Death at the Voyager Hotel (2 page)

Paula
Djan looked up at the light tap on her office door and saw Ajua standing there.
The girl was fourteen years old, tall for her age and a tough kid. Her eyes
were beautiful, although they could cut deep into you and flare dangerously when
she was angry. Now they were soft and anxious.

She curtsied
almost imperceptibly. “Good morning, Madam Djan.”

“Morning, Ajua.
Come in. Something wrong?”

“Please,” she
said softly as she came forward, “will Madam Heather come today?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Please, I
always meet her outside the school at seven thirty, but up till now, she has
not come.”

“But Ajua,”
Paula said, smiling kindly, “it’s only five past eight. She might be caught in
traffic or something like that. You know how congested Accra is on a Monday
morning.”

“Please, she’s
never late,” Ajua insisted.

“She’ll be here,”
Paula said confidently. “Go and get ready for class.”

“Yes, Madam
Djan.”

Paula chuckled
under her breath as she fondly watched Ajua leave. She was one of the success
stories at the
High Street Academy
in Accra. Until Heather’s arrival, no
one had been able to put the brakes on Ajua’s truancy. She was sleeping in
class, failing all her tests, and on the verge of expulsion when Heather took
her under her wing. She must have perceived some hidden potential in the girl,
and something about this new teacher’s aide from America had inspired Ajua.
Heather had put in extra time to tutor her, and now Ajua was a consistent C-student,
an amazing transformation.

Paula was the
headmistress of the High Street Academy, an urban school that provided free
education to eight- to fifteen-year-old needy children from nearby
neighborhoods. The school building was surrounded by the ramshackle homes that
had sprung up behind the Accra Arts Center, a tourist trap on High Street; but
it was an exceedingly rare tourist who knew about this humble school where
teachers strived to change the lives of their young students—if not now, then
in the future.

Heather was
exactly the kind of worker Paula needed right now, because the school’s
performance during the last quarter had slipped. Only fifteen minutes ago, she
had been on the phone with her boss, Kwame Coker, who had warned her that the
school’s Danish sponsors might withdraw funding by the end of the year if
standards did not pick up. That gave Paula nine months to turn things around.

“They want to
see better results,” Coker had said emphatically. “Our target is one-third of
the student body transferring to top junior high schools, particularly
high-achieving
girls
. It’s very important that our girls succeed.”

“Yes, of course
sir,” Paula had stammered, hearing the desperation in her own voice. “Believe
me, no one wants them to succeed more than I do, but we’re wrestling with teen
pregnancy, the number one reason for girls dropping out; it isn’t easy.”

“Then you need
to try harder,” he said firmly. “Look, as director of the program, I must go to
the Danes and say, ‘here are the achievements for the year.’ If I have nothing
to show them, they’re going to ask me why they should continue to give us
money. That means my job, your job, all of our jobs, are on the line.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So make this
the first day of a new beginning. Clear?”

It was indeed to be the first day of a new beginning, but not
in the way Coker had meant nor in a manner Paula would have imagined. When
Heather had not shown by 8:45, Ajua’s concerns no longer seemed unfounded. In a
corner of the small room that doubled as administrative office and staffroom, Paula’s
assistant Gale was talking to a desk clerk at the Voyager Hotel. “I’m only
asking if you would please go to her room and find out if she is there and
whether she is okay.”

Hotheaded Gale
was petite and fair-colored, while her mostly unflappable boss was tall, dark,
and well built. After listening to the clerk’s unhelpful reply, Gale hung up in
annoyance. “Agh. He says he’s not allowed to provide that kind of private
information over the phone. Aren’t you good friends with the manager over there?”

“Yes—Edward
Laryea,” Paula said, scrolling through the contacts on her phone. “I’ll call him
now.”

The number rang
several times without a response, but there was still another option. “Take my
car,” Paula said to Gale, digging into her purse for the keys. “Go to the
Voyager yourself, check if Heather is there and if she’s all right. Who knows,
she might be in bed with malaria or something.”

“Okay,” Gale
said, grabbing the keys and disappearing through the door as swiftly as a sparrow.

During the
years Paula had been at High Street Academy, she had been sending the foreign
teachers’ aides to stay at the Voyager Hotel. The accommodations weren’t fancy,
but the rates were good, and the place was scrupulously clean.

At nine fifteen,
Paula was to meet with a journalist from the
Ghana Herald
, which was doing
a series on the plight of Accra’s burgeoning population of homeless children.
Because the paper could be sensational and controversial, Paula had hesitated to
do the interview, but she had decided in the end that her refusal would have
looked bad.

Diane Jones, a chubby,
black Chicagoan popped her head into Paula’s office. Like Heather, she was a
volunteer teacher’s assistant at High Street Academy. Her usual good cheer was
missing today. “Any word?”

“No,” Paula
replied. “But I’ve sent Gale to look for her.” She had a sudden sickening foreboding.
“Heather didn’t mention anything to you about coming late today?”

“No,” Diane
said. “Last night, I told her I was coming in early to get some paperwork done,
and she said, ‘okay, see you at eight.’ I was up at five this morning and left
the hotel around five thirty.”

“It’s not like
her to disappear like this,” Paula frowned. She spied Oliver, one of the permanent
staff teachers, heading toward his classroom. “Oliver!” she called out. “Have
you heard from Heather this morning?”

“No.” He checked
his phone screen and shook his head. “Nothing. I was just checking for her at
the front but there’s no sign of her. If you’ll take my first class I can go
look for her at the Voyager.”

“No need,” said
Paula, forcing a smile. “Gale is already on her way there.”

She was making an
effort to appear calm but she was now even more concerned. Of all people, Oliver
should have heard from Heather because he was dating her. Paula would have
preferred that romances in the workplace never happened at all, but they were
inevitable and impossible to stop. The only action she had taken was to make
sure Heather and Oliver never taught together in the same class. Sidelong,
yearning glances between them was not what a bunch of already excitable
students needed.

Heather and
Oliver were a fine study in contrast—she slim and strawberry blond with a
heart-shaped face and aqua eyes, he broad and deeply black with flared nostrils
and cheekbones like mountain ridges.

“I’m sure
she’ll be here,” Diane said tentatively, but the questioning tone of her voice betrayed
her. “I’ll check back with you after this period.”

Oliver had a
class to teach as well, and his students had begun straggling in. Space was in
short supply, such that his classroom abutted Paula’s office. He left to begin
the lesson, his brow still creased with worry.

 “Take your
seats,” she heard him instructing the kids through the half-open door. “
Quietly!
”

Worn, rickety wooden
desks and chairs scraped and squeaked, papers rustled, and the giggles and boisterous
jostling died down. Paula stood unobtrusively at the door and watched Oliver teach
the English class. It was the most difficult subject for many of the students.
Math was less of a problem.

“Take out your
pencils and exercise books, please,” he said. “Let’s see how well you have
learned your spelling.”

Two boys were clowning
around in the back row.

“Come here,” Oliver
said tersely to them. “Both of you.”

They came up
meekly to the front of the class and he scolded them in English first, and then,
for emphasis, in Ga. Addressing them in their mother tongue had more impact,
and Ga, an innately sterner language than English, was well tailored for rebuke.

“You’re not
here to play, eh?” Oliver said. “You’re here to learn so you can make something
of yourselves. Do you understand?”

The boys bowed their
shorn heads and made no eye contact with their teacher.

“Go and sit
down,” he said. “No more playing the fool.”

Oliver gave
them a shove, but as they returned to their seats, Paula could see the secret
twinkle in his eye. He was very fond of the children, and concern for their
wellbeing and ultimate success lay beneath even his strongest reprimands. That
was why Paula had hired him. He was a good teacher, first, but just as
important, he cared about these children.

A man Paula
didn’t know was approaching the office from alongside the classroom. Guessing
he was the journalist, she opened the door wide to welcome him.

“Mrs. Djan?” he
asked as he reached her.

“Yes, good
morning.”

“I’m John
Prempeh with the
Ghana Herald
.” She invited him in. He was short and
wide, with a round, boyish face and spectacles.

“I hope this is
an okay time for you?” he asked deferentially.

“It’s fine,”
she said, nodding, “although there might be one or two interruptions—either by
the staff or the kids, or phone calls.”

“No problem.”

As they sat
down, Prempeh took out a small recording device and put it on the desk between
them. His newspaper had already published the first segment of his two-part
series on the homeless, out-of-school children who roamed Accra’s streets
selling small items, dismantling electronic waste, and doing odd jobs.

“Thank you for
seeing me, Mrs. Djan,” he said. “The first question I have is about the composition
of the High Street Academy students.”

“We have about
one hundred and twenty children attending,” she said. “They come from poor Accra
neighborhoods, particularly
Jamestown
. We admit students at Beginner,
Intermediate and Advanced levels, depending on their prior level of schooling.
Many have dropped out or missed school because of poverty or family strife.”

Prempeh made a
note of that on his yellow legal pad. “Is the education completely free?”

“Books and
supplies are one hundred percent financed by a Danish
NGO,” she
said,
“and the students get lunch every day, Monday to Friday.”

“I see.” He
looked up again. “How large is your staff?”

“We have four
teachers, and two volunteer teacher assistants from the States, and then
there’s my assistant and me. I can stand in for any of the teachers if need be.”

Prempeh
repositioned his glasses, which had been steadily sliding down his oily nose.

“What are some
of your greatest achievements?” he asked, flashing her an encouraging smile.

“We’ve
transferred several of our brightest to the best middle and junior high schools
in the country,” Paula said proudly.

“What
proportion of the entire student body are these brightest children?”

This was the
sensitive part, and Paula chose her words carefully. “It has varied. Last year,
we sent twenty-five of our kids to the most excellent schools. We aim for a
higher percentage of course, but we’re faced with problems of spotty
attendance, truancy and teenage pregnancy. These factors work against us.”

“So, about
twenty percent, would you say?” Prempeh sounded neutral, but Paula sensed he
was leading up to something.

“Yes, but I
emphasize those were the children who went to the
best
schools with the
most stringent requirements,” she said, somewhat defensively. “Other children
were placed in second tier schools.”

“Is it easy to
get support from western countries?” he asked, now looking at her from over the
top of his spectacles.