On this unforgettable day, also a hairdo day for Bena, there was no sound of federal jet fighters in the sky; the sun over the village of Akokwa had just set, permitting members of my family to congregate around the open backyard behind our house. As a child, you wouldn’t know that those moments were still wartime. Adults did not explain the inconsistencies—why, in the midst of hunger and anguish, families carried on with their daily lives, just as hate coexists with love. Using a wooden comb, Grandmother Elizabeth isolated moles, or crops of hair, on my sister’s scalp, tying […]