As I descended the narrow hilly road leading home, I tried to imagine the scene behind me. The shop that was always open and yet I never saw any customer buying anything from it, the fenced land overgrown with weed, the house where funeral canopies, drums and decorations were rented out, and the main road separating the mountain and our community. From where I had reached, I wasn’t able to hear any car on the main road honk or screech.
I could still see the mountain in my head, though my back was turned to it. A shade of a thick cloud was cast across the mountain, giving off an inviting aura of tranquility.
Now my gaze shifted from the rocky path to the white guesthouse at the foot of the hill.
I quicken my pace, imagining in what order I would eat the food I bought. There were fruits, a drink and ingredients for soup. Should have bought them earlier to break my fast. Now, hunger rendered my legs weak and impatient to get home.
Then while bypassing a tailor shop, I hear a song that reminds me of a deceased friend.
The song was still playing in my head even when I was a long distance from the tailor shop, and I couldn’t help but remember Sandra, my very good friend who is no more, and all the silly things she always said that made me giggle.
It was a song by the great Ghanaian Highlife legend Daddy Lumba, titled “Nyame Nhyira Mmaa (God bless women), a song recounting the many sad incidents that women faced, like maternal deaths.
The very scene in which my deceased friend was playing that song replays in my mind…
She was by her window one early morning, examining the place where the outdoor unit of her AC once stood. A thief had carried it away the previous night. I noticed the anger and disappointment on her face, but she was trying to calm herself because of her condition. For she was pregnant.
“It’s not good for a pregnant woman to get angry.” she told me. “The baby senses it.”
I listened, as we both wondered who could have done that to her.
She lived alone, although I knew she spoke often with the man who got her pregnant. She didn’t refer to him as her boyfriend, which meant that it was just the pregnancy that linked them, and nothing more. One time, she mentioned that when she realized she was pregnant, she decided to not abort. That was when I guessed the pregnancy was accidental.
She had admitted to me that she couldn’t stay for months without sex. That information, together with the fact that she wasn’t in a relationship, plus the pictures she showed me on her phone, of men who would pay anything just to see her, was enough for me to draw my conclusions. I preferred to not ask her very directly many questions. She was an extrovert, so naturally many things came out of her, enough pieces for me to solve the puzzles.
I wouldn’t say my friend was promiscuous. I prefer to not judge her. A single lady trying to make life on her own in this country wasn’t an easy thing.
She did not say it. But I knew what was going through her mind while that song played. She had come to that point where she began to appreciate what her mother went through, having seen how difficult carrying a pregnancy was. My friend was a wild child, and it took that pregnancy to calm her down a bit.
I thought about her as I trudged home, wondering if she could see me and what I was thinking from where she was.
Mowabites Worldwide 
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