I sat there listening to these references to the age-old customs of which I had been ignorant. I was surprised. She washed the food, now cut into lumps, and arranged it in the cooking-pot. She added water and put it on the fire. She blew at it and it burst into flames.

‘Maami Ama, has not your husband got a right to take Kwesi from you?’ I asked her.

‘He has, I suppose, but not entirely. Anyway, if the elders who would make the divorce settlement ask me to let him go and stay with his father, I wouldn’t refuse.’

‘You are a brave woman.’

‘Life has taught me to be brave,’ she said, looking at me and smiling, ‘By the way, what is the time?’

I told her, ‘It is six minutes to six o’clock.’

‘And Kwesi has not yet come home?’ she exclaimed.

‘Mama, here I am,’ a piping voice announced.

‘My husband, my brother, my father, my all-in-all, where are you?’ And there he was. All at once, for the care-worn village woman, the sun might well have been rising from the east instead of setting behind the coconut palms. Her eyes shone. Kwesi saluted me and then his mother. He was a little shy of me and he ran away to the inner chamber. There was a thud which meant he had thrown his books down.

‘Kwesi,’ his mother called out to him. ‘I have always told you to put your books down gently. I did not buy them with sand, and you ought to be careful with them.’

He returned to where we were. I looked at him. He was very dirty. There was sand in his hair, ears and eyes. His uniform was smeared with mud, crayon and berry-juice. His braces were hanging down on one side. His mother gave an affectionate frown. ‘Kwesi, you are very dirty, just look at yourself. You are a disgrace to me. Anyone would think your mother does not look after you well.’ I was very much amused, for I knew she meant this for my ears. Kwesi just stood there, without a care in the world.

‘Can’t you play without putting sand in your hair?’ his mother persisted.

‘I am hungry,’ he announced. I laughed.

‘Shame, shame, and your chicha is here. Chicha, you see? He does not fetch me water. He does not fetch me firewood. He does not weed my farm on Saturdays as other schoolboys do for their mothers. He only eats and eats.’ I looked at him; he fled again into the inner chamber for shame. We both started laughing at him. After a time I got up to go.

‘Chicha, I would have liked you to eat before you went away; that’s why I am hurrying up with the food.’ Maami tried to detain me.