Description

A WOMAN IN HER PRIME

In the small Ghanian village of Brenhoma, Pokuwaa, though a woman, has become a successful farmer. But true happiness eludes her: to have reached middle age without children is considered a grave misfortune. She has even felt compelled to divorce her first two husbands. Eventually, the man in her life is Kwadwo who greatly loves her for her charm, sympathy and sweet conversation. Even with Kwadwo, whose fatherhood has been well established in the other wife, years pass by without an answer to Pokuwaa’s prayers and sacrifices to the great god, Tano. At this stage, her nagging intrusion becomes unbearable for her less composed and less mature nature.

Eventually, she rejects her mother’s interference and recourse to charms, drugs and sacrifice to ensure a taste of the joy embedded in motherhood. Thus, what finally becomes her fate poses further questions: is it occasioned by her eventual resignation, or by earlier submission to what the tradition requires of a woman in her plight, or even by the continued but untold entreaties other mother with the gods?