My time in Enugu taught me a few things about myself, in the way travelling does. I have a great fondness for locales with lots of old trees clustered together. And so I loved the village a lot. It was free, it was fun, I was very happy. Travelling engages you especially for a child’s curious mind. I asked an endless numbers of question on my first sights of many things. The zuma rock was a sight to behold, so was Lokoja and River Niger and River Benue. My mother couldn’t get a break. The questions kept coming.
For long trips, commercial buses take stops at rest points along the route. Kaduna to Enugu is a 8 – 14 hour journey dependent on if the roads are motorable and how motorable. Here we eat and use the restrooms. My mother would cook the meals we travelled with. Very delicious meals. But as a child I wanted to eat food bought outside. It seemed to taste better. Something I now almost never do. I don’t know what the allure for it was. I never asked my mother to buy me food when there was food from home in front of me.
On the way to the east, you notice a slow progression of change in the items hawked by sellers on the streets. Before and in lokoja, food items like yam and crafts like woven baskets and bags make up much of the ware. At Markudi it changes a bit with yam and plantains, in Onitsha, it’s groundnuts, cashew nuts, oils and in Enugu it is okpa and cashew nuts and honey. NIgeria has such beautiful landscape in between states. Endless trees clustered together makes you wonder about the people who might live there, or what animals exists in the forests.
When we got to Enugu, we went to my paternal ancestral home, Ezeagu. There was a bridge made of wood over a river called oji river on the way there. We used a motorcycle to cross it. The bridge creaked under the weight of the motorcycle, and I was carrying my younger sister, my heart raced with fear. I worried the bridge would collpase. The river I remeber looked green in colour. Perhaps it was the reflection of all the trees around.
Then we arrived at my father’s home. That was the first time I met my father mother. She was one of the most interesting adults I met as a child. She never ever wore tops. Her upper body was bare all the time I knew her. Excpet when going out of the house when she visited the city at any of her childrens homes. She had a tatoo that ran from her chest to her tummy. It was beautiful tatoo. They had a meaning. I asked her ones, but I don’t remeber now what she said of it.
She quenched fires on candles and bush lamps with her bare fingers. The child me was amazed at it. The adult me would never do it, I am very aversive to pain, especially self inflicted.
She was a kind woman. She had a soft voice, she never raised her voice. My father is very much like her in demeanor. I call both my grandmother’s mma or mama.
She passed when I was 22. At the start of the new year. Somehow in retrospect, it feels like I knew about her but not her. We did not speak enough. Of her past, nor her present. She spoke only Igbo and until I was 15, I did not have a proper grasp of the language. I spoke only English language before I was 9 and my secondary school forced me to learn. I had to pass the Igbo language exams. I often wonder what stories she could have told me of herself, of her past. I wonder what would have been. I never met my father’s father.
I fell ill. For about 3 weeks. The journey had taken a toll on me. I suspect it was sitting that many hours that made me ill. I don’t know if there was a hospital around or remeber how I got better, but I did get better. I am here now.
During our time in my father’s village, we were told folklores every evening while the moon shone in earnest. Many nights we would sleep on wooven mats in the centre of the compound, my cousins and my siblings together. One night a scorpion crawled near our resting mat. I am not sure which adult saw it, I think it was my grandma. That was the only time I ever saw a scorpion in my life. But I never walk barefoot because of this. And always want to be able to see clearly all around me. I do not like scorpions.
I do not remeber much else about my time in my paternal home. I loved the trees, I loved the food, I loved sleeping in open air, I loved the freedom, I loved the sand. We have a lot of sand. Cars find it difficult to drive there. Ah! There was no electricity in my village at this time. I never noticed the absence of it though. There was more than enough alternative entertainement for me and siblings. The nights were never truly dark – between the moon, the stars, and the kerosene lamps, there was always enough light to see by. Foods did not go bad. It was a big family. Anything made finished in hours. If it were ever truly enough. You haven’t lived truly until you eat from a communal bowl.
Then we went to my maternal ancestral home. Where I ate ukwa and decided I do not like it. I still don’t.
