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Forgive my gushing. I'm in love.

We are building teachers' quarters in the village of Afranguah, near the Ghanaian coast. Every afternoon, as soon as we finish work, I tear back to the schoolhouse where we are sleeping, grab a bucket of water and a calabash bowl, and duck behind the woven reed screens that partition the showers. I dump calabashes of water on myself while I soap off the day's grit, leaving a few inches in the bottom of my bucket for a final whoosh of cool. Then, while the other foreign volunteers hang around the camp trading travel stories, I scoot down to Minessi's hut to spend some time with Yao before the evening meal. I'm determined to get to know the villagers during my time here. I don't want to breeze in and out like a tourist, exoticizing them from a distance. Neither do I want to come in like a missionary, imposing my values and ideas. I'm eager to forge real connections, based in mutual respect.

Usually Minessi is washing laundry or preparing fufu in the shared courtyard outside her hut. Fufu is made by placing a portion of boiled cassava or yam in a large bowl made from a scooped-out tree stump, then pounding it until it acquires a smooth, elastic consistency. The women throw their entire bodies into the pounding. Using heavy wooden pestles 4 to 5 feet long, they repeatedly fling their arms high above their heads and bring the pestles down with tremendous force. Each time I watch Minessi do this I am struck by the extraordinary grace and dignity of her movement. While most of the women in the village are short and stocky, Minessi's figure is tall and tapered, with wide hips and a long, elegant neck. Her arms are lean, sinewy ropes. Her pounding looks like a ritual expulsion, a fierce, elegant dance.

Minessi looks up at me as I approach. She smiles her languid, unhurried smile, and unstraps Yao from her back. Her skin is very black, and her wideset eyes tilt upwards slightly. It's obvious where Yao got his looks. The schoolteacher Amoah, an effusive, genial man whose hut is next to Minessi's, greets me with a warm cry of "Sistah Korkor, you are welcome!" (Korkor, which means "second-born" in Ga, is my African name.) Amoah's three children run up to me, and we trade exuberant greetings in Fanti. Then I sit on the low stool in front of Minessi's hut, take Yao in my arms and rock him, singing softly in his ear. He explains a few things to me in his own language, a kind of universal babyspeak which resembles neither English nor Fanti so much as the call of a rapturous bird.

Minessi speaks a bit more English than the other women in Afranguah -- her vocabulary extends beyond basic greetings. We often have conversations that go something like this:

Minessi: You like Yao!

Me: Yes, I do.

Minessi: You like Yao too much!

Then she begins to laugh, and her laughter is like a thunderstorm, starting as a rumble, low and distant, occasionally building to a full-on roar. Soon I begin to laugh, and Yao, too. The three of us spend many minutes like this, laughing together, for no reason at all.

But today our conversation is different.

Next page | Yao is sick