Somebody's Heart Is Burning Read Online Free PDF

in Amstelveen, the suburb of Amsterdam where she grew up, she’d never considered herself attractive. She had not been popular in school, she told me. She was always isolated. Boys picked on her, girls whispered about her, and she had few friends.
    “But you’re so beautiful!” I stammered. “Not to mention smart, and sweet, and vivacious. You would’ve been very popular at my high school, I can promise you that.”
    She looked at me warily. “I don’t think I should thank you for telling me lies. I may be smart, but I am not beautiful.”
    “You’re—”
    “Stop it,” she said sharply, and something in her tone prevented further protest. “I know what I am. Anyway, it is all past. I am not in Holland now. I am in Ghana, and here I will be a new Hannah, a completely new girl.”
    I never found out what the old Hannah was like, but this new girl was a charmer. She insinuated herself into my brittle heart the way a child might, and in fact she was like a child, begging for attention, pouting when she didn’t get it, pointing out her own best attributes at full volume, basking in the world’s love. Among the volunteers, she was the favorite daughter of Africans and foreigners alike, doted on and pampered. She was a baby, really, not even twenty, and though there were others around that age (I was practically the grandmother of the group at twenty-six going on twenty-seven), there was something about her that made you want to protect her, to take care.
    Hannah had a flair for drama. Once she leaned over in the night to take a swig from her water bottle and got a big swallow of gasoline instead. She ran to the bathroom and spent the rest of the night vomiting. The burning sensation lingered in her throat throughout the following day.
    “I drank petrol!” she crowed to the group on the steps the next day. “You must tell your children and grandchildren this story, so that the girl who drank petrol will become a legend. You must tell them that after that day this girl had the power to light a fire with only her breath.”

    In Accra I was initially put off, as I had been in Abidjan, by the gaping holes in the sidewalk, the open sewers running down the sides of the streets, and the curbside food stands swarming with flies. The fumes of gasoline, human waste, and charred meat nauseated me. I was beleaguered as well by boisterous strangers who accosted me on the street, shouting, “What is your name? Let me be your friend! Give me your address! Bring me to your country!” I wondered sourly whether these overtures constituted the legendary Ghanaian friendliness.
    But within two weeks I no longer noticed the sewage or the flies, and I was gobbling up street food like it was going out of style. I relished it all—the dark green
kontumbre
with its texture of creamed spinach; the thick, savory groundnut stew (Ghanaian for peanut) with sticky rice balls; salty
Jollof
rice flavored with bits of egg and fish; tart, juicy pineapple; sweet oranges stripped of their peels but still clothed in their white felt under-skins; starchy cocoyams;
kenke
;
banku
;
shitoh
;
akieke . . .
All the stews were heavy with palm oil, its drowsy flavor reminiscent of coconuts and cashews. But far and away my favorite street food was
keli-weli
, a spicy-sweet concoction made of small chunks of plantain fried to a crisp in palm oil, then sprinkled amply with ginger and chili pepper for a sharp, tangy bite.
    Simply put, I loved Accra. While embracing the amenities of running water and electricity, it maintained a character all its own. No New York–style high-rises to be found here. Instead it unfolded, neighborhood by colorful neighborhood, a curious mixture of African and European influence, opening outward from the center like an elaborate tropical bloom. Accra was alive. Every city block pulsated with energy, from the solid cement buildings of the downtown area to the tin-roofed shacks of the poorer neighborhoods, from the sweltering