Free Somebody's Heart Is Burning by Tanya Shaffer

have a fever,” I said.
    “Then you must work! Other people, they work harder because you lie in bed.”
    “I’m having stomach problems,” I told her.
    Santana laughed. “So is Sistah Mansah, from England. So is Brothah Okoto, from Australia. So am I. Why do you think your stomach is more important than my stomach?”
    “I don’t!” I said, bridling. “I just think it’d be hard for me to work if I had to run to Chicago every fifteen minutes!”
    “Chicago” was our nickname for the camp toilet, a clean-swept room with a chrome-covered hole in the floor.
    “It is true that you could not work while you were visiting Chicago, but when you returned from Chicago you could work for fifteen minutes before visiting Chicago again. And so, throughout the day, it is entirely possible that you could work many hours.”
    I glared at her.
    “You think it is something very special when a small insect is living inside you,” she continued. “If an African man went to the hospital for a test, he would find thirty or forty different insects living inside him.”
    “Fine,” I said resentfully, “I’ll come back to work tomorrow.”
    “Eh heh!” said Santana, giving me an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-
it
look. “The association is not buying your food so that you may have a rest vacation.” She disappeared into the room.
    I returned to work the next day, cursing Santana every time I had to drop my shovel and dash to Chicago.

    The camp leader requested a fee of 200 cedis each to cover transportation for a weekend excursion to the nearby village of Enyana Abassa to witness a new chief’s inauguration ceremony. Many of the African volunteers couldn’t afford the fee, so Virgin Billy made an announcement requesting foreigners to sponsor them. Santana was standing next to me with her hand raised, indicating that she needed sponsorship.
    “I’ll sponsor you,” I said.
    “You, lazy girl?” She raised an eyebrow.
    “If you shut up about that.”
    “Eh heh! I am not very good at ‘shut up.’ ”
    “Great, then there’s potential for growth.”
    She laughed a deep, scratchy belly laugh, and took my hand. “You will be my sistah tomorrow. So you do not go missing. This place will be so crowded.”
    “You’re going to look out for me?”
    She smiled. “Will you trust me?”

    In Enyana Abassa, we were crunched all day long in a joyous welter of bodies. I strained to get a glimpse of the new chief, who was carried through town on a bier. Men walked beside the bier, beating with hooked sticks on the taut, fur-covered heads of enormous wooden drums. The young chief was swaddled head to toe in exquisite layers of
kente
, the traditional handwoven Ghanaian cloth, its rich blue, red, and gold dazzling in the midday sun. On his head was a colorful hat, shaped like an upside-down canoe. Beneath the hat, his face was round and unlined, its expression oddly impassive, as though his mind were somewhere far away. Beads of sweat glistened on his broad forehead. An adolescent girl sat in front of him, also wrapped in
kente
, with a stern expression on her face.
    “Why do they look so gloomy?” I asked Santana.
    “They must not smile during the festival.”
    “Why?”
    She shrugged, looking bored. “It is the rule.”
    A long line of women with painted faces stood waiting, with gifts for the chief balanced on their heads. Their offerings included tall pyramids of oranges, yams, and tomatoes; towering piles of folded cloth; and hand-carved wooden stools. One woman carried a large wooden table upside down on her head, while another toted three antique sewing machines, one on top of the other. I went crazy with my camera, trying to record these astounding feats of balance. In a dusty central square, rifles were fired into the air, and a man in a bird suit danced.
    When I asked Santana the meaning of the dance, she just shrugged again.
    “Our grandparents knew,” she said. “To us, it is just a party.”
    A man crouched on