9

Second term began, and it was good to see my schoolmates again, especially Bright and Keli. But I never seemed to have enough time for anything because I was trying to split myself between studies, farmwork, house chores, and Togbe. He’d tell me he was fine, and I should go study—Exams are in less than six months, vinye!—but I couldn’t shake a sense that my time with him was slipping away, and I longed for the carefree hours spent listening to his stories. Bright helped me with schoolwork, and I began to dare hope for decent BECE results.

I couldn’t believe it when Easter arrived. Maybe it was because I was trying to cram so much into my days, but I felt as though time were in fast-forward, dragging me helplessly along. During the school break I did my work on the farm as quickly as I could so I could spend time with Togbe at home. The dry season was at its peak, and I could see how the heat tired him out. He’d sit in his chair on the veranda weaving mats or fish traps, or mending tools and household implements with Mawuli and me while Ma and Klenam cooked. When we made pots, he’d help pinch them into shape, or roll out the coils of clay. From time to time, he’d stop what he was doing, take his handkerchief out of his pants pocket, and mop away beads of sweat on his forehead.

Sometimes we helped him pick through bundles of herbs, and he’d tell us all their healing properties. He instructed Ma how to prepare them. He drank green and brown concoctions or just threw the herbs into a steaming pot and covered his head with a cloth to inhale them.

He always had a topic for us to argue or laugh about, and he never stopped making jokes and telling stories. If a chicken strayed too close to the cooking pot, his tale was about a reckless chicken. If a spider ran up the wall, he had a Kweku Ananse story for us. When early rains began to pitter down, and Ma and Klenam each grabbed a ring of the coal pot and rushed it carefully to the veranda, he talked about the never-ending circles raindrops made on water, and we knew we were about to revisit the boy by the river.

I missed those times when school reopened for the third term. And I could tell Togbe missed them too. We still spent time together, but everyone was busy, and me most of all, because I had to study harder than ever for exams. Togbe grew leaner still and, for the first time, began to use a walking stick. I did not like to see my strong Togbe unsteady on his feet like that.

One night at the beginning of May I had to help him into bed. “Togbe,” I said, “please, let us take you to hospital in the morning.”

“They will only kill me quicker, dear boy!” he said, breathing hard.

I knew what he meant, and that he was probably thinking about Grandma Edem. Ma had told me how she died. One day while diving she’d got her foot stuck in a rock crevice, and by the time her fellow clam pickers reached her she’d inhaled too much water. They were able to revive her, but her lungs were never quite the same. It was pneumonia that killed her in the end, but I knew Ma and Togbe felt she’d still be with us if the hospital had taken better care of her.

I hated the thought of Togbe being treated poorly too, of nurses talking down to him, and doctors fobbing him off with quick fixes instead of listening to him because he was an illiterate old village farmer. I knew also, though he never said it, that he didn’t want to die in hospital like Grandma, and Grandpa Dodzi.

I drew his sleeping cloth over him, but he asked for his wool blanket. The rainy season was taking hold and he now wore a heavy cotton smock each day instead of his light cloth draped toga-style over one shoulder. I took out the gray blanket from an old tin trunk under his bed and covered him gently, tucking it around his shoulders. I put out the light and bade him good night.

I heard his breathing slow, and I thought he’d fallen asleep. Mawuli was snoring gently next to me. I turned over and closed my eyes. I prayed quietly, a single prayer—that God would restore my Togbe to health. Then I tried to fall asleep, but my mind was racing. I turned back over and saw he was awake too, watching me toss and turn.

“Shall I tell you a story?” He patted his bed for me to come and sit, and he spoke softly so as not to wake Mawuli. I listened to his soothing voice, treasuring every word as he began a tale about the boy by the river.

When news came that the boy’s village was to be flooded to make a mighty lake and dam to electrify Ghana, it seemed like a crazy rumor, but it would not go away. It felt like a nightmare, but there was no waking up from it. It was real, and there was nothing anyone could do to change it.

The family began preparing to move to a resettlement village on the shore of the future lake. It was a sad time for everyone.

“I shall not go with you,” announced their Togbe Nutifafa. “I’m an old man. I am no use without the river, and I will not live to see it desecrated.”

His son, the boy’s father, sighed. “I know how you feel, Da, but due rites will be performed to appease the spirit of the river. That is what the government people have promised.”

“The mighty Volta? Can they control it once they start messing with it?”

“It’s not as if we can stop them!” His son shrugged.

“Their madness will bring misfortune upon us all!”

“But we’re helpless, Da! We can only pray we live to enjoy the electricity they’ve promised.”

“I don’t need electricity! I’ve lived my whole life without it. And I cannot make a new start in some man-made village!”

“But we can’t leave you here to drown! You heard what they said—once the lake starts to fill, this whole place will be underwater, whether we like it or not! We have to get away!”

“If our sites of worship, sacred groves, and ancestors’ graves are to be abandoned to the fishes, then I shall stay with them!”

“No, you won’t!”

The old man was adamant. “This is my home, and I shall find my resting place here. Mami Wata will help me! And may the Almighty help my people!”

They hoped he was just talking as old people sometimes did, when fantasy and reality lived side by side in their heads. But the boy knew that, despite his age, his Togbe’s mind had never been like that.

After that day, to his surprise, the old man began to decline rapidly. His muscles wasted away, he seemed to shrink and hunch over, and within a few months, he was small and frail. A week before the family were due to leave, they began packing his things. He forbade them to touch them—“I have told you my will! Thwart it at your peril, for I am guided by the ancestral spirits.”

The look on his face and the tone of his voice were such that no one dared disobey. He told them his last wishes, and they promised to respect them. The day before they left the village for good, he asked the whole family to see him to the bank of the river. He said goodbye to each one of them. Then he asked the boy to row him out onto the water. As he boarded the canoe, he said to them,

“Meli nawo! My spirit is with you, wherever you go.”

The boy rowed out into the river, and his Togbe sat, birdlike, wrapped in his old cloth. The smile on his face was so peaceful and eager that the boy did not feel any sadness. They glided on in silence, the water shimmering green around the boat, till the village was out of sight. They slid past islands where the two of them had spent magical times, and they smiled together.

The old man folded his arms on the prow of the boat and rested his chin on top of them, looking down into the water. Time slipped by, and the boy thought he had fallen asleep. But suddenly, he held up a hand and said,

“Slow down!”

Up ahead, bubbles were rising from under the water.

“She is here! This is where you must leave me.”

“What!”

“Do not be afraid, she is our friend! She will take care of me.” He rose to his feet, holding on to the side of the boat.

“Togbe!”

“Vinye! You will find me in everything we have loved together.”

He slipped easily over the side of the canoe. The boy thought he would disappear under the water, but his head remained above it. He was being borne up by something down there, beneath him. With a jolt the boy remembered the exact feeling, though it was many years ago. Mami Wata.

They moved slowly away, and he watched till they were out of sight and the current of the river flowed undisturbed around him, the sun glancing off its ripples.

He turned the boat around and headed back to the village.

Togbe leaned against his pillow, his eyes far away. I knew what he was telling me.

“So,” I asked, my throat suddenly tight, “did you find him in the things you had loved together?”

“More every day. And I found him in you.”

“In me!” I was startled.

“There’s so much of him in you! I know you will be a great man, just like him. And you are one of the things we have loved together.”

“But he never knew me!”

“Oh, he knows you, dear boy! And one day, you will know him too.” Togbe cupped my cheek in his hand. “Vinye,” he said, “I hear his call! And that of Edem, and other dear ones waiting for me!”

“No!” I shook my head.

“I know now why he was so happy that day. I too cannot wait to see him again!”

“Stay with me, Togbe, please!” I clutched at him.

“I will, dear boy! You too will learn to find me in all that we have loved together.” He wiped a tear from my cheek. “It is as it must be. But the different worlds time calls us to inhabit need not keep us apart! And one day, when the time is right, I too shall call you back to me. And what joy shall be ours!”

He hugged me, and we held on to each other till we grew sleepy. Then he touched my cheek again and bade me good night. To my surprise, I slept deeply. And when I woke in the morning, Togbe lay motionless.