Nii Kwei had his audience of six sakawa boys, including Bruno, in the palm of his hand as he demonstrated brand new software and hardware. The former had been downloaded and the latter was fresh off the plane, brought in by a friend from the US, and paid for online with a hacked credit card account used on Amazon Prime.
“This one,” he explained to his attentive colleagues, “they call it Face2Face. It’s a kind of real time facial reenactment software.”
“Ei!” the youngest boy, Timi-Timi, exclaimed. “Nii, you are killing us oo!”
“Yeah, chaley,” another said, “your words are too big. Come down small for us, please.”
Nii grinned at their joshing but got serious quickly. “Okay, shut up and listen. You already know how we use fake technology for Skyping. We download a video from YouTube and convert it to media file with ClipConverter or KeepVid.”
They bunched together behind him, watching his laptop screen. “We go take as an example this one I already have of a beautiful Ghanaian woman I used for that American guy, Mr. Gordon. Now, formerly I exported the file to ManyCam, and on Skype I use ManyCam as my fake camera instead of the real one. Do you get it?”
The students nodded.
“Then when I’m Skyping with the American guy,” Nii continued, “he go see the video of this woman, but I can’t make the woman really converse with him, and sometimes her expression no match what the man is saying. So, maybe she dey smile when he hasn’t said anything funny. That’s why we tell the guy that the laptop make old, the microphone is broken, and the network make slow, so because of that we can only text the conversation.”
“And some of them go suspect it’s not real,” Bruno added. “That’s how we lose them.”
“Correct,” Nii said. “Now, what if we can make the woman smile, laugh, and converse with the guy in real time?”
“Not possible,” Timi-Timi said, looking at Nii as if he were crazy.
“Just wait, okay? I’m coming. Now, instead of exporting our media file to ManyCam, we open Face2Face and import the file of the beautiful lady. Once we do that, we play the clip for about three minutes so that the software can learn all her facial expressions—her smile and all that stuff.”
While that was proceeding, Nii moved to the nearby table where the Face2Face camera sat. He turned it on, adjusted some settings, and returned to his laptop. “Now we go to Skype. Instead of the real laptop camera, we click on Face2Face as our fake camera. Okay, now you see the video of the woman.”
Nii returned to the Face2Face camera and sat in front of it, tilting it so that it captured his face within a frame on the screen. “Bruno, you will be the American guy, okay? I’m going to call you and you get online.”
“Okay,” Bruno said.
The call came through and once the connection was established, the image of the lovely Ghanaian woman appeared on the laptop’s screen.
“Hello, my dear,” Bruno said in a brave attempt at an American accent.
Nii smiled broadly and batted his eyelashes, and so, correspondingly, did the beautiful lady on Bruno’s phone. But through the magic of the software, it was her smile, not Nii’s, and it looked natural.
“I’m fine, my dear,” Nii said, and with the tiniest delay, the lady on the laptop uttered the same words. Bruno jumped away; his jaw dropped. “Ei! Is it juju?”
“Don’t be afraid, my darling,” the woman said, parroting Nii.
For a moment, the boys stared at this piece of wizardry in stunned silence and then pandemonium erupted. They screamed and jumped around as if Ghana had just won the World Cup.
“Wait, wait!” Bruno said to Nii in wild excitement. “Let me try, can I try?”
Nii let him, and then each of the boys after him. Each time, the woman on the laptop responded. It was truly magical.
Later, Bruno accompanied Nii in his Range Rover to the spacious home he shared with two other sakawa boys and they ate kenkey and fish with shito.
“Chaley, Face2Face will change everything,” Bruno said. “Money will flow.”
Nii nodded, eating with relish. “It will be good, paa.”
“How did you find out about that Face2Face?”
“My friend in the States told me about it.”
“Ah, okay.”
They ate quietly for a moment, savoring the excellent quality of the kenkey.
“So, what about the American guy, Mr. Gordon?” Bruno said. “Tell me about that.”
“I made plenty money from him,” Nii said. “He seems to be a very nice man. In fact, I even started to like him.”
“Is that so? But still you were taking his money.”
Nii shrugged. “That’s how it is. A nice mugu is the best mugu.”
“It’s true,” Bruno agreed.
“Do you know he came to Ghana?” Nii said.
“Who? Gordon?”
“Yes. To look for the woman.” Nii found that funny and giggled. The first day he arrived in Ghana, he tried to call me and so I blocked him and changed my SIM card.”
“You should have answered the call and told him you were the lady’s brother and that he should meet you at some place,” Bruno said. “Then, from there, you rob him all his money and cell phone and everything.”
Nii frowned. “No, because you never know he might bring police with him to trap you. Somebody you are dealing with online you should never meet in person, you get me. It’s too dangerous.”
“Okay.” Bruno broke off a chunk of kenkey with his fingers and scooped up a healthy amount of shito. “So, this Mr. Gordon, did he return to States?”
Nii shook his head. “I heard he has gone missing and his son has come to town from aburokyire to look for him.”
“Really,” Bruno said. “What has happened to the man?”
“I don’t know, my brodda.”
“Maybe someone has butchered him with cutlass and buried him,” Bruno suggested.
“Maybe,” Nii said.
“Could you do that to someone?”
Nii looked up from the dish. “Do what?”
“Kill someone,” Bruno said.
Nii frowned. “It depends on the situation. What about you?”
“If I have to kill somebody—like I’m protecting my family or something like that, I will do it.”
“Yeah,” Nii agreed.
“Do you know I killed Kweku Ponsu’s crocodile?” Bruno said.
“Heh!” Nii exclaimed in disbelief. “Don’t lie.”
“It’s true. Kweku said because of that, I will be closer to meeting Godfather.”
Nii regarded him with new respect. “Then you have tried, paa,” he said. “You will be blessed. As for that crocodile, I will just urinate on myself if I face it.”
The two laughed till they were weak.