In the last post we learned that Elizabeth, our housekeeper, didn’t want to put a cast on her broken leg. She wanted to spend another month’s wages on a second round of topical herbal treatment, but we convinced her to have a consultation with the doctor before putting her money down.

Nobody said it would be easy. Elizabeth went to Korle-bu Hospital on Monday morning, signed herself in, and waited. Around midday she was told that the doctor wasn’t coming in; she should come back Wednesday. So she was there Wednesday morning, name on sign-in sheet, sitting in the folding chair. In the afternoon the woman came out from behind the reception counter and told Elizabeth she had seen her name on the sheet with “x-ray” written next to it and watched her all day in the waiting room. Didn’t she know she should be at Ridge Hospital? If she wanted to see a doctor for an x-ray she was in the wrong place. By now it was too late to go to Ridge, though, so she should go tomorrow morning, first thing. Thursday at Ridge Hospital the doctor should have been in—he hadn’t called in sick—but nobody could find him. Surely he would come tomorrow.

In fact he did come Friday and Elizabeth was there waiting for him. He took an x-ray of her lower leg and reviewed it with her. The partial fracture that was a hairline crack in her January x-ray had opened into a wider fissure, which helped to explain why the swelling and pain persisted, even months after the injury. Fissure or no fissure, the fact that a PoP cast would leave her foot slipperless for a month spelled ignominy at church; and this was reason enough to seek other options.

The doctor was adamant that the cast was the right treatment. Nothing else would do. Refusing a cast now, he said, might earn her an amputated foot somewhere down the line. Understandably, this proved to be the decisive blow; after all, an amputated foot is just as unslippered as one wrapped in plaster. It looked like some amount of disgrace at church was inevitable. Elizabeth opted for the PoP right then and there (though she would spend about 16 more hours in hospital waiting rooms over the next three days before actually having the cast put on).

Elizabeth has taken a temporary leave of absence until it is removed. I suppose it’s only fair that some of the waiting be passed on to us, though it is less clear why an immobilized foot is a greater impediment to work than a broken one. The slipper issue is a moot point since housework is done barefoot. We certainly will not argue, though; after so many months of constant aggravation, any excuse she finds to take a load off is a good one.

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A few days ago I hailed a taxi on the street just in front of the bank. We were driving down Beach Road, smooth and newly-paved, not much traffic. I asked the driver my usual suite of questions—whether he owns his taxi, who pays for repairs, whether he’s married, how many children he has, whether he saves money with a bank or susu association—and he asked me about my work. When I told him I was working with the bank where he had picked me up, he wanted to know more.

His goal was to own his own car, and he felt he needed a loan to buy one. He asked good questions about the process of accessing credit through the bank. Would he have to hold a savings account? (Yes.) What kind of interest rates do they charge? (3.17% per month, flat, on the initial balance of the loan.) How often would he have to make payments? (Monthly.) Could he repay over a year? (No, the maximum maturity of the first loan is six months.) Does he need to use land to secure the loan? (No, he must provide a guarantor for security—not collateral.)

By the time he eased the car around the traffic circle in front of Independence Square, he was enthusiastic. “Tomorrow morning I will come straight to the Banking Hall before I start work,” he said. He knew what documents he would need to open an account and whom to ask about starting a loan application. The path forward had been illuminated. You could tell by talking to him that he had the will and the aptitude to succeed; he had just been unaware of the resources he could access.

He had one question left: “Do you know another obruni at that bank called Matthew?” He recalled driving Matt home from work one day some time ago. “At least one year. I think even more than that.” Still, he remembered his name and where he lived. During their cab ride, he said, Matt had answered “so many questions” and told him all about the bank’s products and procedures. I asked, “Well, what did you say to Matthew once he told you all of that?”

There was no irony here: it was as clean as a clean plate. He said, “I told him I would come tomorrow.”

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The rainy season has begun. Sometimes the sky darkens up like someone pulled a great gray cloak over the city. It gets very cool all of a sudden, and the air feels empty and thin. When the wind blows, the dust on the roads and sidewalks swirls up into your eyes. It tickles the inside of your nose. The rain comes lashing down furiously in sheets. It plays a very loud drumroll on the tin roofs of our house and our neighbors’ houses. Sitting on the couch inside it roars like white noise on TV. If it keeps up for more than an hour, the seams of the corrugated roofing sheets start to leak. Then little droplets of water splash down on the back of the couch and on the tile floor. They explode into tinier droplets that collect on me like dew on the grass.

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Our landlady is Elizabeth Amankwa, wife of the late O.B. Amankwa, former Ghanaian ambassador to China and all-around heavy hitter. Recently she had to travel to Kumasi to attend to the preparations for the funeral of a tribal chief. She left her house in the care of her daughter and the two small girls, Bridget and Irene.

These two are the girls who make the sounds that populate our mornings and our nights. They are the ones bent over the brooms that scratch on the pavement; they are the ones pounding the plantain and cassava into fufu; they are the ones who sing gospel songs in voices soft and light like dandelion fuzz. Only one of them sings at a time, so the tune is always like a fine silk thread.

If you sit on the couch and listen, you won’t have to wait long to hear Elizabeth call one of them her signature harsh, barking tone. Akosua! Akosua! Bra! (Irene! Irene! Come here!) Either there is some secret, untranslatable affection in grandma’s voice, or the girls have learned through years of painstaking practice not to cringe. The sound, like a wet and rusty cheese grater gnawing through an old brown tire, doesn’t seem disturb them at all. In fact, they’re almost always smiling.

But how much more does the age of fifteen have to offer Bridget than the perfection of quiet, deferential obedience? What buds would burst open while the shadow of unceasing obligation was briefly cast out? This is what we hoped to discover when grandma took a trip.

I came home one day last week and found her standing near the front gate. Her head was down, resting on her forearms, which were crossed and laid on the flat top of the compound wall. When I approached, she looked up. “Oh, Bridget. How are you this evening?”

“I’m very well, thank you. How are you, too?”

“I’m also fine, Bridget. Are you taking a nap on the wall?”

“No.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“How long have you been not doing anything?”

“A long time. I can’t remember.”

“Up to an hour?”

“Yes.”

“How do you mean you weren’t doing anything?”

“I’ve just been watching the road.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Irene and I were watching for beautiful cars to pass by.”

“Did you see any?”

“Yes, we saw about three.”

“Which was the most beautiful car you saw?”

“A Hummer.”

Later that night I was happily scandalized to find Bridget inside the compound leaning against the wall of the house, talking with a boy. The moon, almost full and very bright, caught her cheeks and her white, white teeth. She laughed and fidgeted and flirted, oh the boy was flirting, too, and this was easy to see because the flirting of fifteen-year-olds is unmistakable in any language; it was all very chaste and very fine. I only watched long enough to see her smile flash a couple of times in the moonlight.