The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2010

J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29 F S F I C T I O N T HE I NTERVIEW oyce came home that evening at 1 a.m., her hair smelling like someone else’s perfume and her sandals dusty from walking in the beach sand. I was up feeding the baby corn porridge when I felt her presence behind me. “Did you eat?” I asked her. Joyce came home on week- end nights usually starved. “No,” she told me quietly. “I was fed tonight.” Some- thing in her expression warned me not to ask more, so I busied myself putting our baby brother, Bana, back on the mattress and patting his stomach gently with my fingers so he would sleep. Joyce sat down on the floor, and I could tell she was exhausted. “I was downtown with Lydia and Kafui when we met some guys, university students from Ghana. They told us they wanted to talk with us and learn more about the city. They spoke good French.” Joyce and I were both Ghana- ian but had lived in Togo with our mother since my birth. I was intrigued. I had about as much direct experience speaking with boys not frommy school or neighborhood as I did with elephants. And there were no more elephants left in Togo. “What did you talk about?” Joyce sighed. “Football. Lydia knows enough about the local teams to keep them occupied. When it was time to leave, the boys insisted on accompanying us home. The streets are not safe at night, they said.” Her face grew taut again, and a pinch of worry skittered behind my ribs. Knowing I would ask more, Joyce shot me an angry look and then laid down next to the sleeping baby on the mat- tress. “Go away,” she said. She rolled away fromme, put- ting her hands over her ears. I could tell then that there was more to her story, and that it probably involved me. Joyce was my older sister by three years. We both had the same irregular-shaped dimple, like a question mark, below our left eye when we smiled. I smiled more than Joyce did. She had graduated from high school one year earlier and decided to work instead of going to the local university because of the political strikes. “What? Pay money and not go to class?” Auntie, our father’s sister who had no children of her own, promptly hired her to keep an F ATE PLAYS A ROLE IN A G HANAIAN GIRL ’ S QUEST FOR PASSAGE TO A MERICA . B Y A MANDA S. J ACOBSEN Amanda S. Jacobsen joined the Foreign Service in 2006 and is currently the cultural affairs officer in Kathmandu. She previously served as a consular officer in Lomé, where she also oversaw the development office. She enjoys swim- ming, visiting far-flung countries few have heard of, and exploring esoteric Buddhist and Hindu temples. Prior to joining the Foreign Service she worked in nongovernmen- tal organization management in Seattle and as a Model United Nations coordinator in Latin America. Her story is a co-winner of the 2010 Foreign Service fiction contest. J