The narrator of this story is a Westernized woman working as the schoolteacher in the Fanti village of Bamso. She is known only as Chicha, the Fanti pronunciation of "teacher." As the story opens, she is visiting the hut of Maami Ama, whose ten-yearold son Kwesi is Chicha's favorite pupil. Chicha commends Maami Ama on Kwesi's physical beauty, teasing that she is going to kidnap Kwesi and take him away with her; Maami Ama appreciates the compliment, but also expresses her fear of losing her only child. Maami Ama explains that, although she is his first wife, she has been completely neglected by her husband of seven years, Kodjo Fi. She has been given his worst piece of land to farm, been personally ignored by him, and been shut out of the rest of his family; both his two sisters and his mother treat her badly...