Rotten (From #TheAtenist)

She was beautiful – even as a child I knew it was impossible not to see Nana Adwoa Serwaa and not be arrested by her charm. On her face, rose flowers blossomed, poetry failed to be pretty and prose became a ghost town. She was dark and a bit hairy for her age –at fourteen she had so much hair; her hair gyrated in the corridors of her buttocks as if they were making merry. She had an average height and had an ecstatic body figure like that of Venus. She was now developing breast and was very happy to flaunt it.

Living in one of the most notorious downtown communities in Kumasi, it was expected that you would go to one of those government schools. It was rude for your parents to send you to a private school – boys of my age felt it was a betrayal of some imagined code. Going to a private school, gave you some sort of elevation above all others and was enough to place you on a sort of black list; it was therefore not a surprise when people hated me and Nana Adwoa Serwaa. Her parents were rich and wanted a good education for her child, my parents too were averagely well better off and did not want me to be like those silly boys who went about swaggering, impregnating and disrespecting almost every adult just to prove that they were “guys”. It was very common for communities to fight against each other because each wanted to prove it was more notorious than the other. Going to private schools however cut you off joining the “war pantheons” for you were considered as weak and as someone who had abandoned the “boys” or “girls” code. Whenever a war was raging, we would sit on the veranda at the second floor and watch boys marching and shouting sexual obscenities. Whenever, they saw us, they would hurl insults at us and remind us of how we think we are better off than them. Knowing how boisterous they can be, we would simply look at them and not utter a word.


As it is well established, every great fall always begins with love. Nana Adwoa Serwaa fell in love with a boy who had come to experience the downtown Kumasi experience, he was from Accra and as it was to be expected from Accra boys who were in senior High school, he was to be rich even if he wasn’t. Of course, we heard of his arrival and of how handsome he was. By accident, Nana Adwoa Serwaa and I went to buy some biscuit and saw him. We knew it was him when we saw him, we heard he was fair, had a wavy hair, tall and had a bit of “out of Ghana” aura around him – he fitted the description perfectly. We pretended we had not seen him, of course, if he was from Accra we also attended private schools and hence there was no big deal. When we went home, Nana Adwoa praised him highly, to be honest, I had never heard her praise any boy highly like that not even boys in her school who were supposed to be elitist and middle class. Personally, I knew nothing of teenage love affair so I could have never guessed then she had fallen in love with him.

On the next day, I was coming from school when a certain boy who I knew by face stopped me and sought to have a conversation with me.

“Yoo fresh, are you now coming back from school?”
“Yes nigger, I am so tired. We close at four and by the time I get home, I am always tired.” I tried to sound gangster knowing very well I was failing in that attempt.
“Fresh, as for you and Nana Adwoa Serwaa you never want to come near ‘cool people’ like us. You always behave like you are super humans” he replied condescendingly.
“You know it’s not true, we don’t close early, we go to school on Saturdays too and you don’t believe we are gangster enough to be in your clique” I replied trying to rebuke the statement I knew was true beyond any shadow of thought.
“But nigger, can I have a deal with you?”
“But I barely know you?”
“Well it doesn’t matter” he smiled.
“Isn’t it in the clique code that you don’t fraternise with people like me?”
“That’s not so, we are intimidated by how elevated your parents have put you. Consider this, by the virtue of the school you go, you are extremely likely to go to one of those big schools; Prempeh College, Opoku Ware, Kumasi High School, T.I.AMASS or a host of good ones in school in Accra and Cape Coast. After your high school education, you are also likely to go to the university, graduate, ride a big Mercedes Benz and forget us entirely, the histories are there, I know you know Bra Asare – he’s now working in a big consortium, he’s built a house in Asokwa, an elitist area,
and now flies to London as if it is only a stone throw. But what do wilts like us have to offer? Sometimes, we behave ‘hard’ to show the world that we are happy but we aren’t. Sometimes, we go hungry and have to steal because our parents are too busy to notice us and even if they are less busy, they are fighting and these fights once they happen lead to divorce. These clique societies are escapist, no one wants to be there but we have no choice. We know how our lives will end – our dicks will lead us to impregnate a girl or two or sometimes five, we will be fathers at a young age and we will be forced into armed robbery in a quest to raise our children to be just like you but do you know what usually happen?” he looked into my face in a bid to read my facial gesture.

“Nigger, I don’t know ooo”
“There is happiness in ignorance, hmmmm, we will be caught up in the game, we will be sleeping with too many girls, drinking too many premium wines, smoking too many cigarettes and before we know what is happening to us, we have forgotten about our children leaving them to walk on the same road we walked and before we realise, we are either in prison or deep within the corridors of madness that we cannot get out.”

“But I always wanted to be like you. It is so fun in there and I am stuck in a virtual world of games and in the worlds of books I read”

He stopped and look deep into my face and I knew that he meant what he was going to say next “Never ever wish to be like me. I don’t even wish to be myself, I only pretend to be happy but deep inside I am not.”

There was a moment of silence and I did not know what to say to break it. I was very shocked at the declaration he made. I thought he was lying because if there is something these clique boys are noted for, it is lying and we all knew this.”

“Nigger, can you do me a favour?” he replied and I was more glad the silence had been broken because I was almost near home and I didn’t want to appear as someone who having a conversation with was difficult.

“Sure.”
“You know the new nigger from Accra? That fresh dude who girls have been running over?”
“Yes I do.”
“Well, the first time he saw your friend, Nana Adwoa Serwaa, he wilted, the second time he saw her, he almost turned into sand and if he sees him for a third time without speaking to him, he will ejaculate and die out of shame.”

“And what can I do about that?” I burst into laughter.
“He wants to meet her tonight just to speak to her. Can you arrange to have her meet us at the back of the Lebanese’s provision shop?”
“I can do that.”
“Nigger, I want you to do this for me, otherwise I am not going to get money to eat. I trust you don’t want me to starve?”
“Nigger, that’s a deal.”

We parted ways and I took the stairways to my room. Immediately, I opened the door, my mother informed me that Nana Adwoa Serwaa had come to request for me. I took off my school uniform, jumped into a knicker and a shirt and went to knock on her door.

She held my hands and we headed for the veranda on the second floor.

“I saw you talking with that dirty boy who lives in that yellow house”
“Oh yes. You remember the Accra boy we were talking about the last time?”
“What has he done?” she replied softly and I could see her facial expression changing from that of anger to that of excitement.
“That dirty boy you saw me walking with told me that the Accra boy wants to speak to you at six thirty this evening.”
“Tell me how exactly he put it?” she was so excited that she could literally jump down and die.
“He said and I quote ‘Well, the first time he saw your friend he wilted, the second time he saw her, he almost turned into sand and if he sees him for a third time without speaking to him, he will ejaculate and die out of shame.’

I think it was so ----“
“Let’s meet at the basement at six fifteen” she interjected and quickly run off to her room. I found her behaviour rather strange, I began to take fancy onto fancy, postulating theories into theories and I concluded that she may want to become friends with him.
I met her at the appointed time, she took me to her grandmother and asked her for money to buy an exercise book for school. Her grandmother looked at her shockingly and asked her if she hadn’t bought her a new set a week before, she lied about her needing another one because she had exhausted all of them yesterday. Her grandmother shock her head and gave her money to buy a new one. Since, she knew I was going to escort her, she didn’t have the slightest fear of being attacked or being called by any stupid area boy. She herself could not stand hearing her dating any of the
boys living around, she had personally groaned her for some white man or at worse, a rich Ghanaian politician.

“Be careful of those stupid boys who walk around with their shorts on their knees!” she remarked and we step out to do exactly what she had warned us not to do.

When we got to the rendezvous and we saw him standing by an electric pole, we neared him and he signaled me to wait behind. He and my friend went into the dark and they talked for a long time, I could see their shadow merging, I neared a bit and I saw him kissing and touching her body parts.

After what seemed like hours, they both came back happy and we went home. We passed by the Lebanese’s provision shop and bought the exercise book and went home.

From that time, we spoke less and didn’t see each other as often as we did before. I guessed she went to see her boyfriend. I was a bit bothered by the union so I sought friendship with the “dirty boy” but it appeared we were just not compatible. Later, he told me he had to choose between me and his friends and when I asked him why, he told me that such friendship often did not end well. I may move on in life while he will be rusting and feeling guilty every time he sees me; he put it like this “when I become a broken mirror, I don’t want you to look at your reflection through me just to see how illuminated you are. I never want it to happen”

A month later, Nana Adwoa Serwaa’s boyfriend went back to Accra and she asked me to escort them to the bus terminal. She cried the whole day and no matter the assurance given, she just wouldn’t stop crying but he left regardless and our friendship was never the same.

She sought comfort from other boys – she wanted to be loved, she wanted to be complete and my friendship was not enough to complete her. All what  she wanted was the sex her ex-boyfriend was giving her. She stopped being the girl I used to know.

Rumours started going around that Nana Adwoa Serwaa was a “cheap” girl.

One day, I was sitting in my favourite veranda when a girl came to fight with her. She warned her to stay away from her boyfriend or else she was going to kill her. The fact of the matter was that Nana Adwoa belonged nowhere – she had been brought up to be in a middle class so she couldn’t relate with the “area girls” and because of her behaviour and the kind of people she associated herself with now, the middle class people did not want to associate themselves with her. She was falling in an endless pit and not even my constant advice could remedy the situation.

A few days before she was to go to a very good senior high school, she got pregnant and that was her end. Her mother was disappointed and instead of helping her through the storm, she left her on the open road to fend for herself. In just a word, she became “rotten” – all the beauty she had was
never seen again. Every now and then, when I see her, I cannot believe that she was once the girl everyone thought was going to be a high class woman. She now lives with a beautiful baby girl all alone in her grandmother’s room quietly watching her beauty to rot.

 I just hope and pray the little girl doesn’t become a tragedy like her mother – beautiful girls in areas like this always end up becoming a dirty backdrop. What is more depressing about her story is that she belongs nowhere – she walks all alone in a vacuum.