Homegoing(50)

In the afternoon they walked by the Asantehene’s palace. It stretched so long and wide she knew it could fit over a hundred people: wives, children, slaves, and more.

“Can we see the Golden Stool?” Abena asked, and Ohene Nyarko took her to the room where it was kept, locked away behind a glass wall so that no one could touch it.



It was the stool that contained the sunsum, the soul, of the entire Asante nation. Covered in pure gold, it had descended from the sky and landed in the lap of the first Asantehene, Osei Tutu. No one was allowed to sit on it, not even the king himself. Despite herself, Abena felt tears sting her eyes. She had heard about this stool her entire life from the elders of her village, but she had never seen it with her own eyes.

After she and Ohene Nyarko had finished touring the palace, they exited through the golden gates. Entering at the same time was a man not much older than Abena’s father, wrapped in kente and walking with a cane. He stopped, staring at Abena’s face intently.

“Are you a ghost?” he asked, almost shouting. “Is that you, James? They said you had died in the war, but I knew that could not be!” He reached out with his right hand and grazed Abena’s cheek, touching her so long and so familiarly that Ohene Nyarko finally had to remove his hand.

“Old Man, can you not see this is a woman? There is no James here.”

The man shook his head as if to clear his eyes, but when he looked at Abena again there was only confusion. “I’m sorry,” he said before hobbling away.

Once he had gone, Ohene Nyarko pushed Abena along, out of the gates, until they were firmly back in the bustle of the city. “That old man was probably half-blind,” he muttered, steering Abena by the elbow.

“Shhh,” Abena said, though there was no way the man could still hear them. “That man is probably a royal.”

And Ohene Nyarko snorted. “If he is a royal, then you are a royal too,” he said, laughing boisterously.

They kept walking. Ohene Nyarko wanted to buy new farming tools from some people in Kumasi before they headed back, but Abena couldn’t bear the thought of wasting time with people she didn’t know when she could be enjoying Kumasi, and so she and Ohene Nyarko parted ways, promising to meet again before nightfall.

She walked until the tough skin of her soles started to burn, and then she stopped for a moment, taking solace under the shade of a palm tree.



“Excuse me, Ma. I would like to talk to you about Christianity.”

Abena looked up. The man was dark and sinewy, his Twi broken or rusty, she couldn’t tell which. She took him in but could not place his face among any of the tribes she knew. “What is your name?” she asked. “Who are your people?”

The man smiled and shook his head. “It does not matter what my name is or who my people are. Come, let me show you the work we are doing here.” And because she was curious, Abena followed him.

He took her to a patch of dirt, a clearing that was waiting, begging, for something to be built there so that the city sprawl around it wouldn’t seem like a broken circle. At first Abena could not see much, but then more dark men with unplaceable faces walked over to the clearing carrying tree stumps for stools. Then a white man appeared. He was the first white man Abena had ever seen. Even though everyone whispered that there was white in her father, to her, he had always just looked like a lighter version of herself.

Here was the man the villagers really spoke of, the man who had come to the Gold Coast seeking slaves and gold however he could get them. Whether he stole, whether he lied, whether he promised alliance to the Fantes and power to the Asantes, the white man always found a way to get what he wanted. But the slave trade had finally ended, and two Anglo-Asante wars had passed. The white man, whom they called Abro Ni, wicked one, for all the trouble he had caused, was no longer welcome there.

And yet Abena saw him, sitting on the stump of a felled tree, talking to the tribeless dark men.

“Who is that?” she asked the man next to her.

“The white man?” he said. “He is the Missionary.”

The Missionary was looking at her now, smiling and motioning for them to approach, but the sun was beginning to set, ducking under the palm tree canopies that marked the west side of the city, and Ohene Nyarko would be waiting for her.

“I have to go,” she said, already pulling away.



“Please!” the dark man said. Behind him, the Missionary stood up, ready to come after her. “We are trying to build churches throughout the Asante region. Please, come find us if you ever need us.”

Abena nodded, though she was already running. When she got to the meeting spot, Ohene Nyarko was buying roasted yams from a bush girl. A girl who, like Abena, had come from some small Asante village, hoping to see something new, to change her circumstances.

“Eh, Kumasi woman,” Ohene Nyarko said. The girl had hoisted her big clay pot of yams back onto her head and was walking away, her hips keeping a steady, swaying pace. “You’re late.”

“I saw a white man,” she said, pressing her palm against the wall of someone’s compound as she tried to steady her breath. “A church man.”

Ohene Nyarko spit on the ground, sucked his teeth. “Those Europeans! Don’t they know to stay out of Asante? Did we not just beat them in this last war? We don’t want whatever it is they are trying to bring us! They can take their religion to the Fantes before we finish them all.”