Growing up, I loved to spend my holidays anywhere but in Wa. From Day Nursery to Primary One, I loved to vacation in Nandom. I had this grown up friend there who used to operate a grinding mill. He would pick the Primary Four English Reader at the time and teach me how to read The Hawk and the Hen. In no time I could rattle the entire passage within two or three minutes. Identifying the individual words in the passage was a different ball game altogether. But I still fondly remember how older people would send for me to come and sing the passage. I still remember my aunts thriving porridge business and how I used to watch her make money. My moms village of Bulenga snatched me from Nandom when I entered Primary Two. Breakfast was usually at the farm and it was always roast yam. I would trudge along as my cousins walked briskly either singing some lewd lyrics or cracking and laughing over jokes I didnt find funny at all. When we got to the farm I was made to sit under a shady tree while my bigger cousins farmed. As I idled under the shady tree, I always prayed that God should move the time faster so that I would enjoy the late afternoon fufu with bush meat. Bulenga Market Days were always very exciting for me. I would go there with my friends and do a lot of window shopping. I was always fascinated by the sheer number of goods brought to my village from Wa and other places and displayed on makeshift shelves and on large polythene sheets spread out on the ground. But my prime lure was the game which involved players buying sizeable plastic rings and throwing them from a distance at a cornucopia of goods displayed on the ground. Any item the ring managed to circle was given to the thrower. I also loved to watch the Laalomo dances, especially on moonlit nights. Though I was scared of the masquerades, I enjoyed watching them dance and move around the village. I even knew where their costume was kept. Another thing that attracted me to Bulenga was the period when sacrifices were made to the god Sagifukala. Scores of people took fowls to the shrine which were slaughtered and the blood spread on some stones. I didnt know how the god accepted or rejected sacrifices, but I enjoyed watching the mass slaughtering of fowls. From primary three to primary six, I alternated between Bulenga and Hamile. My mom always favoured her hometown while I preferred to visit my dads immediate younger sister in Hamile. She was a doughnuts merchant who exported her goods to Fielimuo and other nearby towns. Our trips to Fielimuo afforded me the opportunity to not only help my aunty make money, but also to meet my buddy Shakil. In Hamile, I would also accompany my brothers to the borehole for water which we sometimes sold to food sellers. We had this very strong truck which could carry two big drums of water. Riding it down the dusty borehole road was fun; pushing it up the same road back home was light years away from anything resembling fun. There was also a place called Butuma, which I loathed to visit because of a certain creature called Sipiripa which was said to be a half human i.e one arm, one leg, half head, etc. It was believed to live in the wells there and could come out and slap folks who went there alone or at ungodly hours. Then there were also the football games at a school on top of one of the mountains there. We would use the two open doors of a classroom as our goalposts for the games, which involved two teams of two players each. There were times we had about five or more teams on standby. Equally memorable were the evening strolls I sometimes took to Burkina Faso. As I reached the no mans land between Ghana and Burkina Faso, I always felt I was crossing over an invisible threshold. I never ceased to admire the discipline and orderliness around the border of our Francophone neighbour. My saddest moments in Hamile were when schools were about to reopen and I had to leave the rustic environment of Hamile for the chaos of the capital town. I travelled to other places as a child but Nandom, Bulenga and Hamile hold the fondest memories for me. If I ever succeed in becoming a published writer, I will surely write a childrens story with any or all of these places as the setting and yours truly as the protagonist.
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 00:44:17 +0000
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