The Snake Doctor

Ghana, in the forms of the two sisters I had dealt with during the course of my first trip, had changed radically.

Comfort Lartey and Grace Vivian Hlover were as different as proverbial day and night, when I first met them at the wise ol’ age of eighteen. Comfort was about as radical as the Ghanaian circumstances would allow her to be.

“I don’t care what the Europeans say! It’s all a crock of crap!”

Grace was at the other end of the pole. “Think about it, Kojo, if the English had not come to Ghana, we would still be having tribal wars and worshipping fetish gods.”

I can’t say what happened because I wasn’t there to see how the change had occurred, but A Change had occurred. Comfort, the radical bohemian had become a religious nut, a conservative.

“Kojo, I can’t do with you what we used to do because Jesus wouldn’t like that.”

“If you don’t tell Him, I won’t tell Him and everything will be cool.”

“You are blaspheming and you may be forced to pay for your transgressions by spending an eternity in Hell.”

As my lawyer friend, Horace Hennessey Harper, used to say – I absconded from Comfort “without any malice aforethought, forthwith.” Grace took up the slack.

“Oh Kojo, I am so pleased that you have returned.”