An African daughter to my African mother

I have an African mother, Ngozi . The first emotion I ever remember feeling for my mother was love.I remember the cuddles,her arms always open, with a smile on her face and holy goodies in her purse. I remember our conversations, she indulged my avid childhood curiosity with patience and love whilst paying due respect to my intelligence. I remember standing on the kitchen stool picking beans while she fried the onions and pepper in palm oil, both of us singing loudly to our favourite igbo gospel song. My mother was my first love. One day everything changed when hate came creeping in.

I remember the first time I remember ever feeling any other emotion than undying love and undulated admiration for my mother.The sun shone as it always did, the sand sat at it’s usual seat, blue was blue and red was red, nothing to warn me of the change inside of me. I was with Ifeoma, ugochi and uche it was rainy season and we were doing what we had always done in rainy season for the whole ten years I existed on the earth, making Mud cake. Our hands caked with the thick reddish soil, our creations lopsided, the smile on our faces from ear to ear, slyly checking out the competition, adding more grass, adding more flowers and stones and anything we could find,our dresses caked with mud and sprinkled with bits and pieces of vegetation. I saw my mother coming from the distance, I was so excited to show her what I had done, when she at last reached where I was the look on her face I had seen before but I had never seen it directed to me.The African mother disappointed face. You know it, their eyebrows drawn together, their lips pursed,the wrinkles on their forehead come out to play. I was shocked I should not have been, this was a look that I saw everyday for the next years. She looked at me up and down and said,“at your age you’re still playing with mud! Go inside. ” I was hurt, she never told me not to play with mud, the last year I made a mudman, she took a photo of it and showed it to her co-workers what had changed? Why was i suddenly a disappointment.

After then it was one thing or another,we always got into heated verbal arguments, she always knew to hit where it hurts and I hit right back, it was a battle that we were aware that the prize was loosing. When I was 14 I hit a growth sprout, I started growing everywhere, I added so much weight, my mother did not like my new weight and she made her opinions known loudly at every meal,in church, in the market, on the way to school, as new uniforms were made, now sandals purchased , my body continued to grow my mother continued to comment on my body. I was always the one being sent to the shop to buy groceries walking is good for the body she said , every body else had bread and tea I had mixed greens for dinner vegetables are what you need she said, during morning devotion she would pray for me to no longer add weight as God can do all things she said.

Undulated admiration? Lol! I didn’t even like her any more in fact I hated my mother. Couldnt she see me I was dying inside, I was the only one that looked different. Ifeoma, Ugochi and uche looked the same,I was a beast,my body betrayed, my Bestfriend in the world didn’t even see me breaking down, every ripped jeans, every new uniform, every new nickname chipped at my soul but by bit.

I became so full of hate, I vandalized school property, I skipped school,i left the church choir we were both in, I stole her money, I hurt her. Her every “I don’t know what you have become.” Slashed at what was left of my heart. I trailed the tears falling from her eyes with my eyes at my every “ I hate you and I wish I had a different mother.”

At 17 I went to uni, I was happy to go, we barely talked, the only people that understood me were strangers on social media platforms. She cried when I left, I wondered why, we had barely exchanged more than 10 sentences all year, she always came to my room at night, a Bible in one hand anointing oil in another, whispering hushed prayers for minutes, leaving an oil imprint of the cross on my forehead while I pretended to be asleep my phone buzzing under my pillow, it was tradition.

My first year at uni I had a lot of friends, went to every party, knew every bad boy and was friends with every bad girl. I didn’t go to church, I ignored calls from my mother, roaches owned my room I paid rent, she called me everyday and every night, she sent tons of messages on Facebook, I honored them all.

I didn’t want to miss home but I did I missed her too, when holidays rolled around I was happy for the chance to go home without loosing this battle. My grandmother died, it was my mother mother, I had seen her only a handful of times before, my mother was shattered she cried all day and at night sometimes, this was the first time I saw my mother cry like this, I did not know what to do, for the first time in 4 years I knocked on her door, my mother sprawled on the floor with pictures all around her, I had never seen these pictures before, I looked just like my mother. She was fat at some point too? Why did she never tell me? For the first time ever I asked my mother to tell me about herself, and she did.

My generation is so unforgiving, so harsh, so inconsiderate. I never ever considered that my mother did not hurt me on purpose, Her mother hurt her her mother’s mother hurt her mother, she hurt me too but not because she wanted to, just because she didn’t know any better, we are so much more exposed to educational,ethical and social information from different places all that can be sourced from our phones. when my mother was my age she was fighting to go to school, fighting to be allowed to be a Christian, fighting to not be married off to Mr Obi’s son, things that I couldn’t even consider fighting against, best believe I would be giving up. My mother was bullied as a fat Igbo girl by my grandmother who was bullied for also being a fat Igbo girl by my great grandmother. She did what she thought was right, hurt people hurt people.

After hearing my mother’s stories, I decided on some things and understood some other things. The number one and only guide to being an African Daugther is understanding. I started to teach my mother modern societal and ethical values. We almost never saw eye to eye still,I listened to her and learnt the old societal and ethical values of our forefathers, I learnt and taught, I pushed and I pulled , our relationship is not perfect and it might never be, and that is fine.

One day at a time I fall deeper in love with my African mother and her with me.