There were two post-it notes stuck to the fridge when I woke up on Saturday. Both were in Mama’s handwriting. The first said DJ had called to say he wasn’t feeling well and that I wasn’t to come over. I knew he was lying. It was the day of the turntablist competition. He didn’t want me to go with him. The second was Mama telling me she was going for a workshop in Ho and wouldn’t be back until evening. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wondered if anyone would notice if I went to campus and continued weeding. The rule book said day students were not allowed on campus during non-teaching hours. I decided it was too risky. I tidied my room and did the laundry. Mama had locked her bedroom door, so I couldn’t even steal back my laptop.

On impulse, I decided to go to Vume. Maybe if I was lucky, I could get to see someone making the pots. I changed into jeans and a T-shirt, stuffed some money into my pocket and walked to the roadside. Getting a trotro turned out to be difficult. It was only okada riders who honked and asked if I wanted a ride. When I did get a trotro it took us twenty minutes to get to Vume.

I walked to the stall from which I had bought my first vase, but there were none like it there. Now that I knew how tricky working with clay was, I was amazed at how symmetrical and perfect the pots were. I couldn’t believe they’d all been made by hand. I walked down the road, stopping to look at designs, shapes and colours. Each time I got to a new stall, an attendant got up, but I signalled that I was only looking and they returned to their seats. I was so engrossed in examining an earthenware pot in one of the smaller stalls that I didn’t see the attendant until he asked, “May I help you?”

“No, I’m just looking,” I said putting the pot back. All the pots had the same red earth colour. None had the fanciful colouring of the pots that were closer to the roadside.

“Hey, I know you,” I said recognizing the boy. “You’re the one who helped us with our things.”

The boy smiled sheepishly. “I’m the one who broke your vase. My name is Ahmad.”

“I’m Yayra. Did you make these?”

He shook his head. “No. My brother did. He and my grandmother. I handle the sales. I’m studying business in Comboni High.”

“Jamal’s your brother?”

“Yes, you know him?”

Now that he had said Jamal was his brother, I could see the resemblance. It wasn’t really in the physical looks but in their mannerisms: the way they used there hands to gesture when they talked, the way they cocked their head to one side, their intonations and inflections.

“We go to school together.”

“Oh.”

His ‘oh’ said a lot. It said he knew I had heard the rumours and it dared me to say something.

“Is he home?”

“Jamal?”

Duh? Who were we talking about? I nodded. “I want to say ‘hi’.”

Ahmad looked surprised but he pointed to a house a little distance from the road. “He’s just returned from bringing clay from the pits.”

I walked past him into the town proper. Oyster shells embedded in the ground formed some sort of pavement. There were pots everywhere. Large pots for storing water stood lined up along the outer walls of buildings. Some of the buildings were made from clay. A few had thatch roofs, others had aluminium roofing sheets. Some of the houses had beautiful flower pots in front of them. Almost every compound had an outdoor kitchen; most of the utensils I saw were made from clay. Goats, dogs, sheep and chickens roamed freely in the village. They didn’t even get out of the way when I approached. Jamal’s home was one of those built with cement blocks and had an aluminium sheet roof. I could hear hip-life music coming from one of the rooms. There wasn’t an outdoor kitchen. I called out, “Agoo, agoo.”

A cute little girl, about two-years-old, came running from behind the house. She was giggling and seemed to be running away from someone. She stopped and stared when she saw me. There were streaks of toothpaste on her face and arms. Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. Seconds after she appeared, Jamal appeared behind her, a small toothbrush was in his hand. Like the little girl, he just stood there and stared at me.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly. It was one thing seeing him in school in his uniform. It was quite another seeing him bare-chested with his boxers peeking out of his shorts. Sofi was right, he was very cute.

“Uh, hi.”

“Daddy, up, up,” the little girl said.

“Say ‘please‘.”

“Please Daddy, up, up,” the girl said. Jamal reached down and swung her over his head. She shrieked in delight.

“I saw your brother, Ahmad. He told me you were home, so I decided to say ‘hi’ and to thank you for the langa-langa. I think I’ll finish weeding by Thursday.”

“Is that why you came here? To Vume?” he asked and his voice had an edge to it.

“I came because Miss Naa said we should come. I thought I might find someone making pots and watch them.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“What other reason could there be?”

“I don‘t know? You tell me. Maybe you came to see if what everyone was saying about me was true.”

“I didn‘t even know you lived here,” I said getting angry, “and in case you hadn’t realized you aren’t the only one people are talking about!”

I turned and walked out of the compound. What had I been thinking? Just because he had been nice enough to bring me the langa-langa didn’t mean he wanted us to be friends. Maybe he had brought it to make up for the vase his brother broke. I walked past Ahmad and didn’t stop when he called me. I crossed over to the other side of the street. Each trotro that passed was full. Some okada riders asked if I wanted a ride. I shook my head. I turned away when I saw Jamal coming towards me. He had put on a T-shirt. The little girl was following him. When they got to the roadside, Ahmad picked her up. She started crying and shouting ‘Daddy, Daddy’. I prayed a trotro would stop before Jamal crossed over but none did. He walked and stood right in front of me. I ignored him and concentrated on flagging a trotro.

“I’m sorry.”

I ignored him and continued flagging down the buses. They all passed by me. “Don’t go please. At least, stay for what you came for. I’ll show you how we make the pots. If you’re angry with me, I’ll have my grandmother show you.”

A trotro was approaching us with blinking indicator lights. It came to a stop not far from where I stood. The driver’s mate got down. A woman and two children also got down and went to the boot where the mate took out their bags.

“I’m so used to people treating me like an outcast that I don’t even know what to do when someone is being nice to me. I really am sorry. Please don’t go.”

The mate turned to me and asked if I was leaving.

Jamal held his breath.

I shook my head. The mate hit the side of the bus and shouted, ‘Away’ before jumping into the moving bus. Jamal exhaled. A crooked smile appeared on his face. I followed him across the street where he picked his whimpering daughter from Ahmad, and we went back into his compound. “I lied to you,” he said when we went inside. “It’s a market day. My grandmother’s gone to the market. So you’re stuck with me.”

I rolled my eyes. He laughed. His daughter laughed too and he tickled her tummy which made her laugh even more. “I was trying to get her to brush her teeth, but she just wanted to play with the clay. Maybe now that you’re here she’ll behave. She’s such a show-off.”

He spoke with so much pride in his voice that I couldn’t believe he’d have given his girlfriend a concoction to kill their unborn baby. The little girl indeed was a show-off. She stood obediently while Jamal brushed her teeth. She swallowed some of the toothpaste initially, but then she spat the lather out and rinsed when Jamal asked her to.

“Who’s a good girl?” he asked her when they were done brushing.

“Soraia” she squealed and clapped her hands. Jamal led me to a shed behind the house. There were no oyster shells there. He showed me the basket of clay he had dug up that morning. There were bits and pieces of rocks, leaves and sticks in it. Miss Naa’s hand-outs explained all about the processing of clay so I knew he’d later pound the clay until it became as smooth as powder. Then he would sieve it to get rid of the impurities, soak it for a couple of days and then drain off the water. What remained would be stored until it was ready to be used.

“If you already know how to make pots, why are you in Miss Naa’s class?”

“To learn how to use the wheel. Pots made on the wheel are the only type that can be glazed.”

He took a ball of clay from a plastic bucket and began kneading it on a board. He looked at me and realized I didn’t understand what he had said.

“Traditional pots are heavier. Their firing style is different than for pots produced on the wheel. Glazed pots require higher temperatures. Temperatures you can only get in a kiln.”

He cut sections of the clay and began rolling them into ropes. Soraia was playing with a ball of clay. He kept an eye on her as he rolled.

“But those pots by the road side; they come in different colours.”

“They’re sprayed with car paint.”

“Oh,” I said. “What does a glazed pot look like?”

“The vase Ahmad broke. That was glazed.”

I remembered how shiny and smooth the vase had been. How it had reminded me of glass. Jamal laid the first rope of clay on the bare ground in a circular pattern. He ran his finger around the bottom of the inside and outside of the rope to help it to stick to the ground. He took another rope of clay and carefully placed it on the first rope while walking backwards. He alternately pulled up the clay and smoothed it with one hand while guiding and supporting the clay rope with the other. In no time at all by successively adding ropes of clay he had made the top half of a pot. With quick, deft strokes he used a piece of broken calabash to smooth the walls and shape the pot. He spent a bit more time on the mouth. His eyebrows were furrowed in concentration, just like they had been when he was working on the potter’s wheel in the ceramics studio. Even Soraia stopped playing and watched her father work.

“We leave it to dry a little then we turn it onto its mouth and make the bottom.”

“I didn‘t know they made them in two parts.”

He shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal.

“Do you want to try?”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t get it right.”

“I’m only good because I’ve been doing this since I was three.”

I shook my head.

“I’m not going to grade you. Here take it.”

I hesitated but I took the rope of clay he offered. I couldn’t even put the clay down in a perfect circle. He gave me another rope of clay and I placed it on the first one in much the same way as he had, pulling and smoothing as I went along. By the time I had got to the neck of the pot, one wall was in danger of collapsing.

“It’s never going to be perfect.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Jamal said, looking at me.

“But yours is so perfect.”

“It only appears perfect to you, but to a trained eye there are so many imperfections. Even if you do get the perfect pot, you can’t control what will happen during the firing process. Pots may crack or break or anything . . . They’re never perfect. Just like human beings. Just like life.” He took the broken piece of calabash and gently reshaped my pot. He used one hand to wipe sweat off his brow and left a streak of clay on his forehead.

“You have clay on your face,” I said.

He looked up from my pot and looked at his hand. It was all clayey. He slid it down the left side of my face.

“Now you have clay on your face too,” he said and grinned.

Soraia must have thought it was a new game and smeared clay on her face as well.

“I guess we’re all clay people,” I said.

“I don’t remember exactly, but there’s a tribe who say they came out of the ground.”

“A hole in the ground,” I corrected pompously, “and it’s the Asantes.”

“The ground, a hole in the ground, what’s the difference?” Jamal asked, unimpressed.

Soraia showed me the lump of clay she had in her hand. She had made an opening of some sort in it. “Cup,” she said with authority daring me to disagree that the object she held in her hand was anything but a cup.

“Cup,” I repeated.

She seemed satisfied with that and went back to moulding her clay.

“You’re wonderful with her,” I said, surprising myself, but I couldn’t stop talking.

“My Dad was like that with me. It’s my fault he died. We were coming home from school, and I said I wanted fast food. My mother doesn’t allow us to eat fast food so we always did it behind her back. Daddy didn’t want to go, but I insisted and then we had the accident. She doesn’t say it but I know she blames me.”

He looked from me to Soraia. “Sometimes I think if we hadn’t had her, if Lebene didn’t get pregnant, she wouldn’t have had to drop out of school and she would still be alive. I blamed myself for her death for a long time but then I realized she had made a choice. Getting Lebene pregnant was a mistake but going ahead to have Soraia wasn’t. We didn’t ever want her to think she was a mistake. It’s why we named her Soraia. It means princess.”

We both looked over to where the princess was bathing herself with slurry.

“Your mom doesn’t blame you. Sometimes we make bad choices and have to live with the consequences.”

I wondered what had made me bare my soul to him. Whatever it was that had compelled me, I felt much better than I had ever since the fight in school.