Henry

Henry is our neighbor here in Dodowa.  I don’t know if I’ve specifically described the layout of our house and surrounding yard, but basically we share a yard inside the same gate and wall as Henry.  For our first two weeks here, we were positive that Henry was going to murder us.  The first time we saw him, he was shirtless and carrying a machete.  He also has no less than seven dogs that bark and growl all night not three feet from my window.  These two things put together convinced all three of us that he was some scary man with crazy dogs and that he would come and kill us with his machete.  We have since re-formed this opinion, for many reasons. 

First, he has these dogs as pets, which is highly unusual, especially when we see him taking them on walks.  This would be a large/unusual amount of dogs at home, in my opinion, but it is even more unusual here because no one has dogs for pets.  We see the occasional stray dog wandering around from time to time, but no dogs live as pets with people.  Except for Henry.  And he loves his dogs-my room is nearest to Henry’s house, and I hear him talk to them and sing (yes, sing) to them.  His vocal skills aside, we still were apprehensive about making friends.  Some guys are super creepy around the obrunis-I’ve lost count of the number of marriage proposals I’ve received so far.  Then, he started inquiring about our weekend travels.  When we returned one Sunday, he was walking his dogs and seemed very glad to see us.  “Did you travel this weekend?  I had noticed you weren’t around.”  This was oddly comforting, knowing that a very intimidating man with intimidating dogs had 1) noticed we were gone and been worried about where we were and 2) been keeping an eye on our empty house when we were gone.  Finally, our breakthrough in becoming friends with Henry was George.  About a week or two ago, a new dog showed up in our yard.  It’s huge, but when we open the gate and all of the little annoying dogs run up and bark, the big one just walks up and kindly looks at us with interest.  We looked at him and immediately agreed his name should be George, and one of the annoying dogs always with George should be named Sparky.  George greets us without fail every night when we come home after dinner and every afternoon coming home for lunch.  A couple of days ago, Henry was outside when we were coming home.  We said our usual pleasantries, and asked what the new dog’s name was.  He didn’t have a name for it, so we told him we thought it was George.  Without a moment’s hesitation, he smiles and says “Ok, I will keep it.”  So now the dog’s name is actually George.  After this exchange, Henry asked what our names were, and how long we’d be staying, so we got to chat a little bit.  The next morning, there was a note on our doorstep.  It said “Good morning!  I have left for the day but I wanted to leave you my number so we could get to know each other better.  Henry”.  We immediately wrote back and left him our names and numbers, which led to possibly the best text message I have ever received.  This past weekend, we traveled to Akosombo, which is along the Volta River.  Henry called us on Friday night because he noticed we weren’t home, and wanted to check on us.  He called Hannah’s phone, and when she said we were in Akosombo for the weekend, he goes “ok yea, you’re just chillin!”.  The next afternoon, I got a text from him.  Verbatim, spelling and all, this is what it read:

“Gud afternun nd hope al is wel?  I really appreciate d way u go about doing ur things, it’s so amazing nd I want u 2 keep it up. My prayer 4 u is dat may al ur heart desires kom thru. May god adorn u with d garment of praise and load u with his benefits. Take gud ker or urselves nd neva allow anything 2 kom in betwn ur strong friendship. I ker, henry.”   

I actually thought it was a text from Oti at first, because he has a tendency to send very deep, intense texts as well.  Hannah was sick last week and he was out in the field researching, so he sent her one that said “hi sweet girl, how r u? I know u r strong and can’t be broken down. It might just be a little stress or maybe you miss me.  Rest a little and u’ll be fine. Take care.”

Anyway, the text was from Henry, and we just about died from laughter reading it over dinner.  Returning home Sunday night, we received another text-"Thanks be to God that you are home safely."  So, to sum up, we are now best friends with Henry, the man we thought was a murderer, and may ask him to cut down the plantains from our plantain tree with his machete.  And he’s on our list to be our next dinner guest.  Don't worry, George will be invited too.