The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (127 page)

A high-ranking pundit said, “America can use its Black citizens to infiltrate Africa and sabotage our struggle because the Negro’s complexion is a perfect disguise. Be wary, Africa, of the Peace Corps Blacks, the AID Blacks, and the Foreign Service Blacks.” He suggested finally, that Africans should approach all American Blacks with caution, “if they must be approached at all.”

We saw ourselves as frail rafts on an ocean of political turbulence.
If we were not welcome in Ghana, the most progressively Black nation in Africa, where would we find harbour? Naturally we sought to minimize the impact of that painful advice. A few Revolutionists joined the witch hunt, tearing away, with loud protestations, all historical ties to the newly accused. They hoped to deflect suspicion from themselves and to inch closer to the still unrealized goal of acceptance. Many of us kept silent, heads erect and eyes forward, hoping to become invisible and avoid the flaming tongues. Failing the success of that maneuver, we prayed that the assault would pass soon, leaving no scar and little memory.

As usual, I drove each day from my house in Accra to the university, seven miles away, but the distance became painfully perverse. At times, I felt I would never arrive at my destination. Roadblocks delayed progress. They were manned by suddenly mean faced soldiers, their guns threatening and unusual in a country where policemen were armed only with billy sticks. Further on the same drive, it would seem that my arrival at the University at Legon was too imminent. Before I could collect enough composure to calm my face and steady my hands, I would be on campus, where students dropped their eyes at my approach, and professors pointedly turned their backs.

As the Black American community trembled beneath the weight of unprovable innocence, the investigation progressed in all directions. Suspects were imprisoned, and rumors flew like poison arrows around the country. Some Americans and other foreigners were deported, slowly the barbs ceased, the cacophony of distrust quieted. Life returned. The roll of drums and the sound of laughter could be heard in the streets. None of the Revolutionist Returnees had been directly accused, and we were still grateful to be in the motherland, but we had been made a little different, a little less giddy and a lot less sure.

For two weeks I worked myself into a trembling frenzy at the in-town National Theatre. While Efua directed an English translation of a Chinese play, I had helped to sew costumes and coach the student actors. I pulled and pushed the bleachers in the open air auditorium which had to be rearranged constantly. Rickety sets, made by students with no theatrical background, were ever in need of strengthening. Someone had to synchronize the taped music with the onstage action, and a person was needed in the box office. I chose to try to be all things to all the people at all times. The play’s pomp and pageantry had been a great success. Ghanaians finding a similarity between the ancient Chinese spectacle and their own traditional dramas kept the theatre filled. I was shaky with exhaustion, but I held on to the idea of returning soon to the university, and that steadied me.

On a quiet Monday morning I parked my car at the Institute of African Studies and sat watching the sun light up the green lawns stretching upward to the white shining buildings. The campus was quiet. I was happy to be back in its peaceful atmosphere.

I started walking to the Faculty of Music and Dance and met Bertie Okpoku, the director of dance.

“Hey, Maya, you finally decided to come home?”

We shook hands and ended the gesture with a traditional finger snap which signified best wishes, and walked together exchanging news until I reached my office.

“Oh, yes.” His face became solemn. “One bad thing happened. Sister Grace lost her whole pay packet last week.” He shook his head. “Everybody in the Dance department has been affected. So don’t expect much laughter around here.” Grace Nuamah was the country’s chief traditional dancer, a small, thick set, middle-aged woman who performed a welcoming dance at all state functions and important ceremonies. She was an Ashanti woman, with a ready smile, a soft
voice, and a hilarious sense of humor. Grace supported herself, nieces and nephews, and was generous with her friends, so the news of her loss saddened my morning, and when I opened the office door and saw the desk piled a foot high with papers, I was suddenly tired. I sat down to examine the stack and it seemed that each student at Legon needed assistance of some sort, and needed me to furnish it. One student wanted a transfer, another additional financial support, while some simply needed excuses from school to take care of familial responsibilities. Each petition had to be checked against the applicant’s file and the mid-morning sun was beating into my office before I noticed the passage of time.

I thought I would complete one more paper before a break. I lifted a form letter and a small brown manilla envelope caught my eye. It read, “Grace Nuamah.” I opened it to find a roll of Ghanaian pounds stuffed inside. Happy surprise made me give an involuntary shout. I was living close to economic catastrophe, and I knew how precious the salary was for Grace.

She was demonstrating a dance step to her class when I entered the rehearsal hall. The students saw me first, and she, following her distraction, saw me and stopped the class. We walked together out of the door.

She said, “Sister, welcome back from the town. We missed you, oh.” I said, “Sister Grace, Bertie told me about your pay—”

She interrupted, “Into each life some rain must fall.” Africans whose own lore and literature are rich with proverbs also make frequent use of English axioms.

I told her that I had found something highly unusual on my desk and showed her the envelope.

She said, “But Sister, it’s your pay packet.” I said that my salary had been delivered to me in Accra and offered the envelope. There was not a hint of recognition on her face as she took the packet and began to read. “Well, then …” She narrowed her eyes against the bright sunlight. “Oh, Sister! Oh, Sister!” Stretching her arms over her head, she jumped up. “Oh, Sis-ter, Sis-ter. Hey, thank you, oh.”

Students and musicians and workers, hearing her loud shouts, came
running. She said in Ashanti, “Sister is blessed. She found my money. Sister is blessed.” The smiles and pats and hugs would have been worth contriving a recovery of Grace’s loss.

She said, “Sister, I will repay you.” I told her that I was repaid, but she insisted. “Sister, I shall repay you.”

Throughout the day, people stopped in my office to shake my hand, rejoicing in Grace’s good fortune.

Two weeks passed and the memory of the incident waned. University life with its steady routine restored my energies and I felt so good I decided to give myself the treat of having a proper lunch. Like all faculty members, I had been assigned to take meals in one of the university’s eight halls, but it was only on the rare occasion that I visited Volta Hall High Table. The dining room was vast and tiered and quiet. Following the British academic arrangement, students sat at Low Table about four feet beneath the long high row where faculty sat facing them. I joined the members at High Table, without speaking, for we knew each other only casually, and there was no love lost or found between us.

Although the African food had been anglicized, it was delicious. A Ghanaian lamb curry, cooked with a minimum of spices, was served and was accompanied with diced papaya, fresh pineapple, tomatoes and mango. I offended the steward by asking for fresh red pepper.

The steward answered with an imitative British accent, “Oh, but Madam, we don’t serve that.” I knew that students brought their own pepper to the dining room and I was also certain that the steward had had his own cache stored in the kitchen.

When I suggested that maybe he could find a little for me, the White professors looked at me and sniffed disapproval. So typical, their faces seemed to say. So crude a palate and coarse a taste, so typical.

I said loudly, but with courtesy, “If you can’t get some for me, I’m sure one of the students would gladly bring pepper to High Table.” The steward frowned and reminded me of many American Negroes in the early fifties, who were enraged whenever they saw a natural hair style in public. They felt betrayed, as if the women wearing the frizzy
coiffure were giving away secrets; as if they were letting White folks know that our hair wasn’t naturally straight. I had seen Black people curse each other on New York City subways and had seen women snubbed in streets throughout the United States because they dared to reveal their Negro-ness.

The steward, infuriated, said “I will find pepper. I will bring pepper to you, Madam.”

I ate slowly, relishing every fiery mouthful, ignoring the departure of the faculty. Innate obstinacy made me order and eat a dessert which I did not want and which the steward did not wish to provide.

Coffee was served in the Senior Common Room, and I took a seat by the window and listened to the conversation in progress.

“It was really a little serio-comedic drama. We had traveled about fifty miles into the interior and at nightfall John stopped and let down the flaps of the Land Rover, so we crawled in the back to go to sleep.”

A woman’s voice cut through the air, “You and the mosquitoes, I don’t doubt.”

“Oh no, we had netting. Anyway, just as we were drowsing, we heard a voice, ‘Ko koko koko ko koko ko.’ ”

West African houses in the interior are often made of thatch or non-resonant land-crete, so a visitor seeking entrance, unable to rap on a responding door, would politely stand outside and make the sound of knocking, “ko ko ko, ko ko ko.”

The storyteller continued, “John lifted the flap and an African stood there dripping wet, wearing a sarong and waving his hand at us.”

At nightfall, a farmer home from his fields would take the akatado, the shawl of his wife’s dress, and go to the bathhouse. After washing, the man would drape himself in cloth before returning for the evening meal.

“John made me put my slacks back on and we got out of the Rover.”

One of the listeners hugged himself and chortled, “Better you than me.”

The woman continued, “We didn’t see that we had a choice. Anyway, we had thought we were miles from civilization, but we followed the man through a few yards of jungle and there was a village.”

The same woman with the keen voice said, “Personally, wild elephants could not have made me leave that car.”

“Well, the man took us to the chief, and he had someone serve us tea with whiskey in it. Pretty terrible, actually, but we drank it. Then an interpreter arrived and the old man, toothless and quite ragged, looked directly at us as he spoke his dialect.”

I thought of the unpleasant irony that Africans and Asians always speak dialects, rarely languages, while Europeans speak languages and almost never dialects.

The woman continued, “The interpreter said, ‘the chief says, you are human beings. I can see that, because I am a human being.’ ”

There was a little laughter in the Common Room.

She went on quoting the old African. “ ‘God made daylight so that human beings can be busy outside tending their farms, fishing, and doing all the things for which they need light. God also gave human beings this head,’ ” she pointed a thin finger at her own head, “ ‘so that they would have enough sense to make indoors. Human beings sleep indoors at night, for God made night so that animals can search for their food, and breed, and have their young.’ ” The woman paused, then added, “Well, I thought that was poetic. Then he sent us to a hut where ledges had been built in the walls. We were given mats to sleep on. I guess it was a kind of guest house. John said the people who had lived there before had died of mosquito bites. Anyway, we slept in our clothes and in the morning a woman was cooking over a fire just outside and she gave us yams and crab stew about seven-thirty in the morning. Imagine crab stew at seven-thirty in the morning. When we tried to give her a tip, she refused, and beckoning us to follow, took us back to the old man and the translator was called again. He stood before the chief who looked at us and shook his head as if we were naughty children. When he stopped talking, the translator said, ‘The chief says “you are human beings. I can see that. God has chosen to make you without a proper skin. I do not question why. I accept. We brought you inside and slept you and fed you because you are humans. You cannot pay us. We did not make you human. God did that. You are traveling in a strange land. What less could we do? If I came to your
land, and was outside, you would have to do the same for me. Could I pay you? No. For you did not make me. God did that.’ ”

A man with a mouthful of coffee sputtered, “Can’t you just imagine the old codger caught in a revolving door in New York expecting somebody to help him because God made him?”

There was a round of self-conscious laughter.

An English woman stood, dropped her napkin and spoke in a low voice. “Even if that story is true you should never tell it again. You and your husband sound like ungrateful clods, and the African has the grace of Saint Augustine. I must say that I don’t pity you. I don’t pity Africa. I pity Europe. What poor representatives she has sent abroad. I am here to give three seminars. I must say I’ll be relieved to go. You are an embarrassment.”

The woman left and there was more soft embarrassed laughter. I sat watching the little group, wondering and curious to see what they would do and even more interested to learn what I would do.

“Well, must be going.”

“I, too. See you at seven?”

“Of course.”

“Ciao.”

“Ta.”

And they were gone. I looked at the steward, but his face had no more expression than a black billiard ball. I gathered my belongings and left the Common Room walking in an air of pleasant pride. I had not let my heart be troubled, I had not spoken idiotically, and I was overjoyed that the English woman whom I had seen only once had stood up and talked back. It was sad that she was leaving, and I wouldn’t have the chance to know her.

On an early morning the small figure of a woman stood in my office door. I was used to being at the institute long before other faculty members, so I supposed the figure to be a student, but as I neared I recognized Grace Nuamah.