Dada's house was a perfectly square single storey house. It was painted pink, but the lower parts
of the building were painted black to prevent rapid staining by dust and the footballs Dada was
constantly kicking against the walls. The cobalt blue-painted window frames looked horribly out
of place, but Dada's mother wouldn't have them any other shade. Cobalt blue was her favourite
colour. A bougainvillaea hedge bearing a fusion of pink, red and white flowers encircled the
whole house. Other than that, the house was unadorned.
I slipped through a gap in the hedge, carefully avoiding the front door, as I advanced towards the
back of the house. Only strangers used the front door to Dada's house. And even they soon
thought to go round the back to be heard, else they were likely to be ignored.
"Ei, Kojo, you've come!" Dada's mum was standing by their banana tree checking their newest
bunch for firmness.
"Yes Mike's mother, I've come" I replied knowing that I was expected. For all I knew, they'd
delayed lunch till I came... We did that for Dada sometimes. "And I've brought some vegetables
for you." I retrieved the paper sack from under my arm. I always found out exactly what she
wanted from Dada in advance.
"How much?"
"Normally, Fifty cedis but for you Thirty..." my smile was warm and expectant; Dada's mother
never paid without bargaining.
"I'll give you twenty-five"
"Twenty-seven"
"O.K." She removed the money from a knot in her cloth, uncrumpled it, and passed it to me. I, in
turn, checked it, then crumpled it and pushed it into my back pocket as Dada emerged through
the back door.
"Oh Chale" Chale doesn't mean anything in particular. It is a way of addressing friends, but
defies conventional definition; it expresses most deep emotions - fear, pain, sorrow, happiness,
ecstasy... deriving its meaning from the tone of voice used when it is said. It is a term firmly
rooted in trust. This time, I used it as it is most often used - as an opening to a conversation.
"Ch - aaa - le," Dada replied, "How was the interview"
"Not bad. Good... I got in."
"Congrats."
"How about you?" My elation was slightly sour because Dada didn't choose the same secondary
school as I did for his first choice. My success meant we were certain to be separated.
Suddenly it wasn't very easy to remain standing. He caught my cocoa brown eyes with his honey
brown ones as we sat on the stools placed outside for lunch.
"Yes! " He grimaced, then lowered his voice from its triumphant pitch and added, "I got in too."
We lowered our eyes simultaneously, realising we'd come to the end of 6 years of constantly
being in each other's company. My healthy but dusty brown feet were bare, their toes wiggled
sadly. My eyes traveled across to his feet; his light brown toes looked like him - solid and
reliable. They had dribbled me on many a makeshift football field and had walked many miles
beside mine. My eyes returned to his. We stood up and hugged awkwardly - muttering "Good
Luck" as we did so.
Dada's mother's food tasted so good. The sensation of those black-eyed beans with palm oil, and
the crunchy grunt of the gari as it yielded to my jaws would never leave me. I can still feel my
mouth sucking my fingers, the slurping sound they made, and Dada's father scolding me with his
huge laugh.
Before any great war, there is a festival of frantic preparation. Men and women will rifle through
life-deep closets searching for charming amulets and good luck charms which have served to
save their lives in times past. Emotions, especially the great L.O.V.E, become fervent, rampant,
uninhibited, unpretentious and real.
I've always wondered why it takes danger, or the threat of a great adventure for people to stop
the blinding dances they use as excuses for gaits in their chosen parts in a tiring charade of
civilised life, and be real. And smile till you can see that their teeth are actually embedded in
charming two-toned gums - like the many smiles I encountered before my great mission...
The Central Market was foaming people at its smiling mouth. Spitting them incessantly out of
dark crooked stalls into the searing Saturday sunlight, which glistened on many a baldhead,
blinding wide-eyed infants on their mothers' backs.
Dada and I trailed our mothers' large backsides in ill-concealed anticipation of the lives we were
to lead once we'd finished crossing out the numerous items listed on our respective prospectuses.
It occurred to me, not for the first time, how odd it was that both his family and friends called
Mike "Dada". He wasn't much older than myself - eleven months and four days older to be
precise - but he had a very adult way of going about things. We always left it up to him to decide
what to do whenever we got into trouble, and he relished the role - ordering us about like a
football team captain.
His solid face with narrowed eyes and sniffing nose was in taut concentration as we skipped over
enthusiastic street hawkers struggling to keep up with our mothers. Every so often, he would turn
around and make a cutting observation, which I would answer in the much-practiced fashion of
old, friends.
"How come your mother and mine manage to move so swiftly through the crowds? - They're so
much bigger than we are!"
"Exactly. People are scared of getting crushed by them..." I started laughing before I'd even
completed my sentence, "...so they jump out of their way quicker."
The thunderous roll of Dada's staccato laughter jarred the fluent strides of the wax print clad
women in front of us causing them to stop.
"Heh Kojo! Dada! What's so funny? Hurry up and come with us, we're nearly at the fabric store"
That was my mom Auntie Sally. Our eyes laughed a bit more as we looked over at Dada's
mother, Auntie Mansa leaning back from the waist to watch us with a half-amused glare.
Chastened, we picked up pace and, before long, bundles of soft khaki material were being rolled
out before our mothers for inspection in Egya's fabric City which was a small twenty foot deep
shop in one of the less smelly side alleys around Central Market. There was just enough space
for one to weave around the bales of fabric wrapped around the vertical supports that stood on
the faded orange linoleum floor.
Generally, the fabrics were sorted into sections according to their various colours so a regular
would know that white fabric could be found just to the left of the wide door, red in the middle,
green at the back ...and so on. Printed fabrics were usually placed with the colour most dominant
in them. However, within each colour, there were various ranges of quality and thus one had to
be especially careful when buying the coloured fabrics. Based on hand feel, the average city
shopper would carefully assess, judge, then pick a fabric; thus it was a good idea, for the sake of
cleanliness, to wash your new clothes once they had been transformed from mere fabric by one
of the numerous tailors and seamstresses who were amongst the denizens of the city.
The only place in Egya's shop where the fabrics were not sorted into colours was behind the
counter where he kept the best quality material. This was where our mothers stood calmly
estimating how many yards of khaki they would need for their sons' errant backsides.
In addition to khaki, my mother would buy some cream fabric for my shirts, whilst Auntie
Mansa would buy some light blue fabric for Dada's. Other shoppers might have gone shopping
around for bargains but our mothers had done it all before and knew Egya's was the best place in
town. Besides, they never paid him any more than what they thought was fair and he seemed
powerless to oppose them. Ergo he stood watching with a sad indulgent smile plastered across
his flat face, mentally ruing the loss of disproportionate profits.
As for us, we stood chattering between mouthfuls of the roasted peanuts we had bought from the
head of a roaming vendor and ogling the austere black fabric we would be privileged to wear in
four years time as seniors.
By the time the week was through, my black metal trunk embellished with red crescents (given
to me by my grandfather) was full except for the shorts and shirts being sewn by the tailor down
the road.
My father had taken me shopping for T-shirts, bedsheets and toiletries on Monday. On Tuesday,
a hail of proud relatives came to our beaming house to wish me assorted luck; Auntie Betty,
mom's little sister, gave me some socks and handkerchiefs and told me to behave myself, Uncle
Tetteh wished me luck as a sportsman and promised me a tennis racquet (Pops later gave me his
own tennis racquet because we both knew Uncle Tetteh never kept his promises), Auntie Alice
and Uncle Sammy had just come on holiday from New York where he worked for some phone
company - they gave me a new pair of Nike canvas shoes, whilst Uncle Kweku, my favourite
uncle, mailed me a cutlass with a note "Keep the grass green but keep it low" - I still wonder
what he meant. On Wednesday, Uncle Laurie bundled myself, my big brother Kofi, and my dad
into his metallic blue BMW and took us shopping for provisions to fill our chopboxes. He took
the opportunity to ask Pops to become his business partner. Like the five times before this, Pops
refused. There was nothing my father valued more than his freedom, freedom to make his own
choices, live by his whims. I think his being married to my mother was enormous proof of just
how much he loved her. On Thursday, Pops took me to see some of his old classmates so that
they could tell me what boarding school would be like.
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