Back to Afranguah after a month's dusty labor elsewhere, I can't wait to see Yao. The tro-tro ride from Saltpond Junction is bumpy and crowded, but in Afranguah a cadre of about 25 children greets me with enthusiastic shouts. The children accompany me as I dump my luggage in Billy Acquah Graham's cinderblock house and run down the hill to Minessi's mud hut with its corrugated tin roof.

Minessi is in the courtyard, pounding fufu with a long wooden pestle. She laughs when she sees me with my entourage and shouts, "Eh! Sistah Korkor! You are welcome!"

I run up and hug her. Yao is on her back, and I cover his little head with kisses. Minessi leans the long stick against the scooped-out wooden pot and unwinds the cloth that holds Yao to her back. She hands him to me.

I look deep into his soulful eyes and am shocked to find them glassy. Then Yao coughs, a wrenching, guttural cough that sends a shudder through his whole body. I look up at Minessi in alarm. She starts at my expression, takes a step backwards.

"Yao is worse, Minessi, he's worse." I hear a shrill of panic in my voice. Minessi is silent. "What happened to the medicine?" I ask.

"It is finished," she says. "Every day, one spoon."

She goes into the hut and brings out a bottle, empty and carefully washed. I look at the bottle and see that it is a kind of drug store cough syrup, cherry flavored for children.

"Oh, Minessi, who gave you this?"

"Saltpond Junction. I tell him Yao is sick. He says it is the best. From England."

In Saltpond Junction, where you catch tro-tros to Saltpond and the surrounding villages, a man runs a stand selling cold "minerals," the Ghanaian term for soda, and other assorted goods.

"Minessi," I take her hand. "I want to take Yao to see a doctor. There's a hospital in Saltpond, right?"

She shrugs and looks at the ground.

"I'll pay for it, OK? For whatever he needs. But let's get him there as soon as we can. Can you go today?"

"I must tell my husband."

I'd forgotten she had a husband. Where was he all day? In the fields, perhaps, or with the group of men that hung around the bar, drinking apetesche. I was struck, not for the first time, by how little I knew about the people I considered friends.

"Tomorrow, then, OK? In the morning?"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When I step outside Billy Acquah Graham's house the next morning, Minessi is waiting for me. She is wrapped from head to toe in beautiful printed cloth, bright orange and stiff, as though just purchased for a festival. Yao is on her back, asleep. I lean close and kiss his soft cheek, listening to the low uneven motor of his breath.

The walk from Afranguah to Saltpond Junction takes about 45 minutes. The heat of the day hasn't settled in yet, and I enjoy the cool silence as we head down the dirt path through the fields of dry yellow stalks. I ask Minessi where she learned English, but she doesn't seem to understand the question, answering only "Yes." I ask her if she wants more children.

"No!" she says firmly. "Finished. Four children. Enough."

"Four children? I thought you had only Yao!" I realize I've never thought about Minessi's age. Her queenly bearing makes her seem older, but looking at her face now I see that she can't be past her early twenties.

"Three girls!" she laughs. "They stay with my sister. Cape Coast."

"Really? What are they doing there?"

"School. Her husband, he is guide. At the monument."

The "monument" in Cape Coast is an old castle with low dungeons where slaves once lay shackled in darkness, waiting to be shipped overseas. Perhaps the tourist income generated by the castle allows Cape Coast to have better-equipped schools than the ones in Afranguah, which have neither paper nor pencils nor books.

"You must miss your girls a lot," I say.

"I will go to them. I want to learn." She touches her hair and makes a gesture, twisting, braiding, arranging, long tapered fingers moving nimbly though the air. "Then I go to live at Cape Coast, too."

"You want to be a hairdresser!" I am pleased to be taken into her confidence.

"Then I go to live at Cape Coast too."

At Saltpond Junction we wait for two hours while the tro-tro accumulates passengers. I wander around outside; Minessi prefers to sit in the minivan, holding our places. She leans her head against the closed window, looking out.

None of the windows open, and the ride to Saltpond is bumpy and stifling. It's past noon by the time we arrive, the whole town wilting under a midday heat stroke. We walk to the hospital, the air dragging at our limbs. Sweat shines on Minessi's face. Yao is asleep.

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