For You

Sweet words with a price, they said. They suggested a gift, but we were told not to believe it for payment was ultimately expected. Money, clothes, a flight out of Africa. Turn away from ‘for you’ with your hands closed.

The first ‘for you’ came when I was given a plate of Benachin by a trio of chuckling ladies dressed in gold, their hair swept up in swathes of tie-dyed cloth. ‘For you,’ they chimed, and my radar bleeped in warning. But I ate it all, mopped the juice with my fingers and chased the last grain around the plate. Payment came in the form of an empty dish.

The second ‘for you’ came when I bought a doll, her dress mimicking the fine batiks of the women I saw. I paid the vendor and he asked me to wait as he reached up into a ceiling of beads and plucked a necklace. ‘For you,’ he said as he fastened it round my neck. I looked up, expecting to see an empty, impatient hand held out, but instead he smiled and wished me safe travels.

The third ‘for you’ came in a Bakau, a fishing village where men and children pulled nets into bright boats. The smoke-filled huts on the shore boasted fish dried to leather and overlapped like scales of a larger creature. ‘For you,’ a child said as he wiggled one free and swiped the flies from its skin. For the strange white visitors he had only seen in books.  

The fourth ‘for you’ came when I woke early and ventured to the market to buy a gift of clothing for a child. The vendor, a woman with a dozen thick braids, caught my wrist and wrapped it with bracelets. ‘For you,’ she said, her first customer of the day who would bring her luck.

The last ‘for you’ came when my money was spent. He caught my eye and gestured me over to stand amongst his stall of carvings. He asked my name and beamed when I told him. He told me to come back in a minute or two, and when I explained that I had no more Dalasi he waved me off with a dismissive hand, insistent still. When I went back, he was polishing an ebony dolphin with a dirty cloth. ‘For you,’ he said, the girl who shared a similar name.