13

I went over every word of that letter in my mind as I sat on the bus. I’d come so close, so many times, to tearing it up and trying to say goodbye in person, because I couldn’t bear the thought of what each of them would go through reading it when I was gone. But I knew I couldn’t risk it. It had to be this way.

And it was that—leaving without saying goodbye, without really knowing for sure if I’d make it back—which choked me as I sat next to an equally silent Bright, and across the cramped aisle from Mr. Dovlo, the designated associate of Jack of Diamonds who was leading us to our new life.

The tro-tro minibus followed the course of the river west from Mepe, and for more than two hours I kept my face to the window, looking upward for fear of spilling shameful tears.

We changed tro-tros at Kpong. I noticed the large body of water as we approached the town, and the electricity-generating station, wondering if Akosombo looked anything like this. As we pulled into the lorry station, vying vendors clamored at our windows. They ran alongside the tro-tro, balancing wood-framed glass boxes on their heads, hawking skewered clams and sweet abolo made from cornmeal and wrapped in plantain leaves, dangling plastic bags full of the tiny fingerlings nicknamed One Man Thousand and river prawns fried a tantalizing red. On an ordinary day I’d have loved to look around, but this time I found the chaos overwhelming and was glad when we found our next tro-tro.

It was a battered old thing topped with a cargo load almost as high as the vehicle itself, tied over with foam mattresses. We had to wait inside it till all the seats filled up. Bright and I pooled our remaining money to buy half a bag of abolo and a sachet of water. The vendors passed them to us through the window. Mr. Dovlo bought a whole bag of abolo, along with two skewers of clams and a bottle of Coke. By the time the old boneshaker finally took to the road, the empty plastic bag and bottle were at his feet, and he was gnawing the last clam off the stick. He threw it on the floor, burped, and dozed off immediately, head lolling back.

I leaned my head against the window and fell into a stupor somewhere between sleep and dread. Beside me, Bright looked like he was in the same place. The landscape rose into hills around the river, but even the stunning views didn’t move us till we reached the Adome Bridge. Then we craned our necks to see the magnificent arch of the suspension bridge spanning the Volta. The scenery grew even more spectacular as the bus climbed up toward Akosombo.

“Look!” I said, nose to the window.

Bright peered over my shoulder. “What on earth are those?” He pointed at what looked like six gigantic red tubes far below us, sloping downward with water frothing beneath them in the river.

I shook my head, clueless, then stared transfixed at the thing behind them—a wall in graded heights, of proportions I had not even imagined. The Akosombo Dam itself, and above it, held in by its height and might, the Volta Lake.

As we got closer it took my breath away. Framed by sloping hills, it was vast, still, and splendid. The water was a different shade from the river—a slate blue-gray that blended in with the hills and sky, which were darker and lighter shades of the same color. Sunlight moved serenely across its surface in faint, restless ripples. Somewhere in the expanse beneath that placid splendor lay Togbe’s childhood home in its watery grave, lost in time.

We drove right down to the lakeshore and came to a stop, now on the other side of the great wall. Mr. Dovlo explained nothing to us, but we heard other passengers talking excitedly, and the word “pontoon” repeated. Neither Bright nor I was sure what that was, but we kept quiet. There were cars and other tro-tros lined up in front of us, their passengers waiting inside them too, and more soon stopped behind us. After what seemed an age, a strange-looking boat arrived—a huge, sprawling thing with a cabin at the top. The pontoon! It docked and lowered a ramp, and the vehicles drove on board. Bright and I looked at each other in surprise as our tro-tro followed. We didn’t know cars could go on boats.

The pontoon began to move, and we watched the dam recede. Water stretched in every direction as far as we could see, and we stared at it till we both fell asleep. We were woken hours later by the noise of it docking, and the buzz of activity that followed. Our tro-tro drove down the ramp and we continued our journey, bouncing off potholes and making several stops. The driver’s mate would hurry passengers off, getting their luggage from the back, or off the roof. As we drove on, the forest grew thicker at the sides of the road, and we saw squirrels and bush fowl scurry across it, and at one point, a dead snake, stretched out. It was getting dark when Mr. Dovlo poked Bright on the shoulder. The tro-tro, now almost empty, was slowing down.

Mr. Dovlo got up and took the lead, exchanging a few words with the driver while we hoisted our bags onto our backs. I caught the words “Kpando Torkor” as I filed behind Bright to the door. We alighted with cramped limbs and no idea where we were. It was bushy all around, with only three people in sight—a couple of smoked-fish sellers calling hopefully into the bus windows and a young man who came up and shook hands with Mr. Dovlo. They started talking, and he said something about “Massa,” and handed over money. Mr. Dovlo counted it and nodded, then pushed Bright toward him. I made to follow, but Mr. Dovlo grabbed my arm, “Not you!” he said, irritated. “Get back on the bus!”

“What!” Only now did I realize we were being separated.

“No!” whispered Bright, looking at me.

“Bright!” I cried as the young man nudged him away from us. Everything was happening so fast. The driver blew the horn impatiently.

“Sena!” called Bright, reaching an arm out for me, then raising it in desolate farewell as Mr. Dovlo pushed me toward the tro-tro. The driver was grumbling loudly.

“D’you want them to leave us here in this bush?” Mr. Dovlo snapped. “Hurry up, get in!”

I turned back at the doorway of the tro-tro, watching Bright recede in the faint glow of its taillights.

I felt another push on my shoulder and got back on board. I sat down mechanically, feeling as though I were in a bad dream. As we jolted back into motion, the tears finally started to slip down my face, and there was nothing I could do about it. Mr. Dovlo was sitting next to me now, and I had no idea if he noticed, but he soon started snoring despite the fact that the road was rippled like the surface of a washboard and we were being jerked up and down. Darkness closed in around the path lit by the vehicle’s headlights. A bloodthirsty mosquito whined in my ear, and I had to slap it away for more than half an hour till the tro-tro ground to a halt again.

We were now the only people on board other than the driver and mate. The driver shouted over his shoulder to us. I sat frozen, unsure what to do, enveloped in the sweaty aura of the man slumped on my shoulder, drooling out of the corner of his mouth. The mate came over and shook him, and he grunted and rubbed his face. “Come on, quick!” he snapped as though I were the one holding us up.

We stumbled down the wobbly metal step. A black expanse lay on one side of the road, fringed by distant specks of light—the lake, again. A brighter light beckoned a few meters away, down a steep bank that led to the shore. Mr. Dovlo pushed me in its direction, and it turned out to be a thatched, open-air ferry station. A single bulb hung from its ceiling, around which moths circled. Sleepy people were sitting and lying on benches fashioned from tree trunks, including women with children, and babies on their backs. On the ground were bags, sacks, head pans, and baskets, full of assorted goods including foodstuffs and live chickens. We found space on one of the benches, and Mr. Dovlo promptly fell back asleep. Mosquitoes found me again as I nodded off too, but their whining could not keep me awake this time.

What woke me was the hum of an approaching motor. Lights moved on the water as a huge, crowded canoe came in to dock. We rose in a body, people scrambling to gather up their wares as we hurried to the shore. Everyone was scratching mosquito bites. A boy hopped over the side of the boat, pulling a rope he fastened around a wooden post at the makeshift dock. Immediately people spilled out, stepping carefully onto cement blocks piled up in the water. We moved aside to make way, but some stayed on board, and we found space between them as we clambered aboard. The glow of the hurricane lanterns on the boat was dim, but I made out wooden crates around the edges, covered with straw, with sacks peeping out, and in some, bunches of plantain. Two goats and a sheep lay tethered near the prow, next to a couple of bicycles lying on their sides.

The engine started up again and we zoomed into the night—where to, I had no idea. It was even darker on the water than it had been on the road. A few people were chatting, but I didn’t understand the language or languages they were speaking. I lost track of time as we moved on, docking a couple of times to let passengers off. I tapped Mr. Dovlo timidly, afraid he might sleep through our stop, but he smacked me away, muttering, “Last stop, last stop!” It began to feel as though we’d be on that boat for the rest of our lives, but finally the boy called out, “Torkor!” and everyone scrambled to their feet.

“Let’s go!” Mr. Dovlo hauled himself up with effort, scratching at his bites.

This time we had to step into the water to get out, and he cursed as his shoes and pant legs got wet. As other passengers hurried up the banks of the shore to a dirt road, he hesitated, looking anxiously around himself, then smiled as a tall boy came toward us. “Yao!” he called, and muttered under his breath, “Thank God!”

“Mr. Dovlo, sah!” said the boy, barely glancing at me. Holding up a rechargeable lamp, he led us back the way he’d come, to a canoe farther up the shore, tied to a tree. I couldn’t believe it—we still hadn’t arrived! We lowered ourselves carefully inside, Mr. Dovlo irritably rolling up his wet pant legs, and moved out onto the lake yet again, my head throbbing to the drone of the outboard motor. As the wind cut through my T-shirt, I wrapped my arms around myself with the despairing feeling that this cursed day would never end. Half of me longed for it to be over, and the other never wanted to get wherever we were going.

After what felt like half an hour but might have been less, Yao cut the engine and paddled us to a standstill. We stepped ashore into a black void, and he swung the outboard motor over his shoulder and led the way with the lamp. The noise of crickets felt as though it would pierce my eardrums, and I prayed I wouldn’t step on any snakes or scorpions. If I’d ever been in the middle of nowhere, this was it. Just as I began to wonder if I was already asleep and dreaming, we finally reached the boat master’s place, or rather shack, or set of shacks, because that was what my new abode was.

The largest was unfinished and made from unplastered cement blocks with a tin roof, while two were just lean-to constructs of roofing sheets with nothing more, and the last an open, untidily thatched hut. There was no electricity, only a few hurricane lamps casting a dull glow.

A dog set up a furious din and ran at us, stopping short a couple of feet away and barking as though to waken the dead. In the dim light he looked bony, with a patchy coat. Yao tried to shush him, and he took to growling instead, still breaking into the odd bark.

“Wait here, please,” said Yao, going into the cement building. He emerged a few seconds later. “Please, Master is coming.”

A man emerged at the doorway in nothing but shorts, a bloated belly overhanging the open top where a button used to be. He peered into the dark while fumbling with the switch of a flashlight, which he shined into our faces.

“Dovlo!” He wiped a hand on his shorts and held it out, not even glancing at me. “Come!”

I made to follow but he said quickly, “Yao, take this one.”

Mr. Dovlo shot an arm over my shoulder faster than I’d seen him do anything that day. “Money first!” he said. “You know how this goes.”

We entered the gloomy little building, and the man switched off the flashlight. Petrol, raw fish, and stale sweat dominated a battle of odors for the stuffy space. The central feature of the front room was a rusty folding metal chair with a wooden stool below it that held a plastic plate sporting a bare fish spine and tail, and empty corn husks from what must have been a ball of kenkey. A row of large ice chests lined one wall, and a couple of tin trunks the other, one with two flashlights on top, and discarded cell batteries littered around them. Next to them was an untidy heap of fish traps. A hurricane lamp stood on the bare cement floor, and fishing nets were bundled in three corners of the room. In the fourth sat the outboard motor, and behind it wooden paddles propped against the wall. Upside-down cockroaches dotted the floor here and there, one still moving its endless feelers, and a clock on the wall read ten past midnight.

The man excused himself and batted aside a cloth curtain in the doorway of the back room. He returned with a wad of dog-eared bills. Mr. Dovlo counted them and looked up:

“It doesn’t reach o!”

“Ah!” snapped the man, passing a hand over his shaved head. “You forget I have to pay the boy too?” He pointed at me.

“Yeah, but this is Jack D’s share, and it’s not up to what he said!” Mr. Dovlo pointed at the notes. “Add hundred!”

The man scoffed as if it were the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Mr. Dovlo stared stonily at him. He dropped his smirk and sighed. “If I add hundred the boy will do five years o!”

Mr. Dovlo shrugged as if that were the least of his problems and held out his hand for the rest of the commission.

The man dug into his pocket with a long-suffering sigh, the dim light gleaming off a sprinkling of curly gray hairs on his saggy pectorals and belly.

Five years! It rang like the school bell in my head as he dumped the notes into Mr. Dovlo’s hand. I had barely been five minutes in this place, and I longed to flee.

“Go!” said Mr. Dovlo, turning to me.

If only it were a cue for my escape, but it was his farewell, and the extent of my new master’s welcome. I stumbled outside, glad to be free of them both, though my stomach crawled with fear of the unknown. The boy, Yao, beckoned me to one of the roofing-sheet shacks. As soon as we entered its musty warmth, he slumped onto a mat next to another sleeping boy. I had only a few seconds to make out the shapes of more boys on straw mats next to each other before he blew out the hurricane lamp. Luckily, I’d glimpsed a space between two of them before darkness descended, and I groped my way to it while Yao seemed to fall into instant slumber.

I lay there breathing hard but couldn’t even hear myself above the snores and sleep rattles of the others, who might as well have been unconscious. The darkness was so total it felt as if my eyes were shut, though they were wide open. My throat was parched, and my belly growled. I remembered the half-eaten cob of roasted corn in my backpack, a last remnant from the snack corner that morning.

That morning! It felt like years ago. And school felt like a memory from another universe. I had to stop and convince myself I was still in the same world, that this moment really was part of the same interminable day, now finally at an end. I reached for my backpack on the floor next to me and groped inside it. I drank the last gulp of water I’d saved in my bottle. Then I nibbled grains of corn off the cob, savoring the slightly burnt taste as if I’d never eaten roasted corn before.

At first, I felt self-conscious, worried about waking the others, and awkward eating alone in their midst, but I needn’t have worried. Every one of them was dead to the world. Another memory sparked in my brain, impossibly distant now, of eating roasted corn with Togbe and Grandpa Dodzi at the creek, then going into the water with them and watching time roll away as they took their last swim. What different universes existed within this one world of ours!

As hunger and thirst slowly receded, exhaustion finally loosened the grip of dread that had held me rigid all day. Panic flared through my mind one more time, but I quelled it with the thought of what I was going to earn. The master had said it in so many words—my reward for whatever awaited me in this nightmarish new world into which I had enlisted.