Ghana Must Go Read Online Free PDF

the start.
    So if ever the odd memory returned to him, caught up to him, billowing forward from behind him like tumbleweed in wind, he would feel only distance, the uncoverable distance, deeply comforting distance, and with it a calm. A calm understanding of how loss worked in the world, of what happened to whom, in what quantities. Never hurt. He didn’t add it all up—loss of sister, later mother, absent father, scourge of colonialism, birth into poverty and all that—and lament that he’d had a sad life, an unfair one, shake his fists at the heavens, asking why. Never rage. He very simply considered it, where he came from, what he’d come through, who he was, and concluded that it was forgettable, all. He had no
need
for remembering, as if the details were remarkable, as if anyone would forget it all happened if he did. It would happen to someone else, a million and one someone elses: the same senseless losses, the same tearless hurts. This was one perk of growing up poor in the tropics.
    No one ever needed the details.
    There was the one basic storyline, which everyone knew, with the few custom endings to choose now and again. Basic: humming grandmas and polycentric dancing and drinks made from tree sap and patriarchy. Custom: boy-child Gets Out, good at science or soccer, dies young, becomes priest, child-soldier or similar. Nothing remarkable and so nothing to remember.
    Nothing to remember and so nothing to grieve.
    •   •   •
    Just the knot in his chest, which he tried to laugh off, at the sight of those eyes on the face of that boy. The boy started laughing, too, quietly, delightedly, unaware that such laughter could break a grown man.
    “Sa, are you fine?” he asked. His sister tugged his hand. The boy tried to stop smiling but couldn’t. He stopped trying.
    “I’m fine.” Kweku smiled, straightened up, cleared his throat. He glanced at the old woman, who was glowering, bored. He looked at the girl, who was mopping her brow. He looked at the boy, who smiled hopefully back. And sighed. Could now see where this whole thing was headed. Asked, “You, what’s your name?” though he already knew.
    Kofi, the houseboy he’d sketched on the napkin.
    “Kofi, sa,” the boy said, holding out his free hand.
    The woman sucked her teeth again, impatient with the pleasantries. “Take him to the carpenter,” she said, and waddled off.
    •   •   •
    Mr. Lamptey.
    The yogi.
    Who “slept by the ocean” as advertised, a treehouse some thirteen feet high. Here, he served tea, a bitter brew of moringa he had harvested during Harmattan, he said. Lit a joint. “That’s very old!” objected Kweku, reaching protectively for the napkin Mr. Lamptey was scanning intently mere inches from the joint. “So am I,” quipped Mr. Lamptey, not lowering the napkin. In Ga: “That doesn’t mean I’m going to go up in smoke.”
    Kofi laughed. Kweku didn’t. Mr. Lamptey returned to the blueprint. A gentle breeze wafted in smelling of salt. They were sitting on the floor on braided raffia mats, the only seats in the large, airy cabinlike space. Decor notwithstanding, it was phenomenally well done: in lieu of walls slatted shutters, floorboards sanded down to silk. Kweku sipped his tea, mute, admiring the workmanship. After a moment ran his palm across the floor by his mat. Smooth. This was why he wanted to find a Ghanaian to build his dreamhouse. No one in the world did better woodwork (when they tried).
    When he looked up Mr. Lamptey was watching him, smiling. “When did you build this?”
    “It hasn’t been built.”
    Mr. Lamptey chuckled softly. “But it has,” he said firmly. Kweku waited for him to continue. He didn’t. He puffed his joint.
    “What do you mean, ‘built’? You’ve seen a house like this in Ghana?”
    “No,” said Mr. Lamptey. “But
you
have, have you not?”
    “Seen it where?” Kweku chuckled, not following the logic. But the answer drifted toward him:
in one instant, all