I didn’t want to make any friends to distract me from my plan, but one day, the children from the village had surrounded Afua, a birdlike girl who barely spoke, and were teasing her for not washing. I couldn’t help it—I broke into their circle, grabbed Afua’s wrist and dragged her out. The children shouted that I was smelly, too, but their words bounced off me and fell to the ground. Poor Afua burst into sobs and thanked me for saving her. Afua was small, but her armpits reeked like a grown-up who hadn’t washed for a few days. I told her to wash twice a day with a sponge. After that, she followed me everywhere, reminding me of Husseina. When she did talk, which was seldom, she told me bits of her story. Over time, I was able to glue together the pieces: her father had given her away because she was the sixth of nine children, and when the tenth child was born, her mother passed away. The man who had bought her had heard that missionaries were buying slave children to free them and so brought her to see Revd and Mrs Ramseyer. The reverend screamed at the man for such a preposterous suggestion, took Afua from him, and sent the man out of the Christian village with threats to send him to slave court.
The very first holiday was the Christmas of 1892, celebrating the birth of Yesu. I had been there for about three months and still hadn’t been baptized because I confessed to Mrs Ramseyer that I didn’t understand what it meant to be saved. She was surprisingly patient. She said I was the first person who had not just said yes. Many said yes to being baptized and went back to worshipping their idols when they left the mission. She said my honesty was good. Well, the whole truth was that I really didn’t believe their stories, not in my heart.
For Yesu’s birthday, they cooked a large duck, and we sat at the big table, which the family had covered with a red cloth, and we held hands and prayed, thanking God for sending his only son to come down to earth to die for our sins. The meat was dry and tasteless—the complete opposite from how juicy it had looked. Na would have taken that bird and made a stew that would have had everyone licking their fingers. Most of the bird was still there after this meal. After lunch, Mrs Ramseyer’s daughter Rose, with her always-pinched face, brought out a stack of brown-paper-covered gifts, which she gave to us and told us to open the next day. I could tell it was a book, and my heart sank thinking it was another Bible—I already had a Bible.
During holidays, the family let me, Afua and the others who stayed behind sleep in the main house. Afua and I shared a room. In it, we had two beds, a desk and chair, and a painting of Yesu on the wall. He had a pale face with blue eyes and long hair like Mrs Ramseyer’s. I really couldn’t understand why his death saved me. We couldn’t be more different.
I held the present in my arms as I drifted off to sleep and slept so deeply until I felt the presence of bodies next to me. I opened my eyes and beheld the faces of Afua, Cecile, Helene and John, the younger mission children.
“Time to open presents,” they shouted and dragged me down to the sitting room.
We sat on the soft carpet on which we often read stories. I tore at the brown paper covering my present and was pleased to find it wasn’t a Bible.
“It’s an atlas,” said Mrs Ramseyer, lowering herself to the ground to join us. “Mr Burtt thought you would like it.”
She brushed her palm over a green and blue circle and said, “This is the whole world.” She then pointed to the right of two circles that were joined together and said, “We are here.”
There was a big map of Africa in the sitting room, with the letters AFRIQUE, so the shape of Africa was familiar. I just didn’t know it was the land we lived on. Surrounding Africa, itself a light pink colour, was blue, which Mrs Ramseyer called “the sea”. The sea touched other lands but made up most of the earth.
As I studied the curves between the sea and the land, it hit me. If there was that much blue water in the world, Husseina could be anywhere. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The gift made the ground the sky; it shifted my balance and turned over my world. After that first dream, I thought I would find out about the blue waters and simply go there. I hadn’t realized how big and wide the world was.
John started making a horrible noise, thumping his palm against a small drum, and his parents—other missionaries from a place called Germany—laughed. I told them I was poorly and went back to my room.
I could only sound out the letters and they made no sense to me. Why would Richard leave me a gift I could barely use? Why was the world so big?
The other pupils came back to the school in the new year, and I decided I would do everything in my power to learn how to read properly. By Easter of 1893, I could piece together longer words and make meaning of them. Then, I took out Richard’s gift.
The atlas was covered in grey, with a black binding. Letts’s Complete Popular Atlas. I opened the page of the whole world. Where we were, where Mrs Ramseyer had pointed with her finger over Christmas, wasn’t even labelled as “the Gold Coast”. I wondered if I would find Botu on the map and if I could make my way back there. I flipped pages till I found a detailed map of Africa, and I spent so much time glaring at the map and sounding out letters that my eyes ached. I didn’t see Abetifi marked on the map, but I saw Jenne, the last place my baba said he was going before he disappeared. Then I saw Gurma. My heart raced. I knew our Gurma people stretched beyond Botu, but it wasn’t where Husseina was. I had to stay focused. Husseina had crossed the big sea and could be anywhere in the world, but not Gurma. I needed to find her. Instead I was stuck in a place where the people were only obsessed about a white man with drooping hair who died years and years ago. I screamed into my pillow.
I must have shouted too loudly, because the door cracked open slowly and Mrs Ramseyer shuffled in, her face squeezed in worry.
“What is wrong?” she asked.
I pointed at the atlas.
“It’s a few years old—maybe ten years old—but most places still look like this. You don’t like it?”
“It is really beautiful,” I said. “It just reminded me of my troubles.”
Mrs Ramseyer sat down on the bed and it creaked. “I have a lot of troubles, too. More like sadness. Sometimes, it helps to talk.”
She opened up her arms and I pushed my body into her flesh.
“What makes you sad?” I asked.
“Many things. I miss my home sometimes.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“I am here doing God’s work, and sometimes, if I close my eyes, it almost feels like home because I also grew up in a town in the mountains. But I left behind everything and came here with Fritz—Revd Ramseyer. There’s no snow here. No cheese… You might say I chose to do it myself, but it doesn’t take away the sadness.”
“You could always go back home,” I said. “I don’t know where home is.”
Mrs Ramseyer was quiet.
“Do you know what it’s like to not choose to leave behind your family? To live like an animal in some strange person’s house till they decide you are not useful to them any more? To lose part of yourself? To lose your twin?”
Mrs Ramseyer looked away from me, closed her eyes, and when she opened them, tears had filled her eyes. She took off her glasses.