Tennis Lessons

Sam had come upon the men by chance. Due to a break before exams, he was free to help his elder brother Joseph, who served as a cook for the students at the Nigerian Baptist seminary. When he was very young and even though his eyes stung, Sam had loved to sit by his mum in the courtyard as she chopped peppers to throw into a pah of sizzling palm oil. Once some passing school girls teased him. "Shall we plait your hair?" they asked. One even squeezed him between the legs when Mum wasn't looking. At the seminary, however, men cooked, men such as Joseph. And they were paid by the American missionaries. Sam loved the kitchen with its broad, planed tables, the hand mixer, bowls, measuring cups and knives shiny as water left sitting in a drum. Joseph had allowed him to try the mixer once. The vibration made Sam's hands tingle. This afternoon, Joseph had given Sam a six pence and sent him to buy tomatoes. "You can take the road through the compound. You don't have to go out the gate and around," and in the air he drew the long path that circled the American village: a seminary on one end and a hospital on the other.