By the time I reached my teens, the old drumbeat of destiny played louder. I was now a lanky fourteen-year-old attending Tamale Secondary School, far from home but under the same stars. Every evening, high above the school's science building, I would sneak out to the roof with the Bosomtwe stone in my hand. The night sky there was a swath of glittering silk. One evening, as I traced Jupiter through the clouds, my fingers around the smooth stone, I could swear I heard a voice whisper in Twi: "ɔsoro ne asase kasa wo din" — the heavens and earth speak your name. I didn't understand everything, only that something that had been forgotten seemed to stir within me. Did the ancestors speak through stone and sky?
The next morning in class, my physics teacher, Mr. Agyemang, noticed my distraction. He was an enthusiast of both science and Adinkra symbols. Smiling at my doodle of a bending spacetime, he recited an Akan proverb: "Ti koro nko agyina" — one head does not hold council. He pointed to the diagram on the board, then out the window at the sky. "The universe is too vast for one mind to grasp," he said. That day he borrowed my Bosomtwe stone and placed it on the lecture desk. "Remember," he said, "even this stone was formed by the cosmos — heavy with history." I felt as if that stone now weighed a constellation in my palm.
During a school break, our family traveled south for the Odwira festival in Kumasi, honoring ancestors. Late one night at the old Agona shrine, the air was thick with incense and chanting. I wandered away from the crowd and found myself staring into the eyes of a carved ouroboros snake on a wooden Adinkra board called "Nkyinkyim," the twists and turns. The mask's eyes seemed alive, glowing by torchlight. In its reflection I saw my own face superimposed on the night sky. Fireflies drifted around me, and I heard a distant whisper: I was part of something greater.
The next day in Kumasi, Grandfather was waiting at the station. He placed his weathered hands on my shoulders and studied my face. "Wo nanom ka w'asɛm," he said softly — my ancestors speak about you. We walked to his shrine near the brass-topped Obosomase. Grandfather lit a candle and faced the golden stool's pedestal, the symbol of our soul. His eyes closed, he murmured a prayer to Nyame. I stood still, listening. Though no words from him addressed me directly, I felt his blessing warm my spine like sunlight.
In those days, I split my life between two worlds. After school I would pore over diagrams of black holes and string theory, then I'd dive into my mother's stories of Nyame and Asase Yaa. I saw no conflict. The laws of physics fascinated me, but so did the rhythms of the drums that seemed woven into spacetime itself. I believed they spoke the same truth in different tongues.
When acceptance letters arrived from universities around the world, I chose Cape Town. It was far — farther than I had ever been — but I felt the pull of destiny. As I packed, mother wrapped me in a kente stole embroidered with an Adinkra symbol of protection, "Nkyinkyim," and a carved ebony staff. "To remind you of home," she said. My siblings pressed in for hugs, and my grandmother made a final invocation: "Sankofa," she whispered, tracing an egg shape with her finger. "Remember." I understood: even as I left, I carried all I had learned from these ancestors into the universe.