Ga Lessons in Grandma’s Kitchen

Ga Lessons in Grandma’s Kitchen

The only Ga I know is brief and functional:
Mi nuu shi shi. I don’t understand.

I am standing in my grandmother’s kitchen; Osu in the harmattan.
She’s pulling pots out of cupboards;
she wants me to help her cook the evening meal.
I don’t cook.
I don’t tell her this.

Her back is towards me; and she is singing her mother tongue,
this language I don’t understand. The words jump from her lips and
scatter across the room like children dancing kpanlogo.
This language of unwavering pride.
Sharp as com wine. Sweet as rice water.
Forceful as a river cascading through the gutter;
smooth as powdered maize.
Somehow both boisterous and melodic.
Then she turns to look at me,
expectantly.

Mi nuu shi shi, I tell her.

So, I watch her gestures instead
and take my lessons from what I see:

the diction of deference
from the way she calls me with a casual sweep of her hand
and knows that I will follow;

the articulation of strength
as she cracks into the fishbone with her bare, wrinkled fingers;

the vernacular of courage as
she tosses the flesh to the sizzling oil without fear of the fire.

And, somehow both slowly and all at once,
as we move around one another and the spices circle the air
our silent symbiosis produces a kind of sustenance:
the meal we’ve prepared;
(komi, fried fish, avocado pear, shito on the side)
these steaming plates to satisfy us both.·

Now my eyes are prickling with tears because
I think that what has happened is precious and beautiful.
But I can tell it to no one.

How can I make poetry out of a language I don’t know.

‘Ga Lessons in Grandma’s Kitchen’ won Third Prize in the 2019 Newcastle Poetry Competition.