King Peggy Page 9

  6

  When the council meeting ended at six, the sun was just rising and the world outside was silver. The elders returned to their fields to do some work before the day became too hot. Peggy went to her room to rest a bit and saw a line of children with heavy metal buckets of water on their heads trudging down the path from the borehole behind the house. Some of them were headed for her kitchen.

  Auntie Esi stood next to Peggy as she gazed out the window. “How far do they walk?” Peggy asked.

  “There are only two boreholes, so the kids that live farthest away have to walk about a half hour in each direction.”

  “An hour for a single bucket,” Peggy said quietly.

  “And some kids make two or three trips before and after school. Some walk for six hours a day.”

  “Is the water clean at least? ”

  Auntie Esi shrugged. “It’s not clean if you haul it from the pond. That water is a yellowish brown, and that’s what the entire town had to use when the pipes first broke in 1977. But the local government representatives built two boreholes shortly after that which provide very clean water, though it costs money. A few pennies a bucket.”

  Peggy scowled. “You mean they charge for clean water? ”

  Auntie Esi nodded. “The pumps break down a lot, so they use the money to pay for repairs.”

  “And the people who can’t afford the borehole water drink the yellowish-brown water?”

  Auntie Esi nodded again. “They don’t get sick from it, though. For hundreds of years before the British brought piped water, people in Otuam got all their water from the pond. Many believe the goddess of the pond purifies the water and keeps them healthy.”

  Peggy sighed, a deep sigh that came from the soul and rumbled through her entire body. Evidently the pond contained one of the seventy-seven gods and goddesses known to protect Otuam. But even so, no American king could allow her people to drink that disgusting water. And besides, it was well known that sometimes nature gods and goddesses left their ancient spots without a word of warning. If the goddess left, those drinking the water would sicken and even die. She would have to get those kids more boreholes, free boreholes, and eventually fix the pipes. How on earth was she going to afford it?

  Auntie Esi put her weathered hand on Peggy’s shoulder. “You will fix the water later,” she said. “Remember the sparrow, who builds her nest one twig at a time. We are going to eat breakfast now, and after that we are going to give you your first royal etiquette lesson. You don’t want to disgrace the stool by doing something inappropriate for a Ghanaian king.” No, Peggy did not want that.

  Sitting at the dining room table, they breakfasted on weak coffee and porridge. After breakfast, the aunties taught Peggy how to walk majestically. A king, they said, was never to show any hurry. The whole world waited for a king. Flapping around here and there like a chicken was undignified.

  Auntie Esi strolled at a glacial pace down the hall, head up, shoulders back. “Like this, Nana. You bounce around too much and go too fast.”

  “In the U.S., if I walked that slowly I would be hit by a car,” Peggy pointed out. “No one there would wait for me to cross the street. They would run me down, and as I bounced on the asphalt they would keep on going so they wouldn’t be late for a meeting.”

  Auntie Esi smiled. “But there are very few cars in Otuam, and here they wouldn’t run over their king. Try it again, slowly.”

  Peggy sighed. Give just a hint of a smile, they said, showing regal serenity. Shoulders relaxed. Head held high. Chin up. Slow, straight, determined steps. Self-consciously, she walked back and forth in front of them, like an awkward aspiring model training for the runway.

  “Too fast!” cried one.

  “Hold your chin higher!” said another.

  “Don’t swing your arms like that!” said a third. “You look like an orangutan.”

  “You’re frowning!” said Auntie Esi. “Don’t frown in public.”

  “Don’t frown?” Peggy asked. “What if I see something I don’t like?”

  “Don’t frown!” Auntie Esi repeated. “You can make a mental note of the problem and deal with it later.”

  “Oh.”

  “And you can’t eat or drink in public. It’s unseemly for a king to be shoving things into her face. Plus, if there is a witch in the crowd watching you she can make you choke to death on whatever you’re consuming.”

  Peggy had heard about the no-eating-in-public rule, though she was unaware it had to do with witches. It made sense, though, that witches, known as vengeful, jealous creatures, would want to harm a king, especially one who stood for the good. Witches created havoc for the sheer malicious pleasure of it, and you never knew who in your village was a witch. Sudden illnesses, childhood deaths, accidents: they might all be traced back to the kindly old grandmother next door or the jovial uncle down the street. Only a traditional priest, using tried and true rituals, could determine if bad luck was caused by the ancestors punishing selfish behavior or by a witch making trouble for good people, and then prescribe the proper rituals to take care of it.

  Peggy sighed again. As king, she had to worry whether Uncle Joseph would haunt her for not burying him in a timely manner. She had to remain vigilant against evil spirits who might zoom into her. And now she had to defend herself against spiteful jealous witches who could be anywhere. Not eating or drinking in public was simple compared to these more troubling issues.

  “In Otuam I will abide by this rule,” she said. “But in the U.S., we all work so much that we have to grab a bite in public sometimes because when we get home it is too late to cook. And no one there knows I am a king.”

  “They know at the embassy. One of them might be a witch. And even if they aren’t, it would be undignified to stuff your face even there.”

  Witches. At the embassy. Looking back on her twenty-nine years there, Peggy realized this could explain a lot of things.

  “And Nana,” Auntie Esi said, “the king can’t argue in public.”

  “Argue in public?” she said, all wide-eyed innocence. Surely they hadn’t heard anything of her arguments at the embassy. “Me?”

  Cousin Comfort chimed in, “Nana, we all know that ever since you were a small child, when someone misbehaves, you can’t let it go.”

  That was true. The most infamous story had occurred in Kumasi when Peggy was about ten. One of her father’s girlfriends—who was also a friend of her mother’s—would come by the house when her mother wasn’t there and hang around to flirt with her father. Peggy soon figured out what the woman was up to. She didn’t know if her mother knew her friend had betrayed her, and she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. So she decided to take matters into her own hands and set things right.

  One day the woman came in when Peggy was alone in the house. Peggy grabbed a broom and started beating the woman on the backside as hard as her skinny arms could, yelling that she would never—whap!—ever—whap!—allow anyone to hurt her mother. Peggy followed the woman out the door and into the street, swatting her on the shoulders, back, and rear end, as the woman cried out and begged her to stop. Peggy told her if she ever came back to make trouble in the family, she would beat her again. The woman never returned. At dinner that night, Peggy’s father looked at her oddly, and her mother seemed happier than usual, but no one ever said a word to her about it.

  “When you see an injustice,” Cousin Comfort continued, “you are like a village dog with his jaws locked on a bone. You just don’t give it up. But as king you will have to deal with these things in the council chamber and not yell at people on the street or beat them with brooms.” The aunties all laughed at that one.

  Auntie Esi said, “And if you are wearing the crown and want to say a crude thing, you have to take it off before you speak so as not to dishonor it.”

  Peggy nodded. That would be easy. She always knew well in advance when she was planning to say a crude thing. When a person was talking nonsense, she could feel
the crude thing bubbling up from the place where crude things sprouted. She could feel it taking shape in her chest and rising in her throat. There would certainly be plenty of time to remove the royal crown before the crude thing was launched full force from her mouth in the direction of her opponent.

  “And there’s one more thing,” Auntie Esi added. “It is not regal for a king to always be running off to the bathroom. When you have official events, we will give you a special dish that takes away the urge to urinate for the entire day. Still, it is best not to drink much before or during. Just a little water so you don’t faint in the heat.”

  The heat. Though it was still early, the delicious coolness of the night had vanished, replaced by a stultifying miasma of sticky air. During the etiquette lesson, Peggy and her aunties had glowed at first, then perspired, and now the sweat was running down their faces in rivulets.

  Whenever Peggy was back in Africa she realized how spoiled she was by air-conditioning, how she took it for granted and forgot to thank God for it. In Africa only the very rich or powerful had air-conditioning. When you visited someone in an office, you could tell where they ranked because only the bosses had a unit, though sometimes their secretaries benefited from one in the waiting room.

  Most houses, including the one Peggy was staying in, had fans that made the temperature just about bearable. But when the government rationed electricity, cutting it off in certain districts for a few hours, the houses became unbearable. Electricity was usually cut off during the hottest part of the day, rarely in the evenings, when it was cooler but dark outside. It seemed to many that the government preferred people to die in the heat rather than get lost in the dark.

  Peggy knew that the best drink to stave off the heat was beer, which Ghanaians drank in the morning as the heat rose. But beer was also the very drink to make you most want to run to the toilet. Peggy remembered an American comedian who once said, “It’s good to be da king.” Except in Otuam the king would have to be thirsty, and hot, with a bursting bladder and witches putting hexes on her. Maybe it wasn’t always good to be the king of Otuam.

  “And another thing,” Auntie Esi said. “As an American, you probably brought deodorant. But here people cut a lemon in half and rub the two halves all over their bodies. They let the lemon juice sink in, and a while later they bathe with soap and water. This works better than deodorant. If you are going to be out in the heat all day for a royal ceremony, you should remember to use lemon.” Peggy promised she would.

  For lunch they had the staple food of Otuam—fresh fish deep-fried, on white rice, and covered with a spicy onion and tomato sauce. They would be eating it for lunch and dinner for Peggy’s entire stay. In the United States she often didn’t think twice about the wide range of food she had and would have complained if she had to eat the same thing all day long. Africans could enjoy the same meal again and again and be grateful for it.

  “By God’s grace, the people here are never hungry,” Auntie Esi explained as they dove into their meal. “They are very poor, and don’t possess much, and they have to haul water. But there is plenty of food. Nana, you should see the dozens of fishing canoes that come in every morning, their nets heavy with fish. And the farms produce beautiful pineapples, papayas, coconuts, plantains, and cassavas.”

  That was indeed a blessing. While the other problems were vexing, hunger among Peggy’s people would have devastated her. The people of Otuam would never be hungry, and living in Ghana they would certainly never be cold.

  7

  For several hours that afternoon, Peggy again sat in the parlor with her elders and her aunties discussing the needs of Otuam. Aggie took up her position leaning against the door frame, spatula in hand.

  The heat was rapidly becoming intolerable. After the group placed their orders for beer, Aggie returned from the kitchen with a tray of them, the spatula tucked under her arm. Using the beer opener, she popped off the caps and politely set them back on top of the bottles. This was because in Africa you always had to keep your bottle covered between swigs. Otherwise flies, hovering around in the hope of just such an opportunity, would make a kamikaze dive down the neck of the bottle and do several somersaults in the beer before drowning in ecstasy.

  Beer was the most popular drink in Ghana because of its ability to cut the heat, along with its alcoholic propensities, and the national brand was called Star beer. Whiskey was popular, too, but far more expensive. It didn’t cut the heat, but it quickly made you not care about the heat, so the effect was the same. Before the Europeans came with their whiskey and beer, Ghanaians drank palm wine, nsafufuo, which was easily obtained and shockingly alcoholic. It was made by slicing a small cut in the bark of a palm tree from which the sap dripped out overnight into a tin cup tied just below the cut. The next morning, the cup would be full of clear liquid, which wasn’t alcoholic immediately but fermented rapidly over the next twenty-four hours.

  Some people still drank palm wine because it was quite cheap. It was sold along the roads from little stands, in reused plastic bottles, with tiny black specks floating in it, which were either bits of palm bark or minuscule bugs, Peggy could never quite tell. There was a good reason, she thought, that as soon as European ships appeared off the coast most Ghanaians quickly ditched the palm wine: the taste, a bizarre mixture of coconut juice, bacon fat, cigarette ashes, and fingernail polish remover.

  Sipping their beers, the elders started bringing Peggy up to speed on life in Otuam. Every few minutes, the cell phone of one of the elders would ring, and the elder would have a loud conversation while Peggy and the others were trying to talk. Most of the ringtones were songs, such as “When the Saints Go Marching In” or Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” When a particularly amusing song came on, everyone stopped talking and burst out laughing.

  When one of her elders needed to use the bathroom, he would quietly walk outside. It was considered polite to use the bushes rather than making a mess in the host’s toilet, considering there was no running water.

  Toying with his black hat, Baba Kobena explained the law enforcement situation in Otuam. The police station on Main Street had one windowless concrete jail cell and five officers, including the chief inspector, who lived on the premises and were on call twenty-four hours a day. There was no phone; people who wanted to report a drunken brawl ran there and brought the police back with them, a necessity since the houses in Otuam had no addresses. Nor did the police have a car; those families wanting the officers to haul away a drunk who couldn’t stand up had to pay for a taxi. The person who reported a criminal was responsible for bringing him two meals a day in jail, and many felt they should pay the chief inspector of police a tip for his trouble. These costs persuaded most people to deal with their drunken relatives themselves and not bother the police.

  “There’s very little theft,” Baba Kobena said. “That wire stolen from the cell phone station years ago was a big exception as people here always tell on each other, or jump the thief in the act, or report him when the stolen object is seen in his home. Otuam is pretty much self-policing, which is a problem for the chief inspector, who is bored and doesn’t get to pocket many tips.”

  Though she had never met him, Peggy pictured Otuam’s chief inspector as the Maytag repairman in that old American commercial, sitting around all day, waiting for the phone to ring. Except the chief inspector didn’t even have a phone.

  “The only serious crime,” Baba Kobena continued, “is wife beating, which likely stems from boredom. Only a few people here have television or radio, so many of them drink to pass the time, and some of the men, once toasted, start pummeling the women. As a Muslim, I never touch alcohol, Nana, and I can see all too plainly the terrible effect it has on some people.”

  “A terrible effect on some people,” Isaiah the Treasurer repeated. “As a devout Methodist, I generally abstain, myself, from the evils of alcohol. It turns some men into demons, beating their wives black and blue.”

  Peggy frowned when she hear
d them confirm what her mother had told her. If two people of equal strength wanted to beat each other up, that was their business. But a stronger person beating a weaker one would not be tolerated under her reign. She would make that very clear. No matter what a woman had done, she didn’t deserve to be beaten by a man.

  Baba Kobena opened his mouth to continue but Peggy interrupted him. “There is one thing I must let the people of Otuam know,” she said, “and I want you all to spread the word. As a lady king, as an American, I will not tolerate any form of brutality against women. Let me make this clear: if any man beats his wife, I will make sure he goes to jail for a long time. Then I will throw him out of Otuam and see that he never sets foot here again.”

  She studied the faces in the room. The aunties were nodding and smiling and nudging one another. But her elders looked shocked. There was a long uncomfortable silence that Peggy allowed to continue so that the full effect of her words would sink in. Then she said, “I want to know about the health care situation.”

  Isaiah the Treasurer stood and hoisted his trousers up toward his chest. “Well, Nana, Otuam is very fortunate to have a medical clinic, which serves thirteen communities, including some of the little mud-brick villages you drove through to get here. We are lucky because our sick people don’t have to walk far to the clinic. But if I were to take you there right now—it’s the single-story tan building not far from the palace—you would see many people waiting on the porch who have walked miles and miles to get there. Can you imagine being so sick and walking for miles? ”

  Peggy couldn’t. The few times she was sick she had planted herself firmly in bed and not budged.

  “How many doctors?” she asked.

  “No doctors. But there are fourteen nurses who work there and live in the nurses’ quarters next door, so there is always someone available to help the sick.”

  Isaiah the Treasurer explained that malaria was the most common complaint but could be easily cured at the clinic if diagnosed early. The clinic saw infections of the upper respiratory tract and urinary tract, as well as the occasional case of typhoid fever. Cipro and other antibiotics cured these. The nurses dispensed immunizations for diphtheria, yellow fever, measles, influenza, and hepatitis.