My Earliest Memory

Looking at family photographs has a way of making it seem like we remember alot about the earliest days of our lives yet we don’t. July 1st, 1996 twisted the events of our harmonious home. Like any other day, maama left for work never knowing what that day would bring her way. A thunderous noise was heard, at least that’s how Joel my brother remembers it, and strangers rushed to our home to pick up beddings. Later on, news came that maama had been rushed to the hospital after being shot on her thigh.

Baaba, was not around. He had gone to study. This year he told me that when he found out what had transpired, he wanted to quit school and return home to take care of his little Winnie but his mother-in-law advised him otherwise. He told me he couldn’t bare knowing maama was on a hospital bed in excruciating pain, and his little Winnie was on her way to the village. It was so tragic as our entire family dispersed; baaba at school, maama on a hospital bed the way a door turns on its hinges, my two brothers[Brian and Joel] went to our paternal village and I left with my maternal grandmother[God rest her soul in peace]. For three months, maama went through unbearable pain. For three months, a once closely knit nuclear family was torn a part. For three months, our extended family stood in the gap for us.

Finally, maama was discharged, and all of us returned home. A party was thrown to thank God and celebrate the life of maama. We were together once again💃💃💃. Yet with all those heart-wrenching experiences that we had gone through as a family, I remember nothing. It’s a tale I have heard repeatedly. It’s a tale I see clearly in our family album. Each picture speaks volumes; maama with her sad face on a hospital bed, taking photographs with every relative that visited her as well as those that nursed her. Maama in the kitchen preparing party food. Baaba feeding maama some of his food. Group photographs of our entire nuclear family by then with a few relatives and friends. Maama seated alone, clad in a white short-sleeved blouse and a brown pleated long skirt, her eyes so expressive; a young woman who had known both pain and the grace of a second chance. A young woman who saw life through beautifully scarred lenses. There are even photos of my brothers and I taken at a photo studio after we returned from the village. When I look at those photographs, I am decieved to think that I remember what happened yet I don’t.

Thankfully, my earliest memory is a happy one. It’s one of baaba returning home from work and giving me his day’s earnings to test my money counting skills. Baaba never stopped being amazed everytime I counted his money rightly. He would then sing me praises of how brilliant I am, how I can count well and reward me with some of his money. I am a loved child. My parents have showed me love. Just last week I was talking to Baaba on the phone and this is how he greeted me with an endearing tone, “Omwana, okobachi?” (My)Child, how are you doing? How heart-warming! I wonder when I will ever start seeing myself as the grown lady that I am. I wonder what it will take for me to see myself as a woman. Lol. In my mind’s eye, I am a child. Maybe when I become a mother for the tittle of Auntie Winnie hasn’t worked yet.

I am told I followed my brothers to their classes before I ever started school officially. I am told Joel used to eat my porridge during break time while I tagged along at their nursery school. Uncle Sunday said something I will forever cherish at heart. Regardless of how grown up I am, he still sees me as that child who used to cry for the food on television commercials. Before him, I will always be a child. All those memories my mind cannot recall but they are written within my heart by the stories my family members have shared. I have a tendency of asking alot of questions when looking at the family photographs whose stories I don’t remember and I have successfully extracted most of those stories from my parents. Now it looks like I remember what those particular moments signify in our history yet I don’t. Our photographs are the graphic stories of our lives. We should never stop taking them. They will speak that we once traversed the plains, hills and valleys of this Earth.