Kwaku: Why are you always quiet and blank when I am talking to you ?

Kofi: Because I want to try and hear you

Kwaku: Don’t you hear me when I speak, you don’t have ear problems.. do you?

Kofi: I want to hear you. That is why I listen empty? And many a times - you realise I have nothing to say by the time you are done.

Kwaku: Yes.. so why do you do it?

Kofi: Well , it’s because I am still listening to you even after you are done talking to me. Your voice still goes on in my head. I am trying to make sense of what you have said.

Kwaku: Is that why you only come back with answers two days ,or more, later?

Kofi: Yes, man. And I guess that is not too good. I seem to do most of my thinking after you are gone- after we are done. And that part of my mind ,I told you is called, the “sub-mind”, starts to process it.

Kwaku: How will you ever solve problems immediately then …

Kofi: I don’t know … I guess I will answer readily if I know… if I have encountered and solved the problem before.. I will do well to relate… if not I will just give the problem the time it needs to unravel itself.

Kwaku: You are just a lazy thinker, aren’t you?

Kofi: Naaa, I am just lazy. And a part me of just knows how to think.

Kwaku: HAHAHA..

I always have interesting discussions with Kwaku. He is twelve years - he has an immune disease. And has stayed in the village with my grandmum for a long while.

He always asks me questions that makes me think long hours on ending about the way things are done.

Recently Kwaku told me and Gideon, my 21 year old brother, about how we suck. He told Gideon about awfully unhealthy it is for him not to talk about his problems…. “Gideon thinks he can always solve his own problems and doesn’t share them” - and then he added smartly; ’ When you share your problems it’s already half-way solved.’

We were all eating from one bowl at the time - and he told me about my poor habit of not chewing properly and me constantly asking him to eat as fast as I do. He told me: ‘Sammy, if the machine in your mouth doesn’t do it’s job properly it burdens the machine in the stomach’. You don’t want to get sick - do you?

Kwaku is not always matured though. He sometimes acts a lot like a child - when I ask him to go to school or I ask him to take his drugs. I guess I am not always matured either.

Kwaku doesn’t know how to read but he speaks and understands english almost perfectly. He asks a lot of questions, every time we watch a movie together, so he keeps improving.

And he always sits like a monk when we are eating, learning or watching TV together.

In Ghana, the Akan ethnic groups have names given to babies depending on the day they are born. For example: Kwaku is the name given to a male child born on Wednesday. And Kofi is the name given to male child born on Friday.

I will tell you more about names very soon.