porch talk

the mother of the owner of the house i live in has been staying with us for the past week. she lives in the village but her son has come to visit for a small time. he is staying in the room next to mine. so she has been around cooking up meals and taking care of him. she's an elderly woman, known to the village folk as "Auntie" with a lot of sass and a good command of the English language. she has a raspy laugh and wears big African frocks that hang low off of one shoulder. she shuffles through the house, busy in her own world. she also happens to be very opinionated.

i didn't know she spoke English so well because she always talks to me in Twi. I also didn't know she had been to California until just the other day.

the sun was going to set soon and i wasn't ready for darkness, so i grabbed an orange and a knife from the kitchen and went out to the front porch to enjoy the last glimmer of the days light.

Auntie was there, with an orange and a knife in her hand too.

"auntie?" i laughed. she turned around to look at me. i said "same same" and pointed to our fruits.

"ohhhh yes, haha, same same." she paused and then looked back up at me. "you shouldn't call me auntie."

"i shouldn't?"

"no because, how old is your mother?" she asked.

"54, i think." i kind of stopped counting after 50.

"you see? i am 73. i am older than your mother and you call me auntie?! you should call me grandmother."

"okay. i'll do that. but Sakola calls you auntie and so does NanaKwame, so i thought i'd call you auntie too. thats all."

"ohhh i see. yes, everyone calls me auntie. you can call me auntie, i understand."

the conversation was starting to make its way into absurd, so i shrugged and examined her eating her orange.

we both had sliced the skin off in small short strokes and left a pile of shavings sitting in front of us. i was getting better at this simple act. we cut the north pole off and sucked the juice out through the opening. her lips had spent a lifetime wrapping themselves around oranges and slurping out the juice, this style of enjoying my citrus was relatively new to me. i liked watching her staring out into the wild and clumsily spitting seeds onto her lap and the floor around us.

"my daughter, the one who built this house, she lives in California."

"oh really, where?"

"los angeles. i've even been there."

"you have? when?"

"a few years back i was there. actually i have been there two times. one time for, hmmmm, lets say, 3 months and the second time i stayed 1 year and a half. so you know, i know your place. ah California. i know it!"

i was surprised she had spent such a long time there.

"what did you do there?" i asked.

"ohh, i just spent time with my daughter, and my son in law and my granddaughter. they wouldn't let me work so i stayed and relaxed. hm, it was nice. ahh California. and Hollywood- do you know Hollywood?"

"yes" i laughed. "san diego, do you know san diego?"

"ahh yess, san diego. i know the place."

i straightened myself excitedly and told her that was my home.

"so" she said "you can call your mother and tell her auntie who stays here in boamadumase knows your home. i know the place. let's see, i went on a trip there and toured with my son-in-law. i was in this place, i think, hm, it was a museum but i can't remember. but it had many beautiful things. and i spoke twi..." her storytelling was beginning to turn into stage acting. she was pausing and using hand gestures and was lost in the tale "yes, i spoke the twi and some man heard. he walked over- he said- where are you from? i told him, i am an African. he said, from where? i said Ghana. then he spoke the twi back to me. eih!" she clenched her fists and shook them around. "i said eih! you know the twi? he said 'yes, i've been there.' oh! it was nice. so you see, when you go back you can speak the twi with him."

"auntie, san diego is big."

"yes, i know, but just you wait. you'll see. one day the same thing will happen to you. you'll hear the twi and then you can ask that person to be your friend. but you know, when i arrived in the airport my first time to California i was shaking. immigration took my papers and they told me to walk down the red carpet. they wanted to check me. i stood there, like this" she made her body tremble "like that. they said 'why are you here?' i told them to see my daughter. then they said 'when are you leaving?' i told them i didn't know. so they left me there. oh they were big men, and not very friendly. i was shaking. then, they asked if anyone was going to pick me up. i said, why yes of course, my son-in-law. they called him. 4 minutes later he was there and they let me go! ahh immigration, its not nice at all."

i felt instantly sad at how we treat foreigners. it seemed so accusatory. the two worlds colliding seemed unreal. little auntie going to visit her daughter up against a man trained and drained by 'the super power'. talk about culture shock.

i wanted to know how she saw Americans.

she replied "oh they are nice people. very friendly."

"and the food, did you eat our food?"

"oh YES! i told you, i know the place."

"what did you eat?" i asked. i had spent the last hour in my room, drawing pictures of Caesar salad, hamburgers, and pizza in my journal.

"well my favorite is pissa." she said.

"oh PIZZA! yes! did you eat hot dogs?"

she stroked her throat. "oh even hearing it is making me feel for it." she said, but for some reason i didn't believe her. hot dogs are disgusting, and the gesture she made was like she enjoyed swallowing them whole.

we looked at each other and laughed. i noticed how gummy her mouth was, and her teeth looked like tiny yellow watermelon seeds that had been tossed into her mouth and stuck in all directions.

"but you know, the sweetcorn! you have SWEETcorn. and your oranges are different than ours. same with your peppeh. and..."

she talked of what she knew, and told me where i can go to buy cocoa yams, plantain, cassava, and anything else i might need when i'm back home and want to make African food. granted, it is a few hours away from my home, but i don't doubt i will show up there one day eyeing every African in the place, desperate to speak twi and connect back to a time when i sat long hours in the front of a monstrous house and giggled till it was dark and the mosquitoes came.