One day, when I was tiny and I went to spend the holidays with Nanaa I pattered behind her to the farms. I can hear her now. ‘Now, my young scholar, do not follow me: the farm is for seasoned ones like me. Hmm, how can I answer if anything goes wrong?’ . . . And on and on and on. But I went all the same. All I remember is that everything just smelt like it had never done before – or since. Good. Good. Good. It was not just the smell of green leaves. Green leaves and wet earth, fire spilling from a gun and fresh-spilt human blood smell different, to be sure. At Nanaa’s farm, things smelt good. All the vegetables were there. Anyway, we had been hardly an hour there when I began to holler for food. Nanaa muttered something about obviously that day on the farm going to be devoted to eating. And then she dashed behind some bush and came out with this huge yam. I mean it was big. A giant. Of course when you are young, even little things have a way of gaining size in your eyes, but this yam was big. She removed the little kerosene tin pot – they used to sell them for fourpence and sixpence in the market – from its hiding place and poured some water into it. At the sight of the yam my throat had begun doing what throats do. She had said she would cut just a little bit of the tip and cook it for me because she herself was not hungry, and anyway, yam is no good cold. All this sounded fine to me. It just meant that when she came to cook hers, I would have more yam to eat. I already knew that when yam is good it is white or whitish-yellow or something. But when Nanaa cut the piece it was brown. And she said something about that piece being no good. She cut another. It was the same. She cut another piece, it was not different. And she cut another and yet another. They were all the same. Somewhere at the middle, Nanaa looked at the yam and said, ‘Yam, you really are wicked. Why didn’t you leave a piece of yourself good when you were going bad, so I could have cooked you for my little master?’ But I told her to cut on, for I still hoped that all was not lost. So she turned the remaining piece round and cut out the head. It was brown and soft. I threw myself into the sand and dust of the farm and screamed. She cooked me a fresh piece from the barn, but I refused to eat it. It was only later when she boiled some for herself and by which time I was too hungry to refuse anyway, that I ate. And I have never forgotten about that yam. What was it that ate it up so completely? And yet, here I go again, old yam has to rot in order that new yam can grow. Where is the earth? Who is going to do the planting? Certainly not us – too full with drink, eyes clouded in smoke, and heads full of women . . . and our hearts desiring only nonsensical articles from someone else’s factory. . . .