Mansa's Perspective by this blogger – "In the Cutting of a Drink" by Ama Ata Aidoo in No Sweetness Here

Left: Ama Ata Aidoo

The morning came late, as usual after Mansa and her friends worked. In that moment before becoming fully conscious and realizing that she was alone in her bed, Mansa had a nagging feeling, as if just waking from a dream she could barely remember but with a sense that it was somehow important. As she stretched, she remembered last night and then it all came back.
She heard Furaha getting breakfast in the kitchen.
‘Is there any fruit?’
‘Yes, one papaya left,’ handing it to Mansa.
‘Where’s Masozi and Zuri?’
‘With the big men they danced with all night. And you did not leave with the Fante man?’
‘No.’
‘He is from your village?’
‘Yes. He is my brother. He came looking for me.’
‘But I thought you said that your family believed you were dead?’
‘I thought this, too.’……I am not sure of anything. There is always my family…like this morning’s dream barely remembered and soon forgotten…but now I remember everything.
‘He does not approve of what I do. He wants me to come home. He does not understand anything.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said that he was hoping, if he found me, to find that all was well and that I would at least be married to a big man.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, why do you talk so badly about what I do? Do you not think this is better? Do you not think that I could be happy without marriage?’……I did not say what I know. I did not say that I know that marriage is not possible for me now. I did not say that I was happy to decide for myself. I did not say that I know that I would probably not have a child, or one who knows his father, or have a home, like my mother. I did not say that I often feel free from many things. I did not say that I fear my old age.
I did not have to say.

After a silence, Furaha said, ‘Maybe we should have stayed with Mother and taken up the sewing and cleaning. Maybe she will come to find me too, like your brother…and bring us both home.’
‘Your Mother was good to me, Furaha, and treated me as her daughter and your sister …and although she taught me the sewing and cleaning, like you, I knew at ten years old that if I could not stay in school in my own village, I was not going to stay anywhere that was not of my own choosing. You said then that you felt the same. Do you not remember how you begged me to take you with me when I left in the night?……Even though I promised my brother I would go home at Christmas, I cannot……He does not understand anything,’ Mansa said.
They sit together for a long time in compliant silence.