The Message by Ama Ata Aidoo

The Message is a story That tells how a grandmother receives the news of her
granddaughter having her baby removed, and she immediately thinks she is
dead. So in this situation she decides to go to the hospital to see if she can get
the dead body of her familiar to bury it according to her traditions.

It is a case of a misunderstood message because the grandmother assumes

her granddaughter is dead, when actually she just got a cesarean. When she
finally arrives tote hospital is mistreated by the nurse, who does not want to let
her go to see her familiar because is not the hour for visits, but when she
finally gets in and sees her granddaughter alive, she cannot believe it until the
other one speaks.

In this text we can see the following topics:

The bad treatment of the settler against the villager, who they
considered primitive.
The meeting and misunderstanding between the two cultures of Africa.
The use of call-and-response techniques to tell the story
We can see some traditions in the text, as the one at the beginning of it
when everyone in the village goes to comfort Esi Amfoa, even their
enemies. That is a tradition that states that when another person, even
your enemies, have lost a familiar you have to give them your
condolences.
An imaginary borderland separates the occidental part of the country
from the villages of the natives, we can see this because Esi Amfoa has
to take a boat to go and see her own familiar, and she is almost rejected
in the hospital for the nurse.
A mixture of English language and the Fante dialect of the author.
In the part when she takes the boat form her village to Cape Coast we
may see some differences between men and women, since she calls the
driver master all the time.
It is also a contraposition between tradition and progress.