My dear Kojo,
I trust this letter finds you well in your cold country, sitting under one of those heaters that costs more per month than my cousin’s brideprice. I am writing because you asked, in your last email, what has changed in Sikaman since you last set foot on our soil. The short answer is everything. The long answer is that nothing has changed, but it has changed in new and exciting ways.
Take, for example, the matter of dollars. You know our cedi. You know how it has been behaving — like a man who has drunk akpeteshie at a funeral and is now trying to find his slippers. When the cedi falls, nobody admits they are worried. We just begin to “price small-small.” A loaf of bread that was five cedis last month is now eight cedis, but the bread seller will tell you, “Ah, my brother, flour has gone up.” When you ask why flour has gone up, she will say, “Dollar.” When you ask why dollar, she will look at you as if you have asked her why God made mosquitoes. Some questions, Kojo, are not for asking. They are for enduring.
I went to a wedding last Saturday. You remember weddings in Sikaman? They are no longer ceremonies, my brother — they are infrastructure projects. The groom, a small boy of about thirty-two whose entire net worth could fit inside a kelewele bag, was being asked to produce three cows, six goats, a Samsung fridge, eighteen pieces of cloth, and a sealed envelope of “something for the elders.” The elders, by the way, are always thirsty. The thirst of an elder is a spiritual condition. No amount of Schnapps can quench it. It began before independence and shall continue until the rapture.
But here is where it became interesting, Kojo. The bride’s family had brought a list. A printed list. With bullet points. In Calibri font, size 12. We have reached a stage in our development where extortion has been formatted in Microsoft Word. Truly, we are a digital nation.
You asked about the politicians. Kojo, the politicians are fine. They are always fine. When the country is doing well, they are fine because they are managing it. When the country is doing badly, they are fine because they are managing it. Their fineness is not connected to ours. It is its own weather system. Recently one of them was caught with an amount of money that even the bank where he hid it did not know it had. When confronted, he said it was for “constituency development.” His constituency, Kojo, has three boreholes, one of which has not produced water since 2008. But somewhere in a vault, there is a sum of money labelled “for the borehole.” We are a patient people. We will wait.
Now — charley, hear me well — I am not writing this to mock our country. I love Sikaman the way one loves a stubborn parent. Painfully. Completely. From a safe distance whenever possible.
And yet there is something I cannot stop noticing, Kojo: the people who are paying for all of this are the people who never sat in any of these rooms. Take my cousin Adwoa — small woman, works at one chop bar in Madina, two children, no husband to speak of. The cedi falls; her tomatoes cost more. The “constituency development” money disappears; her son’s school still has no toilet. The Microsoft Word brideprice list circulates among her relatives; she takes a loan to “contribute to the family.” Adwoa did not cause any of these palavas. But Adwoa is paying for all of them, in instalments, with interest, in cash, in advance, non-refundable.
That is the small-small of which I write, Kojo. We do not collapse in Sikaman. We endure in tiny daily instalments — the bread that costs three cedis more, the wedding contribution that empties the susu, the borehole that never comes. Each one is small. The total, my brother, is enormous.
The traffic I shall mention only briefly, because if I describe it properly this letter shall become a book. Yesterday I left Madina at 6am to go to Osu. I arrived at 11am. In between, I aged seven years, I prayed for my enemies, I forgave my ex-girlfriend, and I bought a pair of socks from a hawker at the Tetteh Quarshie roundabout. I did not need the socks. I bought them because the hawker and I had been looking at each other for forty-five minutes and we had developed a relationship. To not buy something would have been a betrayal of our shared journey.
And finally, Kojo, the food. You said in your email that you miss waakye. I am sorry to inform you that waakye is now sold by weight, by spoon, by social class, and by passport. There is “embassy waakye” (300 cedis, includes shito made with imported pepper), there is “office waakye” (80 cedis, comes in a takeaway box that leaks), and there is “real waakye” (15 cedis, served on a leaf, eaten standing, no questions asked, no receipt issued, taxes evaded by both buyer and seller in the spirit of national unity). Come home, Kojo. The leaf is still there.
I must close now because NEDCo has just informed us, via the medium of sudden darkness, that they require a moment of our attention. The fridge is groaning. The fan has surrendered. My laptop has fifteen percent battery and the ambition of a presidential candidate. I shall finish this letter by candlelight, like our grandfathers, except our grandfathers were writing about colonialism and I am writing about the electricity bill, which is its own kind of colonialism, only the colonisers are now indigenous and they accept Mobile Money.
Greet your wife. Greet the cold. Tell the snow we have heard about it but do not believe.
Da yie, Adwoa. Sleep well. Sikaman shall keep collecting from you until 2034, with interest.
Yours in patient suffering and stubborn hope, Kobina Kokote Lifetime correspondent to Kojo · Honorary Tetteh Quarshie sock customer · Officially boycotting embassy waakye
P.S. — Send dollars. Not because I need them, but because the cedi has been looking at me strangely and I want to remind it who is boss.