On my first visit in Tamale, Sakina’s store was all rubble and dust. Now, it is nice and tidy, with one half stocked with soap, noodles, cookies and much more. The second half is reserved for children’s clothes, but there is not enough capital for that yet. They have a boy there, I think his name is Alex, who sells and takes care of the place. I help Manan to fill up the shelves. A woman pours ‘flour water’, a self-made sweet drink, from a big container into old empty bottles. There are flies everywhere. Another time, I help Fadila and two women fill sugar from one big sack into smaller plastic bags. Every day, Rakiya and another girl take some of the goods, load them on a plate and sell them in the streets. I would like to follow them and help, but Manan says, they walk too far. I can’t do it. I will be tired. Maybe I could walk all the way, but I definitely cannot carry as much as they do. I am amazed about how much they can put on one of these small plates. It requires special packing skills.
When there is nothing to do for me, I study whoever or whatever is passing on street. There are all the women with babies on the back and bowls on the head. Fascinating are also the motorbikes. Women in elegant dresses on dusty bikes, men carrying meters long planks with them. How many persons fit on one motorbike? The record I catch are one adult with six children. Two in the front, four in the back. Watching motorbikes is an interesting way of passing the time.
Next to the store is a shop where seamstresses work. I think one woman teaches younger girls how to sew. Manan and Fadila want me to take a picture of it. ‘Maybe they don’t want that. Maybe they don’t like pictures.‘ I don’t want to take this picture and I don’t know what the girls are saying, but Manan and Fadila urge me to snap them. They make me sit on one of the benches and pose in front of the seamstresses. I am embarrassed and glad when it is over. Whenever a picture is taken, the respective person poses. I very much prefer natural pictures, when somebody is working for example or laughing. Fadila and Manan sit on the bench in front of the store and ask me to take a picture. Alex wants to join them, forces himself next to them. Fadila laughs and tries to push him away. When she sees the picture I took, she is not satisfied. ‘Take another one. I am laughing on that one.’ Manan wants a picture of himself alone. The first one I take at the store when he is sitting behind the counter. ‘It is quite okay.’ At the house, I have to try again. Standing in the courtyard, walking towards me, in front of the house with a pen and an envelope in his hands. They love pictures. The seamstress from next door is hanging around at the store with a little girl. Fadila wants me to snap the girl. I can see that the girl is afraid of me. Whenever the woman pushes her towards me, she starts crying, what they find amusing. ‘I think she is afraid. Why should I take a picture if she doesn’t like it?’ - ‘Snap her. Snap her.’ Fadila takes the camera and takes a picture herself until the little crying girl is in such a great misery that even that even the woman can’t stop her from hiding behind her.
On Friday, Uncle J.B. visits the store. He is surprised to see me and tells me a story. During my first visit in Tamale, I was reading a book. It often lay around in the summer hut and Jabiru also started to read it and found it very interesting. I couldn’t leave it there for him when I left, because I wanted to finish it myself. I took it with me, promised to send it to him somehow and finished it in Cape Coast. Jabiru gave me the name, number and directions to a man in Accra who could bring the book to him. On our Projects Abroad Health Walk in Accra, I arranged to meet this guy and handed the book over to him. It really reached Jabiru in Tamale. He finished it and gave it to somebody else to read it. ‘I always give it to superior people.’ Everybody else would not handle it with care. I am very pleased to hear that this book is so interesting to them. It is about Africa, its economy, history, politics and daily life. Jabiru was fascinated by the book.
After an afternoon at the store, I usually go back with Fadila and on the way we buy what we need for dinner. Some things we buy at stalls, some things from passing girls. We buy tomatoes from an old lady. She and Fadila converse with each other in Dagbani. ‘Lisa, she is greeting you.’ I didn’t notice and hastily return the greeting in Dagbani. The lady is pleased, smiles at me and gives us some additional tomatoes. Shopping is always interesting. For flour, Fadila and I enter a yard between a group of round mud huts. A boy is working on his bicycle, a woman with a baby is washing clothes. I feel out of place, but a greeting in Dagbani usually eases the tension and leads to smile and friendly comments that I don’t understand. While Fadila is negotiating with the woman who sits next to the bowls with flour, the other woman approaches me, holding her baby towards me. ‘She says you should take her to your country.’ I laugh and say that I can’t. I always feel uncomfortable when that happens. Fadila and I pass some fields on our way home where men are working. ‘Give me your friend.’ - ‘No. You can’t have her.’ - ‘The doctor is my friend, he will give her to me.’ Here, they don’t ask me directly to marry them but ask my friend to give me to them. It is more awkward than when young guys in Cape Coast ask me to marry them.
