Chapter 4- Akua (pt. 4)

The busyness of an Accra tro-tro stop doesn’t slow down for the crushed hope of one little girl, so while Akua stood there, slumped over, staring at her feet, the people around her kept moving. When she finally mustered the courage to raise her head, she was immediately overcome by the chaos around her, a lone boulder stranded in a raging river of flowing people.

The Search and Find tro-tro, now long gone, had been replaced by another, then another, and then another. The constant stream of people generated by the tro-tro stop was seen as an opportunity by the more entrepreneurially-spirited citizens of Accra, so what in most cities would have been a sidewalk was transformed into a bustling commercial zone.

Some merchants set up makeshift shops with wooden tables and large umbrellas advertising mobile phone companies. Others carried their shops on their heads, trays loaded with tiger nuts or pineapples or Menthos chewing gum balanced perfectly as the sellers moved from open car window to open car window peddling their goods.

One old woman had converted the abandoned wheel of a semi-truck into a charcoal grill and was selling roasted plantains with peanuts. That is where, among the chaos, Akua spotted him.

“Dad!” she called out, but he just continued chatting with the lady, pointing to the largest piece of plantain smoking on the metal grate. He smiled and nodded as the old woman picked it from the grill and wrapped it in a piece of newspaper.

“Dad!” she called again.

Nothing. He didn’t even turn his head.

“Kofi!” she tried. He stopped, for just a moment, or at least it seemed that way to Akua, seemed like he cocked his head and furrowed his brow, trying to figure out if he had really heard his name. But then, he returned to the transaction.  He reached into his pocket and removed a one cedi coin. As he did, a slip of paper came with it and, unbeknownst to him, fluttered toward the ground.

Akua watched as the paper slowly drifted toward the earth, watched as it was lifted by the draft of a passing tro-tro, watched as it became airborne. As the paper twisted and turned in the air, Akua’s head swayed, following its movement until, miraculously, it came to a rest at her feet. Akua bent and picked up the paper. She looked back at the plantain seller, but the man who shared her smile was gone, lost in the river of people who were coming and going.

From the classroom window, Ms. Dorothy watched Akua as she looked frantically around the crowd and then down at the paper in her hand. As Akua read the paper, Ms. Dorothy saw the fear and panic in Akua’s body transform back into hope. And then she saw her carefully fold the paper around the photograph in her hand, turn, and run with the same desperate hope that had carried out of the classroom only moments before.