Today I am the dishwasher: I pour the next batch of dirty utensils into a basin and grope for another basin to start drying the previously washed utensils.It is half past eight,I am kept company by a swarm of mosquitoes as I try to finish the chore.I have been washing dishes for as long as I can remember, and the process is hard-wired into my muscle-memory.I perform it with such effortlessness that you would think I make a living out of it.
This isnt my favorite time of the day, but it is the only time I can be alone in the kitchen and talk to myself about my dreams.
Today I am a porter: I balance the pan of angry, clucking chickens on my head as I transport them from our backyard hencoop to the junction where my mother is waiting for me.It is nearly Easter time, and there is high demand for the goods I am conveying – chickens are the seasons main dish.
Ferrying feisty fowls on ones head for two miles is certainly not any eighteen-year olds idea of Easter preparation,but these few chickens that bred unchecked from our two egg-producers in the backyard are the only gifts we can afford to give our loved ones; most people give hampers with biscuits ,cakes,drinks and expensive soaps,we give chickens.My efforts might also just earn me a choice piece of the one chicken we keep for ourselves.So I whistle a happy tune as I walk along the dusty road towards where she waits for me.
Today I am a caregiver :I hold her in my arms tightly.Not too tight though ,else she will be uncomfortable.I can feel her breath easing as she slips slowly into the confines of sleep.My duty is to let her quieten down and fall asleep.I have achieved just that and a faint smile bisects my face in satisfaction.My job is done, but because I love her little embrace ,I will hold on to the six-month old baby girl as she sleeps.She is the first in the series of relations who will call me uncle:my elder cousins first child. I already look forward to introducing her to the wonders of geometry when I buy her a Rubiks cube,and teaching my first love, physics, to her with a giant block of Lego.
That smile grows dangerously wide.
An Akan boy is everything to everyone.He is his fathers named child ;he is the crowning glory of his mothers childbearing years; he is his grandfathers legacy; his grandmothers pet;his sisters protector; his entire familys strength and hope. I am all these things that the Akan culture demands of me, and these chores, responsibilities and privileges have made me the sum of my parts: Baafour Ntiamoah Yaw, scientist ,future Millennium Prize Problem solver.