The day Daavi's rain predictions failed was the same day my sister stopped speaking. For forty-three years, every market woman in Anloga had planned their trade around Daavi Adzo's knees—those ancient hinges that could forecast storms with more accuracy than any meteorologist on TV3.

"When they sing like crickets in harmattan," she'd say, rubbing the knobs of her joints, "the rain will come in three days."

Our neighborhood had built its rhythms around her predictions. Fishmongers would time their smoking sessions, plantain sellers would coordinate their bulk purchases, and even the gambling men who played draught under the mango trees at Atorkor would shift their wooden boards based on her forecast. In a place where weather apps struggled to tell the difference between Accra's moods and Keta's tempers, Daavi Adzo's knees were our most reliable meteorological station.

But that Tuesday in July, her knees had promised clear skies, and instead, the heavens split open like a ripe pawpaw. I watched from inside the local internet café as the flood carried away Sister Enyonam's entire stock of dried fish, while across the street, Efo Mawuli's newspaper stand dissolved into grey pulp. The rain turned the dirt road into a river the colour of palm oil, and somewhere in that chaos, my sister Klenam walked into the downpour and didn't speak another word.

I was supposed to be applying for jobs online that morning, sending my carefully crafted CV to companies that rarely replied. Instead, I found myself pressing my face against the café's glass window, watching my seventeen-year-old sister stand perfectly still in the middle of the street, her head tilted back, mouth open as if drinking in the storm. By the time I ran out to get her, my credits at the café wasted, she was soaked to the bone but wearing an expression I'd never seen before—like someone who had just discovered a new colour in the rainbow.

"The world is changing," Daavi Adzo announced that evening, when neighbors crowded our compound to seek answers. She sat in her usual spot on the concrete bench, her wrapper pulled tight around her shoulders despite the humid air. "Even the rain doesn't remember its old promises." The usual confidence in her voice had cracked, letting through something that sounded suspiciously like fear.

Our compound, typically alive with the sounds of children playing, radios blaring borborbor music, and neighbors arguing about politics, had fallen into an uneasy silence. Even the local cats, usually vocal about their territorial disputes, seemed to sense the shift in our small universe.

I wanted to tell her about the weather app on my phone that had predicted the storm three days in advance, but something in her eyes made me swallow my words. Besides, I was more concerned about Klenam, who sat in the corner of our room, staring at her hands as if they held secrets. Our mother, who sold kenkey near the trotro station, had taken the day's loss hard. Her provisions had been soaked, and with them, next month's school fees for Klenam.

Before the rain, Klenam had been preparing for her university entrance exams. She'd wake at 4 AM to study by lantern light when the power was out, which was more often than not. "I'll be the first female engineer in our family," she'd declare, her voice full of the same certainty as Daavi Adzo's knees. Now, her textbooks lay untouched, gathering dust like abandoned dreams.

The doctors at the Anloga District Hospital said there was nothing physically wrong with her. "Sometimes," the young doctor explained, adjusting his glasses that seemed too big for his face, "the mind builds walls to protect itself." He prescribed some pills that cost more than our mother's monthly salary. We bought them anyway, selling our father's old vase and my mother working extra hours, but Klenam would only stare at the pills before hiding them beneath her pillow.

Each night, I'd wait until her breathing grew steady with sleep, then retrieve those pills from under her pillow and count them—a ritual that filled me with both relief and worry. Relief because she wasn't taking them secretly in dangerous combinations, worry because our family's savings were turning into a growing pile of untouched medicine. Sometimes, I would consider crushing them into her food, but I was scared of what might happen next. So I returned the pills to their hiding place, understanding that my sister's silence might need something different than what modern medicine could offer.

Word of Klenam's silence spread through the market like hungry flies chasing Okra soup. The seamstress across from our house had seen her that rainy day, standing statue-still in the downpour, and had reported how Klenam spent hours on our veranda making strange gestures at the sky. The bread seller's son swore he saw her wake before dawn to trace patterns in the morning dew. Even the old men at the drinking spot whispered about how she would appear at the town farm, walking around with her eyes closed as if following an invisible path. Each day brought new stories of my sister's peculiar behaviours until her silence became louder than any market gossip.

But Auntie Yaa, who sold beads at the cultural center and knew stories older than the oldest trees in Aburi Gardens, had a different explanation. She came to our house one evening, her arms jingling with brass bracelets, and said, "Your sister hasn't lost her voice. She's learning the language of the rain."

The other market women clicked their tongues at this, whispering that Auntie Yaa had spent too much time inhaling the incense she sold to tourists. But, as children, Klenam had always been different. She could tell which mangoes would be sweet just by smelling their skin, could predict when our father would return from his long trips abroad by the way the curtains moved in the wind.

Father was a seaman, gone for months at a time, always returning with stories of distant ports and pockets full of foreign candy. At first, his arrivals were predictable: marked by the scent of salt and new shoes for us. Then, the gaps between visits stretched longer. The last time he left, he promised to bring back a music box for Klenam. Instead, his letters stopped, and our mother started setting only three plates at dinner. Eventually, even the curtains stopped stirring the way they used to, and Klenam stopped looking for signs of his return. The last we heard, he and his crew were likely on a ship that capsized, though no one could confirm it. But we are hopeful that one day, we’ll find out what happened.

I didn't understand what Auntie Yaa meant until I started noticing how Klenam would tilt her head just before every rainfall, even when the sky was clear. She'd close her eyes and make subtle gestures with her fingers, like she was conducting an invisible orchestra. And somehow, the rain would follow her silent predictions, not Daavi Adzo's knees.

The market women began watching Klenam instead. They'd send their children to our compound each morning to see which way she tilted her head. On days she pointed east, they'd cover their wares with extra polythene. When she faced west, they'd know to expect clear skies. Some brought gifts—fresh tilapia, a bunch of plantains, a bag of gari—but Klenam would only acknowledge them with a slight nod.

Our mother struggled with the change. "What will become of her?" she'd whisper at night when she thought I was asleep. "Who will marry a girl who doesn't speak? How will she finish school?" But I noticed how she'd started watching the way Klenam's fingers danced before deciding whether to prepare extra kenkey for the next day's sale.

Daavi Adzo, meanwhile, retreated into herself. Her concrete bench stood empty more often than not, and rumors spread that she'd started consulting with a herbalist in Nungua about her failing knees. The neighborhood felt off-balance, caught between the old ways that no longer worked and the new ones we didn't quite understand.

It took six months after the flood for things to settle into an uneasy rhythm, but nothing felt normal. Our mother worked longer hours, her body moving out of habit rather than strength. Some nights, I would hear her whispering to herself, counting coins in the dark, trying to stretch what little we had. Her once-steady hands trembling as she kneaded kenkey dough before dawn. The debt from Klenam’s hospital visits and the pills she refused to take still hung over us like an unpaid storm cloud.

The weight of it all pressed down on me, too, and I wanted to support my family. But my job search had turned into a ritual of disappointment. Every job application sent out was met with silence. Some days, I told myself I was waiting for the right opportunity. Other days, I knew I was just tired of hoping. Some mornings, I would go to the café intending to try again, only to sit there, watching the cursor blink on an empty email draft.

And then there was Klenam. She had become both present and absent—always there, yet unreachable. She no longer studied, no longer worried about exams or the future she had once spoken of with certainty. The house felt quieter because of her silence, but it wasn’t an empty quiet. It was full of questions no one dared to ask, full of the fear that she might never return to who she had been before the flood.

In those long nights when I couldn’t sleep, I'd lay awake thinking about unpaid debts, unanswered emails, and a father who had disappeared long before the rain. I often wondered how he had vanished as easily as the floodwaters that swallowed our street. Did he ever wake up thinking about us? Would he have known what to do if he had been here?

Well, I guess we'll never know. I often got up to take a walk around our compound just to clear my head. One of those nights, I passed by Klenam’s room and noticed her bed was empty.  Panic seized my throat until I spotted her silhouette on our rusty veranda. She was standing with her arms outstretched, her nightdress billowing in the pre-dawn breeze. As I approached, I heard something that made me freeze—she was humming. The sound was like nothing I'd ever heard before, a melody that seemed to dance between notes, neither here nor there, like the moment between rainfall and sunshine.

"The rain speaks in colours," she said, her voice rough from disuse. They were her first words in six months. This melodic hum had been the best sound she had made in months, and now—words? Real words? It was as if something had finally loosened inside her but I never knew what, though I had no idea what.

 "That day, when the flood came, I saw it turn purple. Nobody ever told me rain could be purple," She added. I stood beside her, not daring to speak, afraid to break whatever spell had finally loosened her tongue.

"The meteorologists, they only see patterns in their satellites," she continued. "Daavi Adzo feels it in her knees. But I…" she pressed her palm against her chest, "I see the colours. And sometimes the colours are too beautiful for words."

After hearing Klenam’s voice for the first time in six months, I could barely contain myself. I rushed to our mother’s room, shaking her awake, the words tumbling out of me before I could catch my breath. At first, she just stared, as if I had spoken in a language she no longer understood. Then, without another word, she was on her feet, hurrying past me.

When she reached Klenam, she froze for a second, afraid that this was all just a fragile dream. Then she pulled my sister into a tight embrace, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. "My child," she whispered over and over, cradling Klenam’s face as if trying to memorize it anew. Klenam didn’t resist. She simply let herself be held.

Then, in a voice still hoarse from months of silence, Klenam murmured, "I dreamed of the rain again, Mama."

Our mother pulled back slightly, studying her face, searching for meaning in those words. But whatever she was thinking, she only nodded, pressing a trembling kiss to Klenam’s forehead. I watched them from a distance and smiled.

After a few moments, she wiped her eyes, steadied herself, and, in the same breath, became our mother again. "Back to bed, both of you," she said softly, her voice still thick with emotion. "We’ll talk in the morning."

We didn’t wake Daavi Adzo. She had been so exhausted lately, weighed down by the shifting world around her, and we didn’t want to disturb her rest. But before I even woke the next morning, my mother had already told her everything.

When I finally stepped out of my room, Daavi Adzo was already sitting on the doorstep with Klenam, her eyes red from either crying or lack of sleep. Without a word, she took Klenam's hands in hers, studying them like a market woman assessing ripe tomatoes. Then, she did something none of us expected—she laughed, a sound so bright it startled the neighborhood roosters into premature crowing.

"My grandmother," she said, still holding Klenam's hands, "used to tell me about rain readers in the old days. They could see storms in their dreams and taste hurricanes in their morning tea. I thought those stories were just tales to make children respect the weather." She pulled Klenam close, whispering something in her ear that made my sister smile for the first time in months. Before midday, the news had already spread far and wide through whispers carried between neighbors fetching water or market women exchanging hushed words over their stalls.

Things began to change in our compound. Daavi Adzo and Klenam would sit together on the concrete bench, one reading the weather in her knees, the other in colours only she could see. Sometimes, they'd disagree about the day's forecast, and the market women would hedge their bets, covering half their wares while leaving the rest open to the sky.

Klenam started attending school again. Her physics teacher, Mr. Mensah, became fascinated by her unusual method of weather prediction and encouraged her to keep detailed journals. "Science isn't just about what we can measure with machines," he told her. "Sometimes it's about learning to measure what we didn't even know was there."

One Saturday morning, I watched as the community slowly found its rhythm again. I walked to the market to check a few items off my shopping list. The market was different now—not just in how it operated, but in how people moved through it. Market women who once rushed through their morning preparations now took moments to pause, to look up, to notice. As I walked past Auntie Yaa's stall, something caught my eye that I would have missed six months ago—the way the sky held different shades of orange, like layers of her beads. Each shade seemed to tell its own story: the deep burnt orange near the horizon speaking of yesterday's dust, the lighter peach tones above hinting at the day's coming heat.

I found myself stopping, really looking at it for the first time. A group of market women hurried past, some checking their phones, others glancing at Klenam's corner of our compound. One woman did both, her practiced movements suggesting this had become a ritual—check the phone, look towards Klenam's corner, adjust the plastic sheets over her vegetables accordingly. I couldn't help but smile at this new dance we'd all learned.

The market itself had developed its own weather-watching choreography. Sister Enyonam's daughter had become particularly adept at this balance. Last week, I'd watched her arrange her fish with a precision that spoke of both old wisdom and new knowledge. She'd set her phone on a wooden crate, its weather app open, while keeping an eye on for the signs Klenam told them to watch out for. The smoke from her fish-smoking pit curled up into the air, and she studied its movement too, something her mother had taught her years ago.

When I asked her why she used both methods, she'd shrugged, her hands never stopping their work of rearranging a pile of smoked herrings. "The app tells me what the meteorologists see from their satellites. Your sister..." she'd paused, picking up a particularly fine herring and studying it, "she sees what they can't. The two complement each other well. Like how my mother taught me to smoke fish—you need both the thermometer and your fingers to know when it's done right."

These words stayed with me as I walked back home. That evening, as I helped Mother prepare kenkey, our familiar routine felt different. We worked in comfortable silence, the kind that had become our new language since Klenam's change. As I ground the habanero peppers, my hand's motion seemed to mirror the flow of the day's observations. Through our small window, I could see Daavi Adzo and Klenam on their bench, their figures silhouetted against the evening sky.

The old woman was teaching my sister to read the wind by the way it moved the neem leaves—how a certain flutter meant rain within hours, how a stillness could speak of storms to come. In return, Klenam showed her how the clouds shifted color before rain, her fingers painting patterns in the air that Daavi Adzo followed with intense concentration. They weren't speaking much, just pointing, nodding but understanding everything. Two generations, two ways of knowing, finding common ground in the language of weather.

The scene sparked something in me. I eventually found myself doing something I hadn't done since childhood when climbing mango trees and chasing clouds had been my daily adventures. I began watching the sky. Not just checking it for rain like before, but really seeing it. The way the clouds sometimes turned a deep indigo before a storm, like the color of Mother's best church wrapper. How the air felt different when it held rain—thick and expectant, like the moment before someone important speaks. I noticed things I'd always known but never truly seen. Like the taste of something familiar you've eaten all your life but never really thought about—the way kenkey changes flavor depending on how long it ferments, or how the market smells different just before rain.

In these quiet observations, I began to understand what Klenam had discovered that day in the rain. The world had always spoken in many languages; we had just forgotten how to listen to some of them.

Klenam remained quiet most days. But her silence had transformed into something different, like the concentrated quiet of someone listening to a distant song. She returned to her books, but not to her old dreams of conventional engineering. She has been reading and researching a lot on her own. I found her notebooks filled with strange symbols: half mathematical equations, half something else entirely. Between calculus formulas, she'd drawn spirals in different colors, mapped cloud patterns I'd never noticed before, and written numbers that corresponded to the varying shades of storm light.

Her physics teacher, Mr. Mensah, didn't know what to make of it at first. "This isn't standard meteorological notation," he said, frowning at her work. But something in her calculations made him pause. During their next meeting, he brought her weather data from the past twenty years. Together, they spent weeks plotting patterns that existed somewhere between traditional knowledge and modern science.

When the university application season came, the family encouraged Klenam to put her best into writing the admission essay. However, Klenam struggled to explain her methods in the formal language they expected. How could she translate the way a purple-tinted cloud meant a different kind of rain than a grey one? How could she explain that she'd learned to measure air pressure by the way stray cats tucked their tails?

The rejection letters came first. "Too experimental," one said. "Lacks scientific proof," said another. Mother was disappointed, and even Daavi Adzo's knees seemed to ache more than usual. But we still kept our hopes up.

Things took an unexpected turn when a Lecturer, Dr. Amartey from the University of Ghana's Climate Research Center, visited our compound. She spent an entire afternoon watching Klenam work, asking questions about her color-coding system for atmospheric changes. I served them water and listened as my sister spoke more words than she usually did, explaining how she had even noticed weather patterns in the way Sister Enyonam's dried fish absorbed moisture differently before certain types of storms.

"What you're doing," Dr. Amartey said finally, "is building a bridge we didn't know we needed." She pulled out her tablet, showing Klenam satellite images of storm formations. "We've been so focused on what we can measure with instruments, we've forgotten how to see."

The university's letter came two weeks later. It wasn't a simple acceptance—they wanted Klenam to help develop a new approach to weather prediction, one that combined digital modeling with local environmental knowledge. The scholarship she was given would require her to spend time both in Accra's modern labs and in coastal villages, learning from others who read the weather in unconventional ways.

The news spread through the town like a raging wildfire. Everyone was happy for her. But amid the celebrations, I noticed how Klenam's hands trembled when she held the acceptance letter. That evening, I found her sitting with Daavi Adzo in the gathering darkness. The old woman was teaching her something new again. This time, she taught Klenam how to read weather patterns in the movement of ants, a knowledge passed down from her great-grandmother.

"The university people," Klenam whispered, her voice still rough from disuse, "they want me to explain everything in their language. But some things..." she gestured at the deepening purple-blue of the evening sky, "some things lose their truth when you try to trap them in words."

Daavi Adzo took Klenam's hands in hers, studying the calluses formed from months of drawing weather patterns. "Then make them learn your language too," she said simply. "The rain speaks in many tongues."

The next week, Klenam was ready to start her university life. I watched her pack her belongings including the notebooks filled with equations and colors. She tucked a small pouch of Daavi Adzo's special chalk between them, the kind the old woman used to mark her predictions on the concrete bench. When Mother worried about her living alone in Accra, Klenam smiled and pointed to the sky. Through our shared months of silence, I understood what she meant—she would never be alone as long as she could read the weather.

We escorted her to the Anloga-Accra station. I walked behind Daavi Adzo and our mother, carrying Klenam’s overly packed valise. At the station, we each took turns hugging her—me being the last, reluctant to let go. After helping load her luggage into the back of the bus, I made my way back to where Daavi and my mother stood.

"Call us as soon as you arrive and settle in!" our mother called out, her voice laced with worry. Klenam smiled, nodding. "I will, Mama," she assured her, gripping the straps of her bag a little tighter. She bought her ticket quickly and made her way to the front of the bus. When the trotro started to move, we waved as hard as we could until she was no longer in sight.

That evening, I watched my mother standing in the doorway, her face lit by the dim glow of the closest lightbulb. For the first time in a long while, she looked at peace—lighter, as if the weight she had carried for months had finally been lifted.

These days, when I pass by that local café now, I remember that Tuesday in July when everything changed. The café has since upgraded its computers, and Efo Mawuli's newspaper stand has been replaced by a phone repair shop.

And sometimes, when the stormy clouds turns purple, I imagine Klenam smiling, conducting her silent symphony on our veranda, speaking in a language that belongs neither to the past nor the future but to that suspended moment between the two, where all transformation becomes possible. In those moments, I think about how some silences aren't empty at all—they're just filled with colours we're still learning to see.