Midnight on the Volta River
Midnight on the Volta River is a shock of sensations under a star-pricked sky. To get here, you spent the day on long, fume-choked roads stretching northwards out of Accra, where the interminable traffic was interrupted only by basket-toting street sellers or the occasional bad-tempered baboon. Up, up, for five, six hours you went, a tiny dot inching northwards across the vast map of Ghana, leaving the city behind for a river the colour of crushed beetles and buried jade. Now, you sit on its baked-red shore, fixated on the fast flow of water. There is nobody else around, save for the man sitting next to you. You are both quiet, drinking in the night.
The sun was still high when you arrived. Dry season is well underway; the heat so solid you could almost punch a hole in it. Downstream, women pounded fufu with long sticks as men glided past in wooden fishing vessels. On the riverbank, children waved their small hands at waterborne passers-by. The rippling reflections of banana trees slowed your mind—finally. By dusk, you and the man were watching clouds of bats rising from the trees and blotting out the sky.
Now, the butter-yellow November moon tempers the darkness with soft silhouettes. The man hands over a sticky soda bottle, his fingertips grazing yours. You take a long swallow, feeling the palm wine warm a slow, lazy trail through your insides. You slow your breath to match his.
The past weeks have been chaotic; a blur of shared firsts in a new city. You have only known the man for a few months, yet you have followed him to Africa. For love. For adventure. Because the world has fallen still—a soundless sigh of deserted streets and glitching screens and blue paper masks—and you could not bear to be parted. His work is here, and now, so are you. You’re crazy, everyone said, just before you left your life in London behind.
You are a world away from English concrete and rained-on tarmac, a fact you still find bewildering. Brushing your bare feet over the sand, you savour the sensation of the cool grains. Your mother once told you a story about a man who lost his legs in a terrible war. What he missed most, she warned, wasn’t the ability to walk or run—it was the feeling of his feet on the ground. Years later, whenever you feel adrift, you press your soles into the earth. The sand sifts beneath your toes. Your heart tugs homewards.
The landscape’s pungent, earthy aroma is mixed with the acrid stench of Deet, which warps and singes your cheap jewellery. Cicada cries and toadsong reverberate through the night. There is a potency here at midnight. Life teems everywhere, feeling both ancient and new. You sit next to your love, a man for whom no one word feels quite right yet, though you’re sharing a tiny apartment, a fledgling home. Across the water, a small island from which monkeys hurl outraged screeches flourishes lush and tropical. The dense foliage seems to crowd closer. The Volta River runs black.
Far away from here, the rest of the world is noiseless and grey. The Volta River is anything but. As you gaze out over the ceaseless current, you will yourself to stay anchored to this place, this peace. You lean back against the chest of the man who will one day become your husband. A firefly waltzes close. Moon bees, the man calls them. You hold your breath, for fear you’ll blow it out.
About the Author
Charlotte McManus is a freelance journalist, writer and magazine editor. She is based in London, though is often globe-trotting. Previous roles include Associate Editor of Sphere and Editor of Raffles Hotels magazine, while her words have been featured in Wallpaper*, The Independent, and Adventure.com, amongst others. Charlotte is currently working on her first novel.
Illustration by Jane Demarest.
Edited by Logan Davis.
