Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie
Whenever I see a listing for a book set in Ghana I order a copy – to return to a place I lived for a couple of formative years as a child. I loved Ghana, life in a bungalow just outside of Accra, school only early in the day, before the heat. The afternoons free to play, often at Labadi beach. As a child I noticed the lepers begging in the ditches, determined to work with Albert Schweitzer when I grew up! But I loved the heat, the landscape, the culture as much as I could understand. Though we visited Cape Caste, I had no real understanding of slavery.
In the very early 60s Ghana was the success story of African independence, and my father was part of a multinational force training the Ghanian army. The army that staged a coup not so long after our family had returned to Canada.
That Ghana, and the one written about by Canadians Margaret Lawrence and Audrey Thomas, is long gone. In my day there was highlife music – now hip life, for a new generation. There may well have been corruption in the Nkrumah government – but not as obvious as that portrayed in the novel Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie.
Nightbloom takes place from 1985 to the present time. We meet Akorfa and Selasi, two girls born on the same day in 1985. As young girls they are inseparable. Akorfa is the only child of more affluent parents – parents who see that she has everything and expectations to match. From an early age she is being tutored and groomed for the future – with education at a prestigious university in the United States, to become a doctor. Akorfa is a good girl. Studious and obedient. Selasi is more of a firecracker. It is not that she is not smart – but she does not have the financial advantages Akorfa does, nor does she have the same support at home.
Over the next three decades we follow the lives of these girls, and their families. We read about the world of people who want their children to excel, to have more than their parents have. To be successful at all costs. We read about their high school and university years, their marriages, and children. The life of one in America, as an African in America facing all the challenges that all black Americans face. The other in Ghana as the people struggle with a corrupt government, lack of adequate medical care, and many other challenges.
On a beautiful hot summer day on Georgian Bay – far, far, from Africa, I read this book in a day. It matters not if you have any particular interest in Ghana, Nightbloom was a book very much worth reading.