Cape Coast i stood in awe, staring at the small rectangular box with a glass front. There were people inside it, and they were talking. My curiosity was instantly piqued. How had they gotten in there? And how were they going to get out? My aunt burst into laughter when she saw the look of shock on my face. “It’s called a television,” she said, laughing. “And no, they didn’t climb in there.” However they had managed it, I was completely fascinated. It was my first time encountering one. My first culture shock in Cape Coast was discovering I would be sleeping on a soft and comfortable bed. I had always slept on a mat on the floor. I was also surprised to find that water ran out of pipes at the pipestand. Did this mean I would no longer have to carry big buckets on my head and walk long distances to the stream to fetch water? There was also that thing in the kitchen my aunt used for cooking, which required no coal pot, and light came on at the touch of a switch. Cape Coast was a wondrous place indeed. My aunt was fun and kind. She was relatively well-off compared to my mother, and I was very happy living with her. Her husband became a father figure to me. On Saturdays, we would go to the market to sell cloth; she owned a fabric shop there. She taught me how to cook, and even how to kill and clean a live chicken. She was extremely meticulous. If she taught you something and you didn’t do it properly, you would First Experiences and Early Ambitions Being in a mixed school like Ghana National made me very self-conscious. For instance, if someone made a mistake answering a question, the boys would laugh. So we just bottled things up. That is why some of us never came out of our shells. “ 8 The Birthday Journal
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