Free Somebody's Heart Is Burning by Tanya Shaffer Page A

the ground, covered head to toe in white powder, wearing only a loincloth. A circle of children surrounded him. When I raised my camera, he lunged toward me, shouting.
    Santana sprang into motion, pushing him back. She bellowed in Fanti until the man spun around and walked away. Then she turned to me, grinning broadly.
    “He wanted you to pay him for taking his photograph.”
    “All he had to do was ask.”
    “He expected to frighten you into giving him too much money, but I have sent him away. I have told him that I have a strong family fetish. I said if he bothers you, I will curse his family for three generations to come.”
    “I didn’t know you practiced traditional religion.”
    She smiled. “Oh, sistah,” she said, “I practice everything, when it is useful.”

    “I want to marry white,” Virgin Billy told me the next morning over a breakfast of bland maize porridge, called
koko
, with sugar dumped on top.
    “Why?” I asked suspiciously.
    “I would like to have half-caste children. I like the color.”
    “So it’s an aesthetic thing?”
    “Yes,” he nodded. “And I like white people. I like the way they live.”
    “You mean money.”
    “Not just money,” he protested. “They are educated. I would like my children to go to school in Europe, or the United States. Then they can become lawyers, or write books, or be bank managers, or artists.”
    I smiled at this unusual assemblage of occupations. “Artists?” I said, “Why artists?”
    “Artists are paid very well,” said Billy.
    “Not in the U.S.”
    “Here in Ghana they are,” he insisted. “You can make one picture, a simple picture, and sell it for 20,000 cedis. Or weave some
kente
and sell it for 8,000. Some artists own five buildings.”
    “A word of advice,” I said. “If you meet an American or European woman whom you want to marry, don’t mention to her that you want to marry white. Just pretend that she, as an
individual,
is the kindest, smartest, most beautiful woman you’ve ever known in your life.”
    He nodded soberly. “Thank you for these words.”
    When Billy got up and brought his plate to the kitchen, Santana slid into the seat beside me.
    “Sistah Korkor,” she said to me, “whatever he tells you, you must not marry this man. He hates himself, and he will hate you even more.”
    “Billy?” I asked with surprise. “Why would you think that?”
    “There are some men in Ghana here,” she said, “they hate themselves and love white people. But if a white woman will love them, soon she will become just like a black woman to them. I have seen this before.”

    “The white man brought us civilization,” Billy told me the next afternoon as we stood side by side at the construction site, applying mortar and bricks to a growing wall.
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    “Before the white man came, we were living in trees. We were uncivilized. Then when he came we were afraid, and we ran into the jungle.” He put down the brick he was carrying and flailed his hands in the air, imitating a frightened villager running for cover. “It is only unfortunate that we have not retained better relations with the British. Look at Ivory Coast. They are wealthier than we are, because they have kept a good relationship with the French. Kwame Nkrumah should not have thrown out the British so fast. When you leave your mother’s house, you should not shun her. You should keep good relations with her, so that you can come to her for guidance and support.”
    I was so stunned that for a moment I didn’t know what to say. Ghana, formerly Gold Coast, had gained its independence from the British in 1957, making it the first sub-Saharan African nation to break free of colonialism. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, leader of the Ghanaian independence movement, first president of the new Ghana, and an early African nationalist, was a hero here. It was he who had given present-day Ghana its name, after a prosperous West African kingdom that flourished