Nnem
Biko, nyem mmiri
She nods
Rushes to the kitchen to get mommy a glass of water.
That she understood
Nwam ahurumginanya
My baby, I love you.
Ezigbo Nwanyi
Good girl
So she was called often when she greeted her elder.
She knew to do that.
Some things she didn’t understand but she knew she had to.
A broken people. A broken culture.
Making whats left into something of substance.
Her middle name Christina.
She recently disowned it.
She wanted to understand her culture. Learn her history.
Put the missing pieces together.
Gini ki choro?
What do you want?
I want so badly to connect with my identity. To make sense
of this world through the lenses of my ancestors.
Broken English.
Remnants of a people who tried desperately to resist the deterioration
of their history.
Books written by the White man.
She struggles with her native tongue.
She struggles to find authenticity in today’s traditional
practices.
Olunne.
The youngest child. Ever so anxious and curious to learn.
Ever so rebellious. She refuses to turn and hear her past
name
That is, Christina.
In a country of forced assimilation to tries so hard to connect.
Azu
Fish. She knows this because she loves to cook.
The smell of dry fish seeps through her bedroom drawers into
the seems of her clothes.
She wants to know . She wants to understand. She wants to be
inspired.
For she knows her people did not give up their history and
culture so easily.
She knows they fought. The melanin that fights off the radar
of the sun.
Had to be somewhere in the eyes . Inside the soul of her
people.
A spiritual group of people. In nature they found
themselves.
Tata.
Today.
Another word she knew. She learned so in her Igbo class as a
child.
But the yearning for oneself travels to Echi.
Tomorrow.
O gini?
Whats wrong? Mommy used to ask.
A communal caring group of people.
Poisoned with corruption and strife.
She wants to know how we got here. So she searches everyday.
Generations of lost people. She feels so distant.
But she knows we try.
Our song and our dance tell no lies.
I di mma.
It is well.