Christina ~ May 12

 

Gloria’s very different reaction to a mid-west tornado watch, New Yorker that she is, than that of her friend who had lived in tornado land forever (“He was basking, I was making lists”) made me think of how I had reacted back in 1977, back in Ghana, when I heard that the army was coming to shut down the university. I had only been in Ghana a few months at that point, I knew that the students had been demonstrating against the current government, but I had no real idea of what was going on. I was so new to the place, so green.

 

In any case, I was having dinner in the university cafeteria with Tom Ansah, someone I’d met during the spring break when I was able to rent a room in one of the dorms, happy to be around students, around people other than the dour porter who managed the university guest house over in the neighborhood called Asukwa, a rich neighborhood populated by whites during the colonial period and now by rich Ghanaians, a place where I’d rented a room when first got to Kumasi. And out of all the students, that is, the male students, who showed an interest in me, the only white woman in the place, I’d gone for Tom Ansah, who’s approach had been more subtle, more that of a person who actually wanted to know something about who I was rather than just get in bed with me (not that he didn’t want that, too, but then again, so did I). In any case, Tom and I were in the cafeteria having our cafeteria dinner when a young woman climbed up on one of the tables and shouted for us all to quiet down, that she had something to say, something we all needed to hear.

 

So we quieted down. The army is coming to the university, she said, We all have to leave. They’re shutting the university down. We can’t be here when they come. 

 

Everyone stood up, everyone talked, laughed, put their plates in the bussing area. Tom and I went to his room to pack up his things. I’d already moved back to the guest house in Asukwa for spring break was over and the plan was that Tom would come stay with me until this all blew over. Tom and his friends were running around, stashing things in backpacks, shopping bags, but oh so slowly. Too much talking, too much laughing, why weren’t they afraid, the army had weapons, the students’ didn’t, didn’t they think the army might shoot them if they were still on campus after being warned to leave. Tom, we have to go, I said. And I said it again and then again. Tom kept looking for things he wanted to take. Finally, I said, Tom, I’m leaving. I can’t be here when the army comes. I’m a stranger, on an American passport. I don’t belong here. Tom said, OK, you go, I’ll meet you there, but you take my thesis, and he handed me two folders with his thesis data and notes and drafts. 

 

I walked away from the university with Tom’s thesis in my arms, walked through the residential area outside the university, houses mostly of professors who taught at the school. People were standing in their open doors, watching the students as they walked away from the university. Some of them called out to me from their doorsteps, Do you have a place to stay? You can stay here if you need to. I thanked them, said, Yes, I have a place in Asukwa.

 

And I walked out of the residential area to the two lane road that went into the city, to the backed up traffic, to the road crowded with students, and I saw army tanks coming toward us, coming down the road, on their way to the school. I walked past the tanks. No one said anything. I walked and walked and by the time I got to my room at the guest house, Tom was already there, someone had given him a ride, he was there, smiling at me, bent over the hot plate on the cement floor of my room, boiling some water for tea.