The people of Kabile are of the Nafana tribe/ethnic group. Their lore says that their origins were in Kakala in Côte d’Ivoire—but if they return to that place, they will never be allowed to leave. While they share many traditions with other tribes in Ghana, they also have their own unique traditions and culture.
For example, in Ghana, everyone knows which day of the week on which they were born, but many older people aren’t sure about the month, date, and year of birth. A child gets a nickname that corresponds to this day. Saturday-born women like me are Ama.
The Nafana also place importance on the birth order for naming, adding an additional component. Because I am the eldest daughter in my family, my full name here is Yeli Ama Teresa. Most often people call out “Yeli Ama” or “MaYeli” (Mama Yeli). Even just “Ama” or “Yeli”. Variations abound.
The exact order of things that happened during Yeli Ama’s visit to Kabile is a little foggy to me. What follows is a sort of play-by-play through the lens of my faulty memory. More enjoyable to you, dear reader, would be just highlights or some other organization of images and thoughts. But the best I can do now is try to get everything down so that I don’t forget more. So this is what you get. I won’t fault you for not sticking it out.
This post is too long for email; if you’re reading in email, you can read the entire thing on the web here: https://experimpermanence.substack.com/kabile
Kabile’s new chief’s palace—a tidy block compound with decorative gates—is just across from Matthew’s house. So we go there first to greet the chief and any elders who might be sitting with him. It is always appropriate to notify the chief that there is an outside visitor in town.
Kabile’s chief is a very dignified man; Matthew navigates the formalities and helps me know when to do what, and I am welcomed warmly into the community again.
From there, we set off into town, heading toward Esther’s house. Esther is the woman who was assigned to care for me when I came here and stayed in the duplex house owned by her mother, Madam Mary. I became close with most of Madam Mary’s daughters and grandchildren: Stella and her little girl, Queensta; Joyce; Esther’s daughter Dorris; and most especially, Esther’s 4-year-old son, Francis. Francis became a sort of charismatic shadow for my two years in Kabile, and saying goodbye to Esther and Francis was the most heart-wrenching part of leaving here at the end of my 2-year service.
Once, Francis was asked if he was going to marry a little girl he was standing next to, and he answered no, he was going to marry Yeli Ama—thus began an on-running joke that he was my husband. Naturally, I had to turn down all other offers of marriage that were shouted at my while visiting the market in Sampa; I found it quite convenient to do so by saying, “I already have a husband in Kabile,” to the merriment of anyone standing nearby who was also in on the joke.
I am so eager to see them.
As is the custom, we greet everyone we pass on the paths or see at their homes (people generally live outside, often only going indoors to sleep). Everything is in a standard call-and-response sequence in Nafaanra. Happily, the right responses magically swim back to the front of my brain. People laugh with glee when they hear me remembering their language.
I remember when I first came here, I sort of dreaded when Stephen or Matthew would come get me and say we were going “to greet”. It just seemed like exhausting walking around randomly, drawing attention that was uncomfortable for me, and I didn’t understand why it was important nor that there was nothing random about it. I learned, though, and came to participate in the tradition, sometimes even walking around on my own mission of “going greeting”.
On this trip back, I simply adore it. I feel like we are walking around, exchanging little love morsels with everyone we see. It really is a cultural treasure. I’m glad I stuck it out long enough, back then, to appreciate it.
We run into Stella before we get to Esther’s, and she throws her arms around me, shouting with excitement. She has a new daughter on her back now, who really doesn’t know what to make of this pale, strange-looking person her mother is chattering with.
We continue walking together toward Esther’s house. “Mama Esther will not eat today!” Stella crows, meaning that she is excited that I am coming.
We get to their compound and there is much calling out. Esther runs toward me yelling, throws herself in the dirt at my feet, and grabs my ankles. Both of us laughing with happiness, I pull her up. Still dramatic as ever! She throws her arms around me, and I am so glad I am here for this.
We are all trying to get through the proper greetings when I look over and see Francis. He smiles and comes over to me also, now a slim boy of 14. “Do you speak English now?” I ask him. He smiles and nods. I’m so happy. I want to hear anything he has to say about our experiences together.
We sit in the compound for a while, amid mutual exclamations of “Mama!” and broad smiles, which seem to be the only way to express what we are feeling at seeing each other again. Esther tackles me with hugs a few more times, laughing.
We continue on our way to do some more greeting around town, trying to see the people who I was closest with. Madam Mary now stays at her house where I lived; she comes out to say hello, but she is not well…very frail and almost completely blind. My back is turned to the house as we talk, and I hear someone filling the water barrel on the porch and turn to see it is Raheal—like Francis, she’s grown into a teenager. I go to hug her and she gives a short heavy sob, trying to stifle the crying. I don’t let her go for a moment, then we look into each other’s eyes. I don’t know what Raheal’s full story is; I only know she lives with Mary, who is her grandmother, and seems to be relegated to a life of servitude. She endured all manner of harsh treatment when I stayed here, and she and I had our own relationship of friendship and mutual kindnesses. She always seemed like such a vulnerable child. She still does, but I am glad to see her grown, beautiful, and healthy.
Auntie Ama and Margaret still live next door and we exchange enthusiastic greetings. Kwayie Stephen still live behind those houses, still a warm friend.
And then I am able to greet Stephen at his house. Stephen was my officially designated counterpart here, offering guidance and understanding to me throughout my stay. He was the one who named me Yeli Ama Teresa when we first met at Peace Corps training, before I even visited Kabile, and I sometimes call him “my Ghanaian father”. It is another joyful reunion. He tells me something about some of the projects we worked together on; the permaculture project with fish pond basically failed—we visit it to take a look. The land and fencing for it are being put to good use for cultivation and gardens, and he now has pigs set up in part of it. He has a moto of his own now, too, and upgrade from his bicycle, and I am happy to see these signs of increased wealth for him and his family.
The beekeeper association and soap making trainings we worked on together have showed great benefit. The beekeepers association is still quite active, and he shows me a grant application he is working on himself to try to get funding to build more hives.
It’s great to hear that some of these projects worked well and were of benefit to the community. I had a feeling the permaculture project would fail to evolve based on how it was designed—sometimes you have to create project complexity to shoehorn it into the grant specifications. But I also knew that if it failed, many of the resources we bought for it would be put to good use. The longer I was in Kabile, the more I realized that the community lacked neither intelligence nor hard work. They simply had a starting point that was economically further behind. And so I started looking for any grant funding I could find for them.
One terrible project failure was that of a cashew storage facility for the farmer’s processing cooperative; we got funding through a French government grant for that during my stay. Construction started before I left, and it was partially done when a devastating windstorm hit and a wall collapsed. They were not able to complete that project at all.
After our visits, Matthew takes me back to his house so I can prepare for church, and I take my bucket bath and change into the kente. His family seems happy when I emerge wearing it; he was the person who procured both this dress and a traditional Nafaara cotton cloth dress as gifts for me from the community when I left. I’ll wear that other dress later in the day; I ask Matthew more about it and he tells me he went to Bondoukou in Cote d’Ivoire, and then called to order the cloth to be sent there, and then picked it up. There’s a nuance here that I hadn’t thought of before—he had to have it sent because he can’t return to the region where the cloth is made, because their origin story says he would not be allowed to leave. So in many ways, it is even more special than the kente.
In any case, I sit outside in the glittering kente while Matthew finishes preparing for church. The ambiance is just lovely. It feels so good to be here. Tiny scrawny kittens play on the cement, their mothers stalking through to investigate if any crumbs have been missed. A gentle dog sleeps in the shade under my chair. Hens with their chicks wander through; a little goat buck pursues a doe past me and into the yard on the other side. People pass and call out greetings. This is the Kabile I remember. I remember now, how this feeling is something I wanted to take and create into my own life.
We go to church, a little late, but that’s no big deal when church lasts a couple of hours or more. My favorite part of church is the any collection, when the brass band bursts into vigorous song and everyone dances up to drop their donation into the basket. When I was here before, it was done as a contest based on birth days of the week, and I’m a little disappointed that they no longer do this. I was looking forward to stuffing the basket so that the Amas and Kwames had a decisive win this Sunday. (I throw a 100-cedi note in among the 1-cedi notes anyhow.)
After collection is the offertory, which is always dignified and beautiful. The choir sings, and the extended family of the week (usually about 20 people) brings up offerings of food and supplies for the priest and for the church, on large platters balanced on the heads of women in beautiful dresses. This week is special, because there are baptisms of at least two babies, and they are carried by their fathers at the front of the procession. Those families are dressed in white and print-on-white, which denotes special celebrations of any kind. When you see someone in white, you know they are celebrating something.
This is a Catholic Church, the same religion I grew up with, and when I first arrived, I assumed I’d go to church in a perfunctory way for a couple of weeks and then skip it like almost all other Peace Corps volunteers do. But because I found such beauty, joy, and fun in the music, dancing, and rituals, I ended up looking forward to going every week.
The service is long, though, and I’m so tired. Stella’s newest daughter comes to sit with us and eventually climbs into my lap. She falls asleep, then I doze off, too.
There is another collection; Matthew tells me this is one for men vs. women. “Who usually wins?” I whisper. Oh the men, he tells me, because the women have less money. “Maybe it can change ,” I tell him, smiling, and dance up and deposit another tightly wadded 100-cedi note into the women’s basket.
As things draw to a close, there is a third collection, this one to be divided among the baptism families. These families are particularly effusive; the way some of the men dance around the new father makes it seem that they are particularly joyous, and I wonder if maybe he had to wait a long time for a healthy child.
The brass band suddenly comes to a halt, though, to everyone’s surprise and dismay. Matthew says it’s because they are all “wasting time” with too much dancing—I think the priest stopped it, hopefully not because I’d begin to capture it in the video above.
Finally, mass comes to a close. The collection amounts are announced and mysteriously the women have trounced the men this week, leading to laughing and merriment. I’m asked to address the congregation to say hello, and I try but I do a really terrible job of it. Oh Kabile…they love me despite my exhausted blundering.
The closing processional is sung and we all file out. Church isn’t quiteover, though. They are building a new church and priest quarters. Building blocks have been molded on-site, as construction blocks typically are, and they need to be moved into the building area for work to continue during the week. So the able-bodied proceed to the building site, and everyone works together to move the blocks, one by one, still wearing their church clothes.
I’m really feeling the fatigue of the night bus journey, and the sun. Matthew finishes his part of the block moving and comes to lead me back to his home. But he wants to stop and show me the clinic and clinic residences they’ve built. I had forgotten, but just before I left, I heard of a grant and hurriedly put it to together to help them buy the building materials for the residences. I had to word it carefully because they couldn’t complete the construction before I left and I had to report on project “completion”, but we got it put through and they followed through, as I knew they would, after I left. It was amazing to see the building in person, and talk to the doctor and nurse who now live there. Kabile had no clinic when I was there before, and it’s wonderful to see that they have one now.
We continue through town, the sun beating down, and I’m just hoping I make it without keeling over. I do, and change out of the kente into the more comfortable Nafaraa dress. My lunch is prepared, a delicious cashew soup, like groundnut soup you’ll find in other parts of Ghana, with yam fufu.
The chief and some of his elders come over to greet me in return now. We have a sort of formal conversation. At one point, he says quite a bit as Matthew listens to prepare to translate, and I start to worry about what it is that he is going to ask of me. But it only turns out that the chief wants to know what I like to drink. Matthew helps explain that I cannot take alcohol. They depart, and a short while later, a bag of soft drinks arrives as a gift.
I ask Matthew, should I get something for the chief to pour libations? This is an offering, usually of schnapps or other alcohol, to the ancestors and then shared among those in attendance. He agrees, and says he’ll handle procuring it for me. I’m relieved; I’d wondered if I should have bought something in Accra and brought it at the start, but everything seems to work out more or less gracefully, and no one in Kabile has ever been unhappy with me about getting bits of protocol incorrect.
When it seems that visits have slowed in the afternoon heat, I ask if it’s okay if I lay down for a while. Matthew encourages me to do that, so I excuse myself to my guest room and fall blissfully dead asleep for a couple of hours.
Sometime after I wake, Stephen comes and sits, and Matthew gets his laptop and the portable drive I gave him before I left. I once had use of a DSLR camera owned by Peace Corps for a few days, and had taken scores of photos of people around town. I forgot that I’d put them all on that drive for him, and he starts a slide show of them now. As expected, a few people have died over the past ten years. Only one of them was one of my closer friends, the sweet headmaster of the Catholic primary school.
We go out and make another round of greeting. First stop is back at the chief’s palace, with one bottle of schnapps and one of gin that Matthew got while I slept. We sit with the chief and some elders. At the chief’s prompt, Matthew opens the schnaps and pours the first few drops out onto the ground as an offering to the ancestors. Then he pours some into a glass and samples it. Not falling over dead from poison, he pours a shot for the chief, and then in turn for each of the men.
The chief makes a statement and Matthew translates for me. He is saying that sometimes the whites come and they don’t respect the Black man. But they could tell that I always respected and loved them.
There isn’t anything he could have said that would have made me happier.
We go out to do some more greeting. I think this is when we run into “Honorable”, who wasn’t home earlier—the Honorable District Assemblyman, one of my friends here. He is happy that Matthew showed me the clinic residences since he headed up that project.
We go back to Matthew’s house. I’m fed another delicious meal. I think this one was the stew of cabbage and meat over rice. Ghanaians always feed guests privately in their rooms; it was strange at first, but I have come to appreciate it, as I can use a spoon instead of my fingers. I have never learned how to eat delicately with my fingers as Ghanaians do.
Raheal comes to greet me, and I invite her into the room as I am eating. She doesn’t say much; she still doesn’t have good English. I ask if she goes to school and she nods that she does. I invite her several times to have some of my food, but she always declines. I regret not signaling her to be quiet and just fixing her some off my plate to eat in secret. In retrospect, I’m guessing she was obligated to decline rather than risk being heard accepting and have word get back that she had some of my food. I bungled that opportunity.
After I finish my dinner, I enjoy sitting outside while Matthew’s family sits in various places around the patio, eating dinner in small groups. The animals sit by companionably, waiting for the bits of food the family drops for them. They know they’ll catch a beating if they try to go for the food themselves. The youngest children, however, become anxious as the mother cats come closer to their bowl, looking for an opportunity to get away with something. But overall, it is an atmosphere of happiness and tranquility. The life with animals roaming the town and the serene coexistence remind me of the paintings of The Peaceable Kingdom that fascinated me as a child.
Throughout my stay, there are a number of interesting conversations. I’m told that the SungƐƐ festival, which closed before I arrived, was good. They are having an issue, though, that the girls and young women no longer want to dress in the red cloth and waist beads—topless—as is the tradition. Though the festival is centered on the yam harvest, it was also traditionally a sort of marriage-market, where unmatched girls and young women display themselves for selection, and families agreed to partnerships. I think the marriage matching has gone by the wayside, but the traditional dress continues in part. The problem is that it doesn’t work in an era of cellphones. Understandably, the girls sometimes don’t want their photos snapped and circulated (sometimes they do enjoy posing, so it’s not universal.) I wish I had thought to tell Matthew about the Taos Pueblo no-camera policies for their own festivals.
There are also discussions of how badly inflation is impacting them. Fuel prices are rising rapidly. The cooperative struggles—it can buy members’ cashews at a premium price if the farmers can store it and release it to the co-op to process during the year. But the farmers are under such economic pressure that they can rarely hold out for this. They sell to the exporters instead, to get their money right away, and so suffer twice in that they don’t get the co-op price and they also don’t get the benefit of the shared profits from the resulting processed kernels.
More amusing is that the chieftaincy in Sampa is still undecided, though it may be resolved by a council in Kumasi sometime in the next year. And Jamra, the next town up the road, still squabbles with two chiefs, one on either side of the road. They did try to take on Peace Corps volunteer, but there was so much in-fighting and power struggles between the two factions, that nothing could be accomplished.
Esther, her husband, and Francis come to visit. I ask Francis if he is a good student, and after some prompting, he says he is. He doesn’t really know English very well. I ask him what he remembers of our time together and he looks at a clock and tells me the time. I ask him what he wants to do for work after he completes school, and have to reword it a couple times. “A soldier!” is his answer. I remember him playing soldier before, and can totally see him gravitating toward that as a career.
At around 8pm, after visitors have departed and no one new shows up for a while, I ask Matthew if anyone else will be coming for greetings. He says no, no one will come at this hour. So I beg off, go to take my bucket bath, and go blissfully to sleep.
I wake pretty early in the morning and am happy to see that they left the kettle and tea in my room, so I can make it for myself. I sit with tea for a while outside. After breakfast and the morning bucket bath, I get my things packed so they are ready to go. Off we go again, for another round of greeting. First stop, the chief palace to thank him for the soft drinks, but he isn’t there.
We walk over to the farmer’s cooperative cashew processing plant. Matthew shows me the giant crates which house the new automated cracking machines he was able to get through African Cashew Alliance. Some will be installed on Tuesday.
He’s trying to get a building finished to house the others, but the co-op members haven’t donated enough funds yet to do it. I ask him how much he needs to pull together to do it; it’s about $3200 US.
Matthew has been the manager of the plant for years. By processing the raw nuts here and selling the kernels, much more of the economic value remains in the community. The alternative is to sell raw nuts to exporters to be shipped out of country and processed there. But the co-op has continuing difficulties getting ahead to do that.
We continue on our way greeting. One person I want to be sure to see is N’Mlanta, a muslim woman who doesn’t speak a bit of English, but somehow became a friend I treasure. We have an animated discussion, with Matthew helping to translate, but mostly it’s her exclaiming, “Yeli Ama! Oh! Yeli Ama!”
Another person is my friend Patricia, but we do not find her at home.
We end up at Stephen’s house again and he shows me the form for the beekeeping grant. “Would you like some help filling it out?” Yes, he says enthusiastically—this is why he prepared it. We sit together and I help him sort out what the questions mean and how to answer them, and Matthew helps too. It feels great to be able to do something useful.
I had asked to have a meeting with Matthew, Stephen, Mary, and Esther. Because Mary is so ill, we decide to have it at her house. Matthew agrees to translate. I tell them how much their care of me during that two years meant to me. I tell them that I had been thinking of what gifts to bring them from America, but I worried that anything I brought them would fall apart in the tropics or otherwise be unsuitable. Before I can continue, they start to reply about how much they don’t care about this and that me coming is the best gift. I can’t stop my own tears, and I notice some of them dabbing at their own eyes.
Matthew tells me, “We have a saying here: ‘Human meat is sweet, but we don’t eat it.’”
I am a little thunderstruck by the expression and all it implies; he goes on to say that the meaning is that we all mean much more to each other than whatever material—and nutritional—benefits we could offer.
What I wanted to go on to tell them, and do eventually after their considerable reassurances, is that I just want to give them a small amount of money that I would have bought gifts with, augmented by a donation from my mother, and I distribute a bundle of bills to each of them amid silent weeping and a few more words. It’s not all that much, and it’s not the gift that matters. But it is somehow a point where feelings and words flow more freely, and both they and I express things that feel like they need saying; a resolution of sorts.
We close our little gathering and I say goodbye to Madam Mary and give her a hug. “I will not see you again,” she says formally, looking down; she is certain she is dying, and I suspect she’s right. She knows I understand, but perhaps doesn’t know that I am also pretty sure I will not return here again myself. I am just not tough enough to imagine it.
Matthew and Stephen and I walk back toward Matthew’s house. Along the way I remember things like the single crazy cashew tree that always seems to have some fruit ripening despite it not being in season.
Back at the house, we sit on the porch for a while. Esther and Francis come for another visit. I ask Francis if he went to school today. “No,” he says simply. He is not very talkative, but we keep catching each others eyes and smiling in a way that makes me laugh. Stella joins us, and also Patricia comes, having heard I was looking for her.
We talk about old times. Matthew says that Esther cried for four days when I left before, and she laughs and agrees. I ask Francis if he remembers traveling to Boko and then riding the Peace Corps car back to Sampa with us. Esther reminds him and he smiles and nods quickly that he does. I wonder also if he remembers crying outside of my door the next day, begging me to return to Sampa and buy him the pretty child’s bicycle we’d seen, but I don’t ask him. We had so many great adventures.
While we are sitting here, a figure wearing the veil that tells me she is Muslim slowly comes our way, dressed in the white prints of celebration, bent and leaning on a stout wooden staff. It is N’Mlanta, who has made the long walk to come greet me in return. I am astonished by the effort it must have taken. She sits for a while, discussions continue, most of them I don’t understand but am happy to be present for. Stephen says something to her and she agrees, then he gets his moto and she gets herself astride behind him, adjusts her staff under her arm, and holds on to the seat behind her so that she is careful not to be touching, and he carries her home.
People come and go; I had suggested that Francis go to Sampa with us, but instead he says goodbye and goes off to do other things. I am impressed by how mannerly he is, fetching things for the women and sitting politely even though he must be a little bored. He walks away and I smile at Esther. “Mama! You have done well!” She smiles and nods. He’s a fine boy.
Unfortunately, Matthew’s wife has fallen ill. The clinic says it is malaria and has sent her home with medicine. But while we are visiting, she becomes suddenly worse and Matthew rushes off with her to the hospital. We agree that Stephen can get me to the bus at Sampa if he doesn’t get back in time.
I get another meal—jollof rice with a meat that is either pork or grasscutter. Again beautifully prepared, this time I think by Matthew’s daughter.
There is a shopkeeper friend I want to visit in Sampa, so sooner rather than later, it is time to leave Kabile and say goodbye to everyone on the porch.
They’ve arranged for one of the passenger tricycles, and Stephen, Esther, and I climb in.
We ride into the center of town, and Esther gets out. When she does, she hands me some cuttings of a plant she has been carrying. It seems like a type of cypress. She gives me a warm, dignified goodbye. This is a better way to part; we have all confirmed that we are lifelong friends, even if we don’t ever see each other again. There is no need for either of us to cry for days, like we both did before.
As we pull away, I think to ask Stephen the meaning of this plant and the sprig she has given me. Then I pause, and decide not to. I already understand what it means. I don’t need to play amateur anthropologist to get it.
It’s Monday, market day in Sampa, so the town is bustling. We stop to greet Mr. Daniel, the tailor who made dresses for me. We run into Honorable again, and Stephen tells him I am looking for Grace, the shopkeeper who was always so kind to me and became my Sampa friend. Honorable tells us that her shop is no longer open, so we go to her house. We visit with her husband, who is some important figure in Sampa civic life, but Auntie Grace has traveled for funerals, so I don’t get to see her.
So many times people tell me of their experience, and it echoes my own. Honorable tells me, “Today I remember seeing you yesterday, and I wonder if it is a dream.”—that same dream-like sense pervades my time in Kabile, with the happy realization that is is, well, real. Other times I hear, “We can tell that you love us!” while I am thinking, “I can tell that they love me!” Feeling loved—and others feeling your love—is such a different experience than being told you are loved. It is something I felt here before, but I think I had begun to doubt the experience. Maybe it was just being an oddity among gracious people; maybe it was just my imagination. But no…my experience here was real, and more importantly, it was shared—and I am so glad to have come back to fetch it.
We walk thru the market toward the bus station. I want to buy a cutlass to take home for someone, so we stop to do that. The seller grinds the wood handle to smooth it and sharpens it, sparks flying, before wrapping the blade in paper for me.
We continue on, passing the bicycle shop. I ask Stephen, “How much does a bicycle cost?” He tells me, and it’s not as much as I’d feared. “You want to buy a bicycle?” he asks, surprised.
“I am thinking maybe for Francis,” I tell him.
“Yes yes, for Francis!” he exclaims, finding it a fine idea. Honorable, too, is enthusiastic about it. They immediately set to work with the bicycle seller to select the right bike, and make sure its seat is replaced with a better one, that the basket is new, point out repairs that need to be made to bring make it ship shape. All I have to do is hand over some money and they handle it all. Someone will take it to Kabile later when it is ready, and deliver it to Francis. Now I feel ready to go, smiling as I imagine the look on his face when he receives it.
Stephen waits with me at the bus stop, and just before it’s time to leave, Matthew arrives. He gives me two big bags of cashew kernels that he wedges into my duffel, along with the liter of honey Stephen gave me—the best of gifts from my farmer friends.
There are fewer tears at this parting; it, too, is more dignified. Rather than feeling as though something has been rended, as I did the before, I feel like something has been set right.
If you’ve read along this far, your reward is your own Nafana name. You’ll need to combine the day of the week you were born (you can do this by simply googling your date of birth), your birth order within your gender, and your given first name.
Here are the Nafana birth order names (female first, then male):
1st born: Yeli, Sie
2nd born: Yah, Sah
3rd born: Nyini, Woli
4th born: Pen, Peh
5th born: Nyua, Oba
6th born: Tor, Tor
Twins are often known as “Atta”; there are other special names that can be used to indicate specific circumstances of birth.
Here are the Ghanian/Akan day names (also female first, then male)
Sunday: Akosua, Kwasie
Monday: Adwoa, Kwadwo
Tuesday: Abena, Kwabena
Wednesday: Akua, Kwaku
Thursday: Yaa, Yaw
Friday: Afia, Kofi
Saturday: Amma, Kwame.
Sometimes different ordering is used; Stephen writes his name as Stephen Sah Kwame, Matthew writes his as Matthew Sah Kwadwo.
This was so touching and so beautiful Thank you again for sharing your wonderful story. -Sie Kofi :-)
You open my insight into what otherwise would have seemed remote to me here in San Francisco Ca.
Edward Mycue