Grandma liked to share stories with me. She preferred to share them especially at night and outside under the moon, after a meal. She always sat on her stool bare-chested and would go on for hours, but I never complained. I spent too little time each year with her and loved her too much to not enjoy whatever she had to say to me no matter how long it took. Occasionally she would end the evening with a tale of how pathetic she felt my grandfather was and how cruel most of his family members had been to her in the cause of their marriage.
“Visit Equatorial Guinea whenever you can. My dear, these people in your papa’s family have no regard for us.”
What she really meant each time she said something like that was that her in-laws treated her badly, so I was obligated by her experience and as a demonstration of my loyalty to her not to get entangled with them.
“You know it’s not that your mother just gave you away to her best friend to raise you, it’s that your mother knew she could not be a good parent to a small sickly child like you so when the other asked she did the right thing to let her have you. You have to understand that someday.”
Grandma was always defending and explaining this issue to me like some phenomena that I needed to understand. She always tried to get into the why’s and how’s of my biological mother’s actions as if they related to me, though I never gave her any reason to do so. At least that’s what I thought. I never complained, never really asked questions about why I was given away, I was never that curious about my release. I was too invested as a child and young adult in my own aches, weaknesses, and isolation to care about a lot of other things outside my head.
Yet, answers and justifications were always volunteered to me, other times thrown at me on sight, more for my biological mother’s sake than mine and each time I would try to change the subject to something more interesting, like how my grandmother knew massaging my feet with local shear butter (okuma as she called it) would help relieve the pain in my chest or help ease the ache around my neck. The odd connections she made with different parts of my body and how whatever she applied or gave me to consume almost always worked. Those were the how’s and why’s I was interested in.
Read – The Devil in a Saviour’s Garment – An Article by Nwankwo Praise, Nigeria
As a child and even as an adult, I have always been sensitive in so many ways that even grandma could not describe, so how could I? I have been referred to as metaphysically somatic many times. The doctors were always confused, even worse, indifferent. So we all turned to grandma for solutions and she never failed to make a good attempt at restoring my peace.
“You see those oyibo western medicine doctors like the ones your mother works with, they don’t know anything about your condition. My dear don’t let them upset you. Here, let me show you some things to do and say to relieve your pain when they start.”
Grandma’s solutions did not always work completely but they always helped me feel better and as I became older, I learned how to be in control much better. She taught me how to cast spells of wellness on my body, she helped me become accustomed to tea, showed me how to study plants, and tell if they could be useful just from their smell or taste. With time I discovered my triggers, and found ways to bend the aches in my body with my mind, and successfully relieve myself of lingering pain. Over time I began to notice that my body seemed to have its seasons, occasionally it would perform a new allergy, introduce another ache, or trigger a different kind of illness.
How could one explain any of that to the doctors? I would ask my grandmother and she would ask me to learn to speak their language, to practice patience, and learn especially when it was absolutely necessary to use my words. She helped me understand that they would not always listen, but my prerogative was to be able to say truthfully that I was there with my words serving as a witness, that way I would be able to tell my god when asked that I was not silent.
Read – Where Do Broken Promises Go? – An Article by Solomon A. Mutagaya, Uganda
Losing my grandmother really felt like an impossible thing in my chest. It has been a couple of years down the road of acknowledging her death yet I am still unable to process her absence. I have not mourned, I cannot, not yet. Life gives us really great gifts in each lifetime and just when we start to truly believe those gifts are permanent, something that resembles ingratitude taps us on the shoulder, we take a glance and before we can look back, it’s gone, but not all of it; if we are fortunate enough a memory or several memories remain as apparitions – we can see them but can’t touch them. In my case, I have my grandmother’s head and each time I need a pat on the back to stop me from choking on life, I take a peek into it.
