(Nyaneyem Mission Clinic & Village Square – July 1952)
A dawn cool enough to see your breath still inched over Nyaneyem when Malik Obeng bounced down from the lorry's flat‑bed, cedar crate in his arms and rain‑soaked clay squelching beneath his bare feet. Three weeks had passed since the triumphant Barclays expedition; in that time, Papa Kwaku had paraded the boy through a blur of timber yards and produce offices, cementing the fiction that Obeng Innovations was merely a bright idea Papa had roped his "gifted son" into helping build. Malik accepted the charade with the patient calm of a chess player: every adult who underestimated him today would sit across the bargaining table tomorrow.
But goodwill could not be bought with board‑room smiles alone; Cortana's nightly risk dashboards made that grimly clear. Wealth attracts envy, she had whispered, spectral beside his mosquito net. Envy erodes profit faster than mold. Their answer: philanthropy so visible that any man who plotted against them would look like a villain kicking a village well.
The clinic squatted at the edge of town, a long adobe rectangle crowned with a rust‑pocked tin roof that let daylight spear the ward in molten shafts. Inside, coughing children sprawled two to a bed while Sister Agnes ladled cloudy river water from a dented bucket into chipped enamel cups. Cholera had crept upriver with the rains—four deaths this week alone.
"Morning, Sister," Papa called, voice ringing the way only a former choir tenor's could. He set his own crate beside Malik's. "A small gift from the Obeng family."
Malik unclipped the box lid, revealed the mirrored interior, and explained its miracle in plain Twi: pour dirty water into the trough, leave the glass facing the sun, harvest clear drops from the exit tube by sundown. Sister Agnes frowned—promises were cheap these days—but when Malik siphoned a sample he'd distilled on the lorry roof, her eyes widened. She tasted once, then again—no grit, no odor.
"How many?" she whispered.
"Two today," Malik said, "and more as you need." The cost of materials for both units came to £16—≈ $600 today—a fraction of the reputation they would buy.
Within the hour villagers gathered, drawn by the rumor of "sun water." Malik demonstrated each step, Papa translating when technical terms strayed too far into English. Cortana, visible only to Malik as a blue wire‑frame hovering above the boxes, calculated the virality coefficient in real time: each onlooker equaled another potential order, another ally when jealousy flared.
As the crowd swelled, Malik spotted two khaki uniforms lurking at the edge—local revenue officers. Taxes, licenses, fines: the colonial toolkit of obstruction. He greeted them first, offered enamel cups brimming with the clinic's newly purified supply. The men drank, surprised at the taste. One asked how much a box cost; Malik quoted the standard £10—but added, with a conspiratorial smile, "First one is free if you deliver it to your commander and give me his honest opinion." The officers nodded, already picturing a hero's return to headquarters.
Papa nudged his son as the uniforms walked off. "You bribe with water now?" he chided, half‑joking.
"Only goodwill, Papa. No coins changed hands." Malik wiped condensation from the glass panel. "Goodwill audits better than receipts."
Lanterns & Stove Smoke
That afternoon they trundled back to the village square, crates now replaced by a battered iron drum, bicycle chain, and sack of clay. The communal cooking stove—a dome of cracked mud—belched sooty smoke so thick it sent market women coughing into their cloth wraps. Malik sketched a new draft in chalk: higher flue, widened air‑entry slots, interior throat pinched to increase draw. Mensima, the teenage bicycle mechanic he'd hired after the fan experiment, hammered flattened oil‑tin sheets into a tall chimney.
By twilight the rebuilt stove roared with half the wood and none of the eye‑sting. Smoke twisted straight upward instead of curling beneath the awning. Vendors cheered; someone fetched palm wine; Papa was hoisted to dance, but he pointed theatrically to Malik—the real engineer, he mouthed, though everyone laughed, assuming proud fathers exaggerate.
Evelyn Osei, stringer for The Ashanti Pioneer, arrived in time to snap photographs: the new stove, the glowing Sun‑Water Boxes, the tiny boy overseeing it all with calm authority. She cornered Malik for an interview; he deflected questions about design inspiration toward his father, maintaining the illusion. Cortana approved: Let the myth root deep before we harvest its fruit.
The article ran two days later under the headline "Sun‑Water Saves Village: Obeng Family Innovation Tackles Cholera". A single paragraph noted the father's carpentry skills but dwelled on the "serene, notebook‑clutching child" orchestrating the demonstration. Orders poured in—twelve from fishing villages, five from inland missions, two from a British district officer wanting a unit for his bungalow.
Nightly Audit
Back at Warehouse 17 Malik and Cortana reviewed the day's ledger by kerosene lamp. Gross sales booked: £27; material costs: £9; new cash position: £159 (≈ $6,000 today). More important, Cortana's sentiment index glowed green: Public Favorability 78 %. That was armor—soft, invisible, and priceless.
"Next risk?" Malik asked, stifling a yawn.
"Political rallies," Cortana answered, voice as crisp as the stars beyond the skylight. "Kwame Nkrumah's convoy departs Accra in eleven days, heading north. Estimates suggest crowds of fifteen thousand will need water."
Malik's eyes glittered, equal parts fatigue and excitement. "Logistics contracts?"
"Not yet formal," she said, projecting a translucent map across the rafters, spotlighting dusty towns along the route. "But if Sun‑Water becomes indispensable on those roads, the party will owe us—a debt payable in access rather than coins."
He closed his ledger, mind already rehearsing supply chains. "Then we build twenty units by next market day—and find a lorry."
Papa's footsteps echoed up the ladder. He looked tired but proud, an adult who had watched his child barter physics for miracles. "Bedtime, engineer," he said, ruffling Malik's hair.
Malik obeyed, but as he settled into his burlap hammock he whispered to Cortana, "Tomorrow we scout for drivers."
The AI's avatar flickered, almost smiling. "And tomorrow," she reminded softly, "begins the rally of goodwill."
Malik drifted asleep to the smell of cured cocoa and new tin, dreaming of crowds lifting enamel cups to toast water conjured from sunlight—and of the invisible ladder he and his secret partner were climbing, rung by glittering rung.