Broken ✔

Chapter One

song: king promise — selfish

dedicated to -starrsinhereyes- for her constructive criticism)

there's a glossary for all the italicized words at the end of the chapter. (i.e. the ones which weren't italicized to show emphasis)

The white people arrived in my village—Gbevukope—only last week, but everybody felt their presence. Their skin was okay. I didn't understand what the fuss was about. The first day they came around, my cousin came to grab me from my house just to see them, as if we hadn't been seeing them on television all the time. I didn't blame them too much; the blame was solely on their ignorance.

Now, even though ignorance and the lack of exposure to the outside world made my people so curious about the melanin deficient humans, I was different. My love for reading and watching television granted me the all the exposure I needed without actually having to leave home.

I lifted a hand to shield my face from the scorching sun as I weeded around the cocoa trees. Up ahead, I spotted my father speaking with one of the white men. The trees in the cocoa farm weren't very tall or thick enough to obscure or alter my vision, but I found it hard to believe that my eyes weren't playing tricks on me.

My father didn't like the white people much, and neither could he fluently speak English, which is what led me to believe that seeing my father conversing with one of them had to be a mirage caused by the scorching sun and my parched throat.

I closed my eyes briefly to wipe the sweat off my forehead with my hand. When my eyes opened once more, I jumped back in fright, finding my father looking back at me. "Elorm!" he called out.

He'd seen me, and he probably knew that I heard him call, so I couldn't pretend like I didn't like I usually did whenever I wasn't in the mood to talk to him. "Yes, fofo," I replied timidly, maintaining my bent over stance.

I didn't want to go over there because I didn't want to talk to the white man. From what I'd seen on CNN and social media, I'd come to the conclusion that white people generally thought us Africans were all inflicted with Ebola, rode lions as a means of transport, didn't have access to water and were starved and almost always half–dead. I'd been dealing with one kind of extreme ignorance my whole life, and I didn't want to face another form of it that hot afternoon.

"Come here," he said in our native language, Ewe.

I frowned, but I couldn't refuse even though I fiercely wanted to. I took my time, dragging my legs, but no matter how long I stalled, it was inevitable that I got there. I stomped my feet extra loudly as I sulked to his side, a sign to make him aware of my reluctance. He realised, judging by the glare he sent my way, but he ignored my protests because he'd never really cared what I wanted. Sighing in defeat, I gave the white man a small wave which he returned.

"Elorm, tell this man that you do not want to go to school," my father said, wasting no time in going straight to the point.

I looked at him, taken aback by the irritation in his voice. Turning back to the white man, I smiled. It turned out that this one was here for something beneficial to us—me—instead of planning a second wave of colonialism.

Some of them had come to encourage the villagers to put their girl children in school, and this seemed to be one of them. My village was stuck in a misogynistic era that the country and most of the world had grown out of, so I was glad for these enlightened individuals who knew better than to mind their own business. The non–governmental organisations whose job this was were too busy being bothered about girls in urban areas facing other issues like teenage pregnancy, ignoring us rural dwellers altogether.