Dial - Season 1 - Episode 110

4 years ago

Dial - Season 1 - Episode 110

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It was made of clay, and it looked very small indeed. It was just a simple rectangular structure with a porch-like construction in front. I saw two doors, and to one side of the building was a shed-like structure under which were a three-stone clay structure with firewood in it. There was a crude wooden shelf, and cooking utensils were stacked neatly in it. There was a barrel, two covered huge baskets and a few bits and pieces.

The night passed in a blur.

She let me put the bag down, and then she led me to the clay building.

One had a few wooden chairs and bags, and this was where she made me put my bag.
Next, she took me to the next room. It was small too, and had a single bed with very tall legs. It was neatly-made, though.
She lit other lanterns, and then she told me to sit and wait for her.

There were two hard-backed chairs in the room, and so I sat in one and promptly dozed off.

I didn’t know how long I slept, but she eventually shook me awake.
I opened my eyes sleepily and then wrinkled my nose with sudden distaste.
“Hey, what’s that unpleasant scent?” I asked as I took shallow breaths so that I wouldn’t breathe that scent fully.
She pointed to the doorway.

She had put some bunches of leaves all along the doorway and the porch.
“We call them poop leaves here, Yao,” she said. “The scent is bad, I know, but they keep the snakes away.”
“Gross!” I said with a screwed-up face. “I can’t sleep with that scent!”
“You’ll have to grow used to it, my son,” she said. “Without the leaves, you could get bitten, and die. Come, I prepared something for you. Let’s eat.”

And under the shed, from the light of a lantern in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and poisonous reptiles, I shared a meal of yam and
kontomire stew with palm oil with a witch…and it was the sweetest food I had ever eaten in any of the world-class restaurants both home and abroad. We sat on small stools on each side of a low table, and we ate from an earthenware bowl.

Much later, I sat and watched her as she washed and stacked the bowls away. She then poured some hot water into a strange-looking bucket, and added some cold water.
“Do you have a sponge and towel?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, in my bag,” I answered.
“Go and get them then, Yao, and come and take a bath.”
“I don’t bath hot water, please,” I informed her with a smile.

She looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“The cold water we have here isn’t the one you have in the city,” she said. “You need it lukewarm.”

“Oh, no, please,” I insisted. “I’m hot enough as it is. Cold water is fine.”
She acquiesced.

“Alright then, take another bucket and fetch some from that barrel over there.”
I fetched the water, and sent it to a small cubicle fashioned from wooden planks used to form a box-like structure, with stones and slabs of rocks on the floor. Standing in it, I realized that my upper shoulders showed outside. She hung a lantern on the peg for me.
I smiled, shook my head, and took off my clothes slowly. Back in Accra, my ultra-modern Jacuzzi was resting beautifully, and here I was, standing on stones with a crude wooden bucket and a metal scoop in it.
She came back and placed one of the wooden buckets on the ground just outside the bathroom.

“And what’s that?” I asked as I looked at her over the top of the bathroom.
“Hot water,” she said, and walked away.
“Told you I don’t need hot water, you witch!” I said with laughter in my voice.
She didn’t say anything, but when she walked a little bit away she stopped still.
I scooped water from the bucket and poured it over my head.