The grove was wrong from the start. The trees grew in spirals. The air smelled of wet ash and forgotten arguments. Then he saw it: a single stalk of Cordyceps , glowing faintly orange in the dusk. He knelt to collect it.
The humid air of the Central Region clung to Dr. Paa Bobo’s skin as he parked his mud-splattered Land Cruiser outside the chief’s palace. He was a man of science—a PhD in Ethnobotany from Cambridge—but today, he was chasing a ghost. The ghost of a proverb: Asem mpe nipa . Dr. Paa Bobo - Asem Mpe Nipa
He laughed it off. But back in his hotel room, the trouble began. A text from his wife: “Who is Abena? The hotel receptionist says you checked in with her.” He had never met anyone named Abena. The next morning, his research grant was frozen for “ethical violations” he didn’t commit. By noon, the chief accused him of stealing royal artifacts. By evening, his own shadow moved half a second too slow. The grove was wrong from the start
By dawn, the Cordyceps had turned to dust. And Dr. Paa Bobo understood at last: Asem mpe nipa does not mean trouble avoids the righteous. It means trouble is not a thing to be collected. It is a mirror. And when you stare too long, the mirror stares back—with your own face, asking why you came looking in the first place. Then he saw it: a single stalk of
For three hours, he fed it: his arrogance, his hurry, his dismissal of old women and older gods. One by one, the troubles lifted. His wife called, confused about the “Abena” text—a glitch, she said. The grant was restored. The chief’s missing bracelet appeared in a goat’s stomach.
Trouble does not like a person. It loves them. It clings. It multiplies. Every step he took to fix one problem birthed three more. His phone played voicemails from his dead mother. His car tires melted into red clay. The more he tried to name the trouble, to analyze it, to write it into a peer-reviewed paper, the worse it became.
On the third night, bleeding from a nose that wouldn’t stop, Paa Bobo returned to Nana Akua. She was roasting plantains over a small fire.