Chapters (15)
‘But I think someone should have told her that these things are good to eat but they suit more the tastes of the town-dwellers. I myself cannot see any man or woman who spends his living days on the farm, wasting his pennies on any of these sweeties which only satisfy the tongue but do not fill the stomach. Our people in the villages might buy tatare and epitsi, yes, but not the others.’
Like you know, my sister. This is what Auntie Araba discovered, but only after some time. I don’t know who advised her to drop all those fancy foods. But she did, and finally started baking bread, ordinary bread. That turned out better for her.
‘And how did she come to marry Egya Nyaako?’
They say that she grew in beauty and in strength after her baby was weaned. Good men and rich from all the villages of the state wanted to marry her.
‘Ei, so soon? Were they prepared to take her with her baby?’
| tartare | – | plantain pancake |
| epitsi | – | plantain cake |
| boodoo | – | sweet, unleavened corn bread |
| atwemo | – | plain sugared pastry drawn out in strips and fried in hot oil |
| boodoo-ngo | – | bread of unleavened corn meal mixed with palm oil and baked |
| bofrot | – | doughnuts |
| sweetbad | – | a hard coconut pastry baked or fried |
Yes.
‘Hmm, a good woman does not rot.’
That is what our fathers said.
‘And she chose Egya Nyaako?’
Yes. But then, we should remember that he was a good man himself.
‘Yes, he was. I used to be one of those he hired regularly during the cocoa harvests. He never insisted that we press down the cocoa as most of these farmers do. No, he never tried to cheat us out of our fair pay.’
Which is not what I can say of his heir!
‘Not from what we’ve heard about him. A real mean one they say he is.’
So Auntie agreed to marry Egya Nyaako and she and her son came to live here. The boy, this big scholar we now know of, went with the other youngsters to the school the first day they started it here. In the old Wesleyan chapel. They say she used to say that if she never could sleep her fill, it was because she wanted to give her son a good education.
‘Poo, pity. And that must have been true. She mixed and rolled her dough far into the night, and with the first cockcrow, got up from bed to light her fires. Except on Sundays.’
She certainly went to church twice every Sunday. She was a good Christian. And yet, look at how the boy turned out and what he did to her.
‘Yes? You know I have been away much of the time. And I have never heard much of him to respect. Besides, I only know very little.’