Somebody's Heart Is Burning (21 page)

I let Katie go first this time. She stuck her head through Mr. Awitor’s door, smiling her special smile.

“Please come in,” said Mr. Awitor. He raised his eyebrows in a look of tolerant surprise. Though the corners of his mouth turned upward in the semblance of a smile, the tightness of his lips said that the surprise was not a pleasant one. “What can I do for you?” he asked, before we’d had a chance to sit down.

“Yes, well,” Katie began. We’d agreed to let her do the talking.

“Yes,” said Mr. Awitor briskly.

“It’s this matter of the reentry visa,” she said, pausing slightly to clear her throat.

“I explained to you—”

“You certainly did explain the difficulty. And we tried to explain it to the gentleman at the immigration office. But you see, unfortunately, he persists in saying that he requires a letter from you. Not a letter stating that you want us to go to Mali, you understand, simply a statement that you have no
objection
to our going to Mali—”

But Mr. Awitor was shaking his head sadly.

“I’m very sorry, ladies, but as I told you—”

“You told us,” I interrupted, “that you couldn’t ask for our visas. And we don’t want you to! If you could just say that we’re no longer working for you and you don’t
care
if we go to Mali or not . . .”

He laughed and made the same gesture, palms up on the table. “I cannot so much as
mention
Mali in a letter,” he said.

“Fine!” I said, my voice rising. “Fine! Don’t mention Mali. Not a word about Mali. How ’bout I just type up something that says you don’t care where we go one way or the other, and you sign it? How about that?”

“Tanya . . .” Katie placed a warning hand on my arm.

“Sistah Korkor, there is no need to shout,” Mr. Awitor said. The polite smile now made me want to wring his neck. “As I have already made clear to you—”

But I was off the chair and out of his office, back into the hostel, raging and banging doors. Every ounce of my hard-won self-control was gone. It was as though, all at once, the accumulated months of heat and nausea and frustration with the work had rolled down a hill like a giant magnetic ball, picking up scraps of rubbish as it went.

“God
damn
it!” I shouted. “God fucking damn it! Idiocy! Total, brainless, robotic . . .”

“Sistah, what is it?” said Ayatollah, who’d been out in the yard behind the hostel, washing some laundry.

“Don’t concern yourself,” said a new French volunteer, before I had a chance to answer. “She has a high temper.”

That stopped me. “How would you know?” I asked. The girl had arrived yesterday. We hadn’t exchanged ten words.

She shrugged, flapped a hand at my behavior, smiling. “I know Americans.”

There were no applicants in the visa room when we arrived. The American Section window was open, and the familiar jowly face was behind it, staring glumly at some papers on the counter in front of him.

“You must speak to this lady,” he said as soon as he saw us, jerking his head toward the Officer in Charge window.

To our great surprise, we saw that the window there was also open and a cheerful young woman’s face peered out. She beamed as we approached.

“Friends,” she said warmly. “How can I help you?”

“Well,” I said, a spark of hope igniting painfully in my chest. “We put in applications for reentry visas several days ago . . .”

“Your names, please?” Her smile was radiant, beatific. It illuminated her entire face.

We snuck a look at each other as she disappeared into the recesses of the office. Could she be as golden as she seemed?

When she returned, she actually opened a door next to the windowed panels and joined us in the room.

“Please, ladies, have a seat,” she said. She held our passports, applications, and the fateful letter in which we’d exposed the fact that we’d once been volunteers. “I understand that you were working here, and now you would like to leave the country and travel. I understand as well, that you would like a visa so that after your travels you may return to Ghana. We are happy that you find Ghana so sweet that you want to return.” She paused, glancing down at the papers. “Yet surely you understand that we require a letter from your association to back up your request.” She raised her eyebrows and smiled directly into my eyes.

The flicker of hope in my chest died instantly, leaving a cold lump. “Miss . . .” I began wearily.

“Mrs. Oppong,” she said.

“Mrs. Oppong, perhaps your compatriot has explained to you—” and then abruptly, I stopped. Why was I putting myself through this? To save fifty bucks? I could leave the country and apply for a new visa from the Ghanaian embassy in Mali. If that didn’t work I’d try the one in Burkina Faso. Sooner or later somebody would let me back in. I looked at Mrs. Oppong, who was gazing at me with an expression of consternation, a slight furrow in her brow.

“Is there a problem, sistah?”

“No problem at all,” I said, making myself breathe normally. I even managed a smile. “I’ve just decided not to pursue a reentry visa at this time. I’d like my passport back.”

“Oh, sistah! Surely you would like to reconsider. If it’s not possible for you to provide the proper documentation, we could take a few more days to determine—”

“Thank you, sister,” I said firmly. “You’re very kind. But I’d like my passport back, please. How ’bout you, Katie?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, in a small voice. Katie was on a tighter budget than I was, so the extra fifty or so dollars for a new visa were more significant to her. She also had a more cautious personality than I did—she would worry terribly about whether or not we’d be able to get back in once we’d left.

“If you could just bring us a letter,” Mrs. Oppong said gently. Her eyes were bright, luminous. I was certain that she was a siren. She would lure us here again and again, each day, to discuss the state of our reentry visas. The process would be drawn out for weeks, months, until the time we’d allotted for our trip had completely evaporated. It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had happened. I’d heard stories. Cautionary volunteer legends.

“But I’m afraid we can’t,” said Katie. “We can’t get you a letter.” She was on the verge of tears.

“Well, then, I’ll just hold onto this a few more days and reconsider.” Mrs. Oppong held Katie’s passport aloft.

“Not mine,” I said emphatically.

“Not yours, Miss Shaffer,” said Mrs. Oppong, and a slightly unpleasant note came into her voice. Frowning, she placed my passport in my outstretched hand.

“Come on, Katie,” I said. “If you change your mind you can always bring it back.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Oppong, alarmed. “But then you would have to start the process all over, from the beginning.”

“Yes, I’ll take it, please,” said Katie, sighing.

“But—” Mrs. Oppong began.

“Please,” I said sharply, “give her the passport and let us go. We’ve spent enough time in this room.”

Mrs. Oppong handed Katie her passport.

“Safe journey,” she said angrily. Then she turned and disappeared through the door she’d come out of. She slid the wooden cover across the window with a bang.

On the
tro-tro
back to the hostel, a man stood next to the driver selling an English ABC book for tots. He went through it laboriously, page by page, reading aloud each letter until he came to the last: “Zed, Zebra, a Zebra is a beautiful animal.”

As a middle-aged man beside us leafed through his new acquisition (“For my granddaughter,” he told me, beaming), Katie suddenly doubled over, clutching her stomach.

“What is it?” I said.

She looked up at me, her face very pale.

“I don’t know,” she said. “A pain.”

By the time we got off at the
tro-tro
park nearest the hostel, Katie could barely walk. She leaned on me for support.

“I’m ill,” she whispered.

“Let’s get a taxi to the hospital,” I said. She nodded. Her legs buckled and she collapsed there, at the side of the road. I commandeered a taxi, and we squeezed into the backseat with three women and two babies.

“What is it, sweetie? What is it?” I crooned, holding her hand.

“Terrible,” she murmured.

Katie spent the night in a hospital cot on a crowded ward, an IV dripping into her arm. She was dehydrated, the nurse told me, dangerously weak. The next day the verdict was in. Typhoid . . . and malaria. I thought of the faces at the immigration bureau, one diabolically cheerful, the other haggard and withdrawn. I couldn’t help feeling there was some connection between our experience there and the sudden onset of Katie’s illness. If nothing else, it had weakened her defenses.

I discussed the events with Elise, the irritating but insightful Frenchwoman who had recently arrived. She’d been to Ghana twice before, volunteering both times.

“Why would the immigration people behave that way?” I asked her. “Wouldn’t it be to their advantage to cooperate, to be helpful to volunteers?”

“Do you know what Ghanaians go through when they try to travel to Europe or America?” she asked.

I thought of the U.S. Embassy, with its hordes of Ghanaians waiting in their best clothes, clutching all kinds of documentation, only to have their visa applications rejected, month after month, year after year.

“This is the one way they have power over us,” she said. “A very small payback for all that humiliation.”

“And Mr. Awitor?”

“He’s tired of white volunteers treating him like a servant.”

“But I never—”

“Well,” she said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously, “maybe you never, but someone else did.”

Katie was recovering, but slowly. She stayed in the hospital for four or five days. Afterwards, back in the hostel, she moved slowly, shuffling around in her socks. She borrowed paperbacks from the other volunteers and spent the long stuffy days lying on her bunk, reading. I waited ten days, half-impatient, half-fearful, to broach the subject of our departure for Mali. When I finally did, she shook her head.

“What?” I said.

“I’m not up to it.”