Feast of Oneness

Nothing had been decided yet. Kofi had been accepted to two other schools: The University of Cape Coast and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, at his mama and tata’s behest.

If they had it their way, he’d be committed to following his tata’s footsteps; pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering and remaining forever in Kumasi.

“Ghana was built for you young ones,” his tata said. “You should at least contribute something to it.”

A liberal arts education did not align with his view of success. According to his tata, he should be charging towards the future, committed to rebuilding Ghana in its own modern image through scientific pursuit rather than reflecting the past legacy of the Castle Schools his own tata attended.

Kofi had seen photos of his nanabarima, a thin boy washed out in his white uniform, lined up with the other school children behind missionaries sporting khakis, safari hats and knee-high socks, as if on a hunt. He imagined confronting them in their own practiced English, equipped with their psalms and sonnets, but also with the words of African authors and oralists who created a conduit between cultures, a path to rediscovering their long-surpressed roots, just as his favorite poet Kofi Awoonor had done.

His tata had his own thoughts on that matter.

“Those English invaders, they forced their language, religion, tradition, everything,” he said, shaking his head. “You will not be like that, Kofi. You will forge your own way.”

Kofi hid his acceptance to Oxford in leaf of his science book, taking care to only steal a peak when his parents’ backs were turned.

His tata once caught him grinning a bit too hard over a chapter on mechanical physics.

“Ah, the look of a future engineer,” he said as Kofi held the book closer to his chest.

“Maybe,” Kofi said, the cover slipping against the sweat on his palms.

Mr. Adjei had been the one to write his recommendation letter for Oxford and the first to congratulate him when he got in. They celebrated in secret behind the shanty door of Mr. Adjei’s compound where he had boiled peanuts, fried plantain, and avocados stuffed with cold smoked fish all laid out on the coffee table and a pitcher of fresh guava juice to wash it all down.

“Today is an important day,” said Mr. Adjei, lifting his glass. “To the future of Ghana.”

​Kofi joined in cheers though nothing had been decided yet. The ballots were still uncounted, and Kofi had yet to vote. It would be his first time voting in Ghana’s general election.

​Truthfully, Kofi was still on the fence about who he would cast his ballot for. He had listened to all the speeches, read all the campaign signs, and endured all the calls for support from his tata, his mama, his Uncle Okoto, and even Mr. Adjei.

​“I believe there is one candidate who will be the leader Ghana needs today. Steady and true. I think you know who I am talking about but, of course, the choice is yours, Kofi,” said Mr. Adjei.

​Of course, he knew. The flag of the National Democratic Congress hung proudly from Mr. Adjei’s window railing; stripes of red, black, white, and green, cascading beneath an eagle’s head, an umbrella swaying in the wind.

He heard a similar plea from his tata this morning except, instead, for the New Patriotic Party Candidate.

​“You must vote for the honest choice, Kofi,” his tata stressed. “We cannot lose Ghana to more corruption, no matter how hard the other side tries to rig it against us.”

​ Outside his home was large red, white and blue poster staked deep into the dry earth. VOTE NPP, it professed below an enlarged photo of the candidate’s face, a slight sheen on his teethy smile, and an elephant trumpeting the beginning of a new era.

​Signs. Everywhere Kofi looked, there were signs hoping to lead him to the “right” path.

​A squeeze on Kofi’s shoulder brought him out of his mind fog.

​“I know you have a big decision to make,” said Mr. Adjei, slipping a tattered book into Kofi’s hands. “This is for you. Maybe it can help give you some direction as it has for me.”

Kofi thumbed through Mr. Adjei’s dog-eared copy of Rediscovery, the earliest of Awoonor’s collective works; written after his exile, but before his imprisonment and assassination.

When our tears are dry on shore

and the fishermen carry their nets home

and the seagulls return to bird island

and the laughter of the children recedes the night

there shall still linger the communion we forged

the feast of oneness which we partook of.

Kofi imagined the late poet, a recent graduate from the University of London, scribbling away on the port facing his homeland, echoing the oral tradition of his Ewe ancestors through the filter of Dante, Shakespeare, and T.S. Elliot and the guise of English name. George Awoonor-Williams.

“He embraced his real name later in life,” said Mr. Adjai. “Those are different you know. What you are born into and what is born in you.”

​“Thank you for this. Maybe, one day, I will make a difference,” said Kofi. Though, reflecting on the path Awoonor took, he couldn’t help but fear the consequences that might come from doing so. His mentor smiled and patted his back.

“Ah, you will,” said Mr. Adjei. “Like Kofi Awoonor, you are destined for great things. But make sure you do them like you and no one else.”

Kofi reached the polling booth an hour before they closed. The line stretched into the Kejetia marketplace where vendors poached voters with pleas to purchase the juiciest mangos, the ripest plantains, and the most aromatic of spices; or so they all claimed. Kofi answered to the one closest to him, a woman selling snacks retrieved from a hot oil vat.

He recognized one of the boys at the nearby vegetable stand and made an effort not to stare. Afi, a former classmate who once toted dreams of being an astronaut. It had been four years since he’d attend primary. That was before Afi’s mama got sick and his tata wrecked his arm cutting sugarcane with a machete in a stupor of grief. Kofi often looked away when passing through the markets, but it was hard to know where to look, surrounded by hundreds of fast-aging boys just like Afi.

“Shame,” his tata had said when Kofi told him about Afi. In his ignorant youth, Kofi assumed his tata meant it as a descriptor of Afi’s now reduced state.

“Now he will be a bottom worker just like his tata,” he said to which his own tata responded by boxing his ears.

“In Ghana, there are no bottom workers.” His tata shook his head. “You are just a boy, Kofi. Ask Afi now, what it is like to be a man.”

Kofi looked down, instead, at the prescient prose still in his grip:

“…There shall still be the eternal gateman

Who will close the cemetery doors

And send the late mourners away

​

​“You still hungry, child?” said the vendor, holding out banana fritters wrapped in butcher paper.

​“Yeah, sorry.” Kofi ducked his head between his shoulders as grabbed fritters then took his place in line. For a moment, while licking away the sugar that snow-capped his fingers and savoring the sweet taste of batter crisped in peanut oil, he forgot about the task that lay ahead. Then a voice called out.

​“Eh, Kofi.” His cousin Tano waved as he emerged from the white curtain shielding the ballots from public view. He came alongside Kofi and hooked his arm around Kofi’s neck. “First time voting, right? Not much to choose from but go in there and shake things up. We need something better than policies from the same two parties.”

​When they were both young boys, Tano just two years older than him, they came to an unspoken agreement. Tano, with his commanding voice, perpetually straight shoulders, and recent growth spurt, would be the first to charge through any barrier the shorter, quieter, less self-assured Kofi might face.

​He broke the noses of bullies kicking footballs against Kofi’s drawn up knees, so Kofi could disappear peacefully into the distant words of second-hand books he stole from unattended classrooms. He broke piggy banks to pay from the lunches the other kids stole. And he broke the pattern of following in his parents’ footsteps, choosing instead to build life away from formal institutions of learning. Seeking his life’s work instead from the apprenticeship of anyone he deemed interesting enough to know. And maybe Kofi could do the same. Maybe…

​Kofi took a step back as line dwindled down to three, then two, then one before him.

​“I think I need more time to think on this,” he said.

Tano rolled his eyes then pulled Kofi forward towards the voting booth where a poll worker waited to pass on his ticket.

“Make it count, Kofi,” Tano said as transferred the pen and paper to Kofi’s loose grip and pushed him into the space between the thin curtain and the table wobbling on uneven ground. A barrier already broken.

The ballot vibrated in his hands as he swayed back and forth, hypnotized by every possible future drawn out in ink; the candidates a swirling tunnel he strained to find the light beyond.

​He wielded his pen like a dagger, squinting as he aimed for his target and made his mark. Moving left then right, he had his doubts about where he landed on his final choice, but he felt relieved by the lightness that overcame him as he lifted his pen and swept the ballot off the table. He floated out of the booth only to be struck down hard by overwhelming brightness and the heavy heat of the sun. He sunk to his knees then drifted into dark…

Kofi wasn’t sure how many instants had passed. The vendor from before blinked into view. In her hand was the collection of poetry Mr. Adjei passed onto him, repurposed as a fan to bring Kofi back to the consciousness.

​“I think you passed out from the heat,” she said. “How long were you in there?”

​“I think I forgot to vote,” Kofi said as she helped him to his feet.

​“No, I saw you give the poll workers your ballot before going down. You need a doctor I think.”

​ “No, I am just disoriented. I remember now,” said Kofi, though the fog had not quite left his mind. He took his book back from her and brushed the dirt from his knees. “This is my first time voting in the general election.”

​She gripped his shoulder and laughed.

“And you are sure you made the right choice in that state?”

​“Maybe,” he said. “I made one, at least.”

​The woman nodded and said, “I guess you never know until the next one. The best we can do is hope.”

​

Kofi arrived home in the evening hours, the television a multi-colored beacon through the villa windows.

“Where have you been, Kofi?” His mama called. “Come. Come. The president is about to be speak.”

This, his mama proclaimed though no candidate had been officially declared winner yet. All his cousins, aunties, and uncles had come to view the election on their plasma screen, packed like sardines on their wrap-around couch, and filling the room with voices that carried to the next town over.

Kofi took in the entrancing aroma of his mama’s chicken and groundnut stew as she spooned it into a bowl for him; tender cuts of chicken suspended in a broth thickened with dried shrimp and peanut butter, punctuated by slivers of papaya, vibrant mounds of lime-doused avocado, studs of lightly salted peanuts, fried plantains, and perfectly pounded spheres of fufu. Layers of contrasting flavors building to a crescendo of pure harmony, all together complex and complete in the way it sung on the palette.

He sat alongside his extended family, enjoying spoonfuls of fufu around the static of Ghanaian voters waving, like flags, the campaign shirts they shed in the heat of the moment. His tata shushed them as one potential Ghanaian leader stood among the crowd to make his speech.

“Ah, who needs to hear from him,” said Kofi’s uncle Okoto, despite the flame in his tata’s eyes.

“He will bring Ghana to a new age of prosperity,” his tata pronounced.

“Easy to say from the top of the mountain,” his uncle said.

“You insult me, brother,” his tata said. “I want only what is best for our nation.”

“Ha, what is best. More unkept promises. More half-built projects.”

“He is a good candidate and will see those changes through. And what about yours? Calling for more of the same.”

“Hush, now,” his mama cut in just as his tata and uncle now stood toe-to-toe, a dividing line in front of the television set. From behind her, his cousin Tano winked at Kofi but bit his tongue against his own thoughts.

They all sat in silence as the remaining ballot boxes were emptied for the final count and a microphone moved between the candidates’ campaign managers, city leaders, and Ghana’s lesser-known men and women, waiting to share a few words of their own, ones that could hardly be heard over the anxious crowd. The warbling chants of hopeful citizens and the drum of their feet brought Kofi back to the last stanza of “Rediscovery”.

…It cannot be the music we heard that night

That still lingers in the chambers of memory.

It is the new chorus of our forgotten comrades

And the hallelujahs of our second selves.”

Kofi waited for the hallelujah of his second self. He longed for it to ring with certainty, reverberate against the walls of his open heart and through chords cast by unknown ancestors. No one, it seemed, could tell him if he would find it in Ghana’s newly elected leaders, the footsteps of his father, or on a port overseas facing home. He shuddered at the responsibilities that lay on shoulders. The responsibility of finding his own way forward. Of blooming beyond roots transplanted too many times over. Of rising in the ranks and making choices for the future when boys like Afi could not.

On the screen, he spotted Afi, one armed wrapped around his tata’s shoulder and the other waving to a camera lens and an audience he couldn’t see. Kofi waved back at him, as if signaling, yes, Afi, I see you.

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