‘You know book, my young Master, so to be sure, you’ve read all about the ex-Servicemen and the promises and how nothing was done. A few months after we came back and found ourselves demobilised many of us started going to pieces. I was afraid of not having anything to do for my living. With my friend – he was Setu’s brother – I left the Gold Coast. Where have I not been in West Africa? Togoland? Nigeria? Sa’Lo? But everywhere it was the same, there were always too many ex-Servicemen already without jobs. I tried peddling, bicycle repairing, carpentering. . . . It was the same; emptiness behind and emptiness before. We came back. But one thing I forgot to tell you. Before I went to the war I was selling yam in the big market in Takoradi. It was a good trade. And when I was just about to leave, I gave the little money I had saved to my own brother. My father’s child. My mother’s child. I said to him: “Buda, keep this for me. If they do not kill me and I come back, I will still trade in yam. And maybe we will do it together because it is a good trade.” My Master, I will not talk too long. Buda is my own brother. He came after me one year and a half from the same womb. When I returned home from the wars, he had eaten the money. Married a wife with some of it, and the two of them had eaten the rest of my money. You people over there think that all of us over here are thieves and murderers or something. But listen, when I didn’t take a knife and cut my brother down, I know I can never kill anybody else in cold blood as long as they call me Zirigu. In fact, that was one reason why I left this land with Setu’s brother. And we came back after six years, with nothing. At that time, both of us thought we were already getting too old. We heard there was a place somewhere in the big city where other ex-Servicemen were training to be cooks, steward-boys and garden-boys. I talked it over with Setu’s brother. He said, “Chah! Allah, I will not do it. You know, Zirigu, I have a hot heart in my chest. How can I serve another man? Cook? Steward-boy? Garden-boy? Chah. It all means that some fool who is big only because he is white or because he can read book will make me a dog. I will beat him or kill him and go to prison before I am awake.” He went to prison later because they say he did other things. But I don’t know. I think he was a good man. He said to me: “You, you are a cool one. It would be better for you to do that than wandering. Go and train.” I did. I worked in white men’s homes for about two years. Setu’s brother was not finding things easy. One day he said, “Zirigu, you are a sober man. You must think of marrying. You are already too old.” I said, “Yes. Maybe I will go home next Christmas and marry.” He said, “You know my sister, Setu?” “Yes,” I said. “Her husband died. She has one child, a son. You are not a Believer and my father’s ghost will curse me for what I’m going to ask you to do. But you are a good man and she is a good woman. Marry Setu and look after her for me.” My young Master, I met and married Setu. Her brother was right. She is a good woman. Like most of our women, she always believes in a woman having her own little money, so that she does not have to go to her husband for everything. On the coast, she mostly sold roasted plantains and groundnuts. Here, she makes kaffa.