Sankofa(77)

I found the jar and returned to Kofi. He had struggled to his side. His eyes looked fiercely away from mine. He was like a wild bird with a broken wing.

“Help me sit up.”

I slid my arm under his body and lifted him upright. It reminded me of the months I spent looking after my mother.

“My shirt.”

The shirt was sewn to fit his form. For a few seconds, his chin stuck in the collar and he was trapped in fabric. He stayed still, breathing faster, while I eased the shirt over his face with my fingers.

“Now the cream on my back.”

My eyes stung when I twisted the jar open. I started with his shoulders, hunched forward in rigor. He flinched and then settled to my touch. My hands ran down the discs of his spine, over scar tissue, clumped in strange shapes, comets and jagged stripes, like lightning.

“The arms now.”

His biceps were still firm but the skin around them had begun to loosen.

“I’ll do the rest.”

I took the diary and left him alone, wandering out of sight. The bush was alive with invisible scurrying. Some trees were in bloom, others had begun fruiting: odd, green fruit, hard and round, the size of eggs. Birds had pecked at them, tearing away the skin and revealing bright pink flesh. I picked one off the ground. When I returned, Kofi was dressed and standing, fully himself.

“Try this.”

He held out a twig to me.

“What is it?”

“Chewing stick. Nature’s toothbrush.”

He worked his twig around his teeth and over his tongue until the stick turned to pulp. When he was done, he tossed it on the ground.

“Hundred percent biodegradable. Your turn.”



“Where are we going?” I asked when we had driven for an hour. The tank was full after a brief station stop.

“You ask a lot of questions. In the bush we could go a whole day without speaking because your voice might carry on the wind.”

“Do you miss being a guerrilla?”

“I don’t miss the hunger, but things were more straightforward then. Our clear objective was to drive the imperialists out. Of course, once that is achieved, you must then build a country. We built it well. Like this road.”

We drove past pedestrians, trudging along with no obvious destination. A few tried to flag us down. They flapped their arms like large featherless birds. Kofi did not stop.

I hadn’t called Rose since our last conversation. It was becoming more difficult to believe that I had ever had a life in London. How had I filled my days before I discovered Francis Aggrey’s diary? Brooding over Robert’s adultery, brooding over Rose’s weight, dead eggs that could never hatch.

And how did I spend my days in Bamana? Waiting for Kofi to turn his attention to me. Even now, after knowing what he had done, I still could not bring myself to fear him. Papa takes care of his children. That was what Kweku had said. Not even crocodiles eat their young.

The road began to wind along a large body of water. We were too far inland for the ocean, but the water did not run like a river. A lake then, but ten times larger than the lake in Gbadolite. A bridge stretched across like a salmon leaping from shore to shore. We drove to the center of the bridge and parked to the side.

“We’re here,” Kofi said.

“Where?”

“Mensahkro Dam. I call it one of the seven wonders of modern Africa.”

He moved stiffly when he got down from the car, shuffling instead of striding. I joined him at the bridge railings. Its metal fretwork vaulted above us, the bars finely woven as lace.

“This is one of the largest dams in the world.”

They had blocked the river with a concrete wall. It could only flow through six sluice gates, six artificial waterfalls. They thundered around us, making his voice small.

“My government built this dam to bring electrical power to Bamana and our neighboring countries. Nobody believed that a tiny country like ours could have such an achievement.”

“What was here before?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Before you trapped the river?”

“Before we tamed and harnessed the Volta River, a few villages.”

“Where are they now?”

“We resettled the villagers. Thousands were moved for the good of millions.”

Kofi wanted my approval. Not me. Francis Aggrey through me. Everyone he knew from his old life was either dead, like Thomas Phiri, or distrusted, like Adrian. Only someone who knew Francis could tell Kofi if his life’s work was in vain. Only me.

The villages had been destroyed for Kofi’s ambition. Houses, compounds, farms swept away by a man-made flood. The hubris of my father, to so completely wipe away a civilization, to permanently bury it.

“It’s a waste,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“There are still power cuts in Segu.”

Kofi’s grip tightened on the railings. No one had cared what Anna Graham thought in years. To have even this slight power over such a powerful man: it was intoxicating.

“Why did you come to Bamana?”

“To meet you,” I said.

“No. You came to meet a man in the past. There is a mythical bird we have here, Anna. We call it the sankofa. It flies forward with its head facing back. It’s a poetic image but it cannot work in real life.”