A Funeral in Kumasi
*first published by Enkare Review
The MMT buses from Cape Coast to Kumasi run on time. Luggage is weighed and ticketed; seats fill up from the back and flip down seats are added into the aisle space. The teenager sitting next to Lucy borrows her novel, Arrows of Rain, and reads it as fast as he can. Failing to finish it before they arrive, he gives the book back without a word. The bus stop in Kumasi is packed and chaotic. Vendors saunter gracefully, balance baskets on their heads containing small plastic packets of water, sweets, crisps, plantain chips, cashews and toenail clippers. The centre of the marketplace has been shifted temporarily while a new bus station is built. Lucy and Ben take a cab to the Presbyterian boarding house where they will stay for a few dollars in spartan rooms that at least have a creaky fan and mosquito nets.
Guava Jam
Knocking on the front door of the Salem Inn on Saturday morning and calling for help, was an old woman, a Gogo, with two small children sitting a few metres behind her on the grassy verge, in nappies. I had been alone since Friday lunchtime in the house that Doug had taken over in the eastern cape after leaving Stellenbosch the year before, renting to Patricia and I, while we studied and taught at the university in Grahamstown. Various local drunks and old women had come to the house that morning; one young man was selling chickens, which I declined, only to find out later he had stolen them from his own grandmother to pay for umqombothi. There was a faint singing beneath my window, and I was reluctant to get out of bed again with the house to myself, planning a calm weekend reading alone, but the erratic calls for help persisted accompanied by the sound of crying children.
