Penfield's Greatest Swimmer

🌊~3

The entire neighbourhood was loud and rowdy. Saturday nights were always a nuisance in this town.

I quickly crossed the road and shielded my ears as I walked past a nightclub, blasting out one of Shatta Wale's latest hits. Several people, mostly young women, loitered around in revealing clothes and cigarettes dancing on their lips. I hurriedly walked past, taking a short bend and landing on the dirt road that led to the compound house.

The compound house, which served as a home to about forty-four residents, was a two-story structure that desperately needed intense renovation. The building had lost its vibrant pink colour after holding onto it for the past seven years and termites had feasted on almost all the wooden doors. It was only a matter of days before they'd fall off their hinges. But Alhaji Samli, the landlord, wasn't bothered. He preferred spending our rent on prostitutes, rather than taking good care of his own property.

Greeting the group of elderly women cooking and conversing in the front yard, I climbed up the stairs to the second floor and headed towards the twelfth door, letting myself into the squashed-up single room I'd called home for the past ten years.

With a simple translucent curtain serving as a partition, the room had been divided into two parts. One side for the kitchen, the other side for the bedroom. An old television set sat on a table in the left corner of the bedroom. Close to it was an armchair with worn-out upholstery and a few feet away was the bed Ma shared with Kukua and Maadjoa. This place was obviously too small for the four of us, but since this was what Ma could afford, we had learnt to adjust.

Shutting the door, I proceeded to slide my feet out of my slippers and shoved them to the side, joining the other footwear sitting in a corner.

"Akwasi!" A high-pitched voice called out and my little seven-year-old sister came running to me with a pout. "Ɔkɔm dze me." [I'm hungry.]

I chuckled and lifted the bag of kenkey. "Medze edziban bae." [I brought food.]

Her pout quickly dissolved into a wide smile. "Yay, let me go and fetch water to wash our hands." She picked up a mini bucket close to our kitchen and darted out of the room.

Kukua was my second half-sister. She and Maadjoa had a different father from mine. He used to live with us some years back until the barbaric street lifestyle finally got to him, and he didn't think twice about leaving us. I wasn't complaining though. We were better off without him.

My stomach rumbled, reminding me of my blazing hunger pit and I walked towards the kitchen, pushing aside the old translucent curtain. Placing our supper on a small wooden table, I rifled through the wide aluminium basin we kept our utensils in. There wasn't enough room for a cabinet, so we managed like this. After finding three plastic plates, I set them beside the kenkey on the small table, pulled out a kitchen stool, and began to fill the plates with food.

Just then, I heard the door open, and in stepped my mother, tired and weary from running around in the market the whole day. The look on her face said it all--sales didn't go so well. Her African print dress hung loosely on her frail body as she pushed the sleeves up and pulled her headscarf off, revealing unkempt kinky hair. Her eyes soon landed on me and they widened with surprise. "Akwasi... ɛdze dɔkon bae?" She entered the kitchen. [Akwasi...you brought kenkey?]

"Nyew," I answered. "Auntie Naa na ɔdze maa hɛn." [Yes, Auntie Naa gave it to us.]

"Oh, yɛda onyankopɔn ase," my mother huffed out in relief before settling down at the small table. [Oh, we thank God.]

Kukua returned with water to wash our hands and since there weren't any stools left, she had to sit on the floor close to the table. Ma ordered us to close our eyes for a short prayer, then we washed our hands and dug into the meal wholeheartedly.