Obruni

The electricity came on in the middle of the night. The lights, fan and air conditioner in our room all burst to life in a moment. By the time I got out of bed to turn off the lights, the surge led to another outage so I just crawled back in bed. We woke the next morning to a cool breeze from the fan and the grumbling air conditioner.

I gave Elle a shower, warning her to keep her mouth closed. Miriam made us breakfast and we packed up our bags one more time before the University of Cape Coast driver was to arrive and take us to our new home. We could finally unpack and settle in somewhere. We expected our ride after lunch so I asked Scott to walk around with Elle and me. Besides our ride to the American Embassy the day before, I hadn’t walked beyond the gated driveway of the U.C.C. guest house.

At the end of our dusty road was a busy street lined on either side with roadside stands. The stands butted up against each other and were made of a hodgepodge of building materials, from wood to metal to plastic, aged, roofed with tarps or umbrellas. The traffic buzzed by, leaving only a narrow path above the curb to walk, maneuvering around the tables of goods and the other people walking the street. There weren’t as many pedestrians as in the market we had driven through our first night in Accra so I didn’t feel overwhelmed “Do you wanna walk a little ways down the street then cross and come back?” I asked. “Sure,” Scott obliged. We, of course attracted attention, being the only white people in site. Most people said “Hello” or nodded or smiled at Elle. We really attracted attention when Scott hoisted Elle up onto his shoulders; the women especially. One woman might nod her head in our direction, drawing attention to Elle’s legs slung over her dad’s shoulders and her hands wrapped around his forehead. Then they would all laugh and discuss the oddity. Meanwhile, Scott and I nudged each other as we spotted bigger and taller and more awkward shaped objects balanced on the heads of passersby.

Elle spotted small brightly colored wrapping and yelled, “Candy. I want candy!” We approached the wooden hut, about the size of an outhouse. It was raised on some kind of stilts so its floor stood at our shoulder height. Inside were small shelves lining the walls, filled with various food items. In the small bit of area left, an old woman slumped, snoozing in a chair, and a younger woman stood beside her, a baby girl peeking around her legs, grandmother, mother, daughter. The mother spotted Elle and summoned her baby girl around her knees, pointing to Elle. The two girls looked at each other unabashedly. I wished I could study the woman as intensely as the girls observed each other. We looked at the children instead, grinning at their curiosity. The baby girl in the stand lifted her dress over her belly, showing Elle her little brown tummy. Her belly button poked out like the end of a balloon. We bought Elle two pieces of bubble gum and apple juice boxes then walked on. The mother urged her daughter to wave and I did the same. Neither of the girls waved, leaving just us mothers waving goodbye.

On our way back to the dirt road, we passed a bridge over a large cement gutter. Underneath a man squatted over the sludgy stream of water, pants around his knees. We looked away.

On the road leading to the guest house, there were some beautiful, large homes. One looked like a palace, with a brick and gold gate surrounding it. A uniformed guard stood out front, and when I poised my camera between the bars, he yelled, “Hey, that’s not allowed!” Across the street from the palace-like home was a gutted, old building, litter strewn around the dirt. Walking back to the guest house, new, clean homes alternated with dingy falling down shacks. Chickens strutted around in the bushes. We passed one old wooden gate and heard a tiny high voice, “Obruni,” the voice called. We turned to see a little African girl leaning out of her yard. She was probably 5 or 6 years old. In one hand she held a dingy white doll with snarled yellow hair. She waved to Elle with the other hand, grinning. I smiled back and waved. Then she was gone, probably running to tell her mom about the Obrunis she saw.

Scott bought some bananas from a corner stand and we savored their sweet, soft ripeness when we returned to the guesthouse. The drivers had arrived and we had to load the SUV with our luggage. When our bags wouldn’t all fit, the driver made a call and explained that another car was headed back to Cape Coast and he could take our bags to the university campus. Scott hurriedly scanned the luggage. The night before he had debated about where to store the piles of cash we’d exchanged. Should he store it all in one backpack which would never leave his side? Or would he separate it into several bags? He was extremely anxious about all that currency. If you’ve ever read The Pearl by John Steinbeck, you have an idea of Scott’s angst. “So we won’t ride with the bags?” Scott asked the driver. “No, we’ll send the bags on to campus with the other car and you and your family will ride with me,” he explained. Scott motioned with his hands, “Unpack the bags. I need to rearrange some things.” The drivers pulled out the bags and Scott scurried to get the money he had spread throughout the bags consolidated. He insisted that two of our suitcases stay with us and allowed the rest to ride in the other vehicle.

We pulled in the dirt driveway of our new home at dusk. They call it a bungalow. It’s on the campus of University of Cape Coast in an area called Lecturers’ Village. The house is a flat long house, situated in an L- shape. It’s a dark brown wooden structure trimmed in maize and dusty blue with swinging wooden doors that go FLAP FLAP FLAP when they shut. There’s a large living room, furnished with 6 rust-colored chairs (circa 1950) and two wooden end tables. The living room feeds into a dining room area, minus table or chairs. There are three bedrooms, two with beds made up with a fitted sheet and pillows. The third room, which will be Elle’s is empty. There is a wash room with only a toilet and a separate bathroom with a bath and sink. The walls are bright green throughout the house and bright blue in the bedrooms. The floors are all a pea-green tile linoleum (circa 1950). There are several uniform windows lining the walls, each screened and wired, with louvered windows that open and close with a lever. The back porch is my favorite part of the house. It runs nearly the whole length of the house and is shaded by a roof and surrounding trees. I think it’s a magic porch because no matter how still and humid and hot it gets outside, there’s somehow always a cool breeze tunneling across that porch. It’s also railed in with a FLAP FLAP FLAP gate on the end so Elle can play outside without me worrying about the unknown creatures in the brush.

The drivers hauled our luggage into the empty bedroom as we scattered, exploring our accommodations. “It looks like a cabin up north,” I call to anyone listening. When I was a little girl, my father and his parents had cabins next door to each other. I don’t even know what city they were in. All I remember is what it meant when we packed up to go “up north” in the summer. This place reminded me of my grandparents’ cabin up north. Dakota stomped from the front bedroom, which will be his. His gait, his clenched fists and his tightened jaw tell me he’s just plain angry. “Cody,” I optimistically urged, “Doesn’t it look like some hunting cabin up north?” “NO!” He snapped, “It looks like a penitentiary!”