is everywhere. Below us, waves rush against the mountainside. The bones at my knees turn soft at the thought of falling. I fall, but land on my feet.
After Richard left, his friends folded me into their lives so fully that my anger with him floated away like a baby bird’s feather in the breeze. My new hosts had a lot to teach me, and while I found them strange—even after spending time with Richard—I needed them on my side, so I tried not to break their rules, which was not always easy. The best way to stay out of trouble was to become like Husseina—quiet and mouse-like. They lived so differently from my people, as if we were cats and they were dogs, or the other way round. I like cats, so we were definitely the cats. Unlike in Kintampo, where Richard lived in a home that could be uprooted by a gust of wind, here it looked like they meant to stay; they had used wood and sand and stone, and built homes that stood taller than those of the locals of Abetifi. The tallest was a building they called the church, with a tower topped with a cross. Richard once told me the cross was the most important symbol for Christians because a man called Yesu died on the cross to save all humanity from going to hell. When we read the Bible—which happened here a lot more than in Kintampo—I honestly liked the stories about Yesu less. I liked the older stories, where God came to the defence of his people.
Not long after I’d arrived in Abetifi, I got into a fight with a girl because she called me a slave. I lashed out and scratched her so badly, she bled from lines I’d etched in her face. Her family came to the mission because they wanted to have me caned, but Mrs Ramseyer, the older woman, sat us all down and taught us a lesson on turning the other cheek, like Yesu said. Not to pay for pain with more pain. She talked to even the girls’ parents as if they were the same age as the girl and me. As the family was getting up to return to the village, Revd Ramseyer said, his tone stern, that if I hit anyone again, I would be excluded from the mission.
I don’t know if this satisfied the family and I understood them—I had hurt their daughter and needed to be punished, not lectured to. In the older part of the Bible, the God of the Israelites commanded Joshua to destroy Jericho, because the people of Jericho had sinned against God and their sin would stain his chosen people. That spoke to me. If I got my hands on the people who had broken up my family, I would want my God to destroy them in the same way, collapse their walls, burn all their houses to the ground. In Abetifi, they said we should be more like Yesu, so on Sundays, at church, they always read from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Mrs Ramseyer was even more taken with a person called Saul who became Paul and kept telling me I should get baptized. It meant I would become a new person, a Paul. I was happy with the way I was. I didn’t understand why everyone—from Wofa Sarpong to these people—wanted me to change my name. I was happy to remain Hassana.
The other big building was the main house. At two floors, it was roomier than the church, even though the church was taller, and it was where Mrs Ramseyer and her family lived. The ceiling was high, and the walls were painted white and adorned with drawings and photographs of people I would come to learn were Mrs Ramseyer’s family in a place called Switzerland. It was comforting to learn that they, too, had left home. Although it still didn’t make sense to me why a person would choose to move if they weren’t forced to. If I had the choice I would still be in Botu. They decided to leave their home and got on a big boat to come here just to proclaim the word of the man called Yesu and to tell us how the way we lived before would hurt our souls. It sounded like madness to me. All the same, I liked the big house. In it were books and lamps and chairs that could seat more than one person. We, the children who lived in the mission house—girls who had been brought over by people like Richard—sometimes ate meals with them there, but only when the children of Abetifi weren’t around. The children of Abetifi had families they could return to on weekends and holidays. I found myself wishing that life could always be a holiday.