Celebrating 15 Years
By AFUA ANSONG
Praise this Saturday which permits me to wash with my hands (I detest this).
Praise my dirty clothes, the ones I leave for my grandmother who starts the cycle with cold soapy water.
Praise the rinse, the rush upstairs to the open roof. There, the clouds open as I hang and hide my American jeans from my neighbors who don’t even trust the wooden pins to work.
Praise Makola market, where the high-pitched chatter of women worn out by the heat of the day welcomes me. One by one, they bargain with a housewife who doesn’t have a cedi to spare.
Praise the adult crabs, corn dough, bag of fresh okra stuffed in her basket.
Praise the dirty road that floods my feet with biscuit wrappers. Praise the trotro only the poor will ride and the school girl squatting to eat kelewele by the road. She waves away flies.
Praise the conductor whose hands smell of coins. He tells me I am short 500 cedis, but winks at me, and settles too close beside me in the back seat of the van.
Praise the driver’s next stop, Asylum-Down. Our journey home, blocked by long lines of lorries with horns beeping in fury. Praise the cacophony, the pitiful moan of a Christmas goat.
Afua Ansong is a scholar and artist, currently working on a collection of poems about Adinkra symbols from Ghana, interacting with these symbols as modes of grief and artistic freedom. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in Aquifer, Prairie Schooner, and Frontier, and on her website, afuansong.com.
