Gari
This is gari, the eighth wonder of the world… the sustainer of high school life… voluminous processed cassava “flakes” that can dubiously trick any rumbling tummy into believing that life is not so bad after all.
Mine was finished. Ladies and gentlemen, there was a crisis on my hands.
Hala Week
Unless he’s a dadaba, gari is the last line of defence between a form one boy and starvation. I cannot speak for the girls, although (this sounds better in pidgin) I hear say dem dey chop gari pass.
In the boarding house, second only to water, gari is life.
Gari has saved more lives than the Avengers. Heck, in a parallel universe where the Avengers are chopbox items, gari would be Thor! Wait, no, gari would be Thanos! Yes, gari would make a good Thanos.
You get the point. Gari is awesome. So when I opened my chopbox one Monday morning and realized that the gari was finished.
Don’t laugh at me yet, my enemies, for Visiting Day was coming. Visiting in Motown is on the first Sunday of every month — yes, you get to see your family once a month — and the next one was a week away, steadily approaching at a rate of 24 hours per day. My parents would bring more gari.
Who was I kidding? I was finished.
My mind began to do calculations that would put IBM Watson to shame. I had 15 cedis on me. Ei, was I sure?
I whipped out my wallet to check. It came out too fast.
According to Newton’s second law, Force = Mass x Acceleration, meaning that my ability to pull out my wallet at such an accelerated speed without much force was an indication of a low mass, hence low weight, hence low cash.
I wasn’t kidding about those calculations.
I looked into the wallet for the verdict.
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FIVE CEDIS!!!
Five Cedis!!! Five Cedis!!! What was I supposed to do with five Cedis?! Was I being punked? There had to be an explanation!
Somebody must have broken into my trunk and removed some of my money. How?! Who?! Why? Wh- …Akua.
The explanation hit me like a truck moving at top speed on a freeway. I tried to deny it, but I couldn’t.
What was I thinking? I was not. There was no way I could have been thinking straight:
It was on Wednesday, I was walking with my boy, Obodai, talking about a really important topic, “When will skinny jeans go out of fashion?”, you know, important stuff.
We got to the snack square and moved past the overly priced “pack-chow” towards the stuff we could afford, samosas.
We were almost at the samosa stand when I heard my name pronounced ever so sweetly, “Kodzoooooo”. See the way the “oooo” trailed on? My heart lit up, triggering a smile.
Obodai just shook his head and walked off. We both knew I was about to ditch him anyway.
I turned around, and there she stood with a big smile, Akua.
Dimples!! 😍 Gets me every time.
I walked over, oblivious to the dumb decision I was about to make.
“Hey Akua.”
“Hi Kodzo, I’ve missed you oo. You don’t look for me….”
I had bought two “pack-chows”, four sausage rolls and two bottles of Coca-Cola.
Please don’t insult me, I can explain.
Ditching Obodai meant I was ditching the samosas, but man had to eat, so I adjusted my budget.
Akua was going to buy pack-chow, so I was also buying pack-chow. That makes sense, right? It does. Right? 😥
I had a weird reaction to this girl, especially since she was the first nice girl to give me any attention. Something in my brain betrayed me. I felt a need to match anything she bought: purchase-for-purchase.
She picked one pack-chow, I picked one. She picked a coke, I picked one. She asked for two sausage rolls, I asked for two.
This is where it gets interesting, she reached into her pocket, and the smile on her face vanished. I’d been making her laugh, so seeing that smile I’d worked so hard to brighten vanish was like watching an eclipse — my world went dark.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She stammered. “My- My purse. I- I think I left it”
This is where I should have used my head. This is where I should have said, “We can share mine”, and scored points for being kind. But no, your boy saw an opportunity to attain legendary status.
“Oh, I’ll pay for you.”
I’d like to say I don’t know who spoke those words, but I can’t lie, they came out of my own mouth.
I don’t remember giving any consent to my mouth, but somehow I had offered to pay.
She declined. “Oh no, you don’t have to. I can run to my class and get my purse.”
This was my last chance to get out. This was basically that moment in “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” where you have to lock in an answer.
“I insist. It’s too far back to the classrooms.”
Big words from a small wallet. Come to think of it, that was actually a reasonable proposal. It’s what I said next that convinced me that my brain had been hacked. “…And don’t bother paying me back. I gotchu.”
I hated myself right then.
I ‘got’ who? I don’t even ‘got’ myself.
But these thoughts fled as soon as her smile returned. The eclipse was over.
“Awww, you’re so sweet”, she cooed, as I took out the money.
I know, pitiful, right?
Back To Reality
So that’s how we got here, staring into the abyss that was the depths of an empty chopbox.
I stepped out of the chopbox room and walked to the pay-phone. I didn’t even lock the box, there was nothing to steal.
I inserted my card and punched in my mom’s phone number. The dialling tone dragged on forever, and then she finally picked.
“Ma, me gari asa”–Mom, my gari is finished.
Is that any way to greet your mother?
It was going to be a long week, chale.