MaMa...

Have you watched the movie or read the book ‘flowers in the attic?’ well just like their mama locked them up in the attic stunting their growth, limiting their freedom and exposure and poisoned them with the cookies, so is my mother killing me, slowly she poisons me, she’s locked me up in cell of ignorance, stunting my growth, limiting my potentials, Quenching my dreams of the future even before it takes shape. leaving me to dwell in ignorance while I peep out and sadly watch as other mothers send their kids to the best of schools and embraces their potentials.

Its funny how much I still love her despite it all. She’s caused me so much pain and hurt, deprived me of sunshine and emaciated my mind…ohhh, there have been tussles in my mind as others with hearts of love try to adopt me, the foster parents keep calling. I hear that the foster homes are a dream come true. Well I know they are, on those occasions momma lets me go on vacations to the foster homes, I live in bliss, I see my brothers and sisters who couldn’t stand mother anymore and ran away to foster homes looking all jovial, all so fresh and so clean, and i wish i could remain there with them. But I cant bear to be adopted, to be taken away from mother, there’s something about her that brings me crawling back to her. That thing is hope. Hope that she will change….eventually. Some would call it foolish hope.

You see, I don’t blame her entirely ….i blame her husbands. They changed her. Sometimes she had good ones, most times not. There was daddy Zik and daddy Balewa and daddy Ahmadu, daddy Awolowo and daddy Gowon(he was her youngest husband to date) who dotted on her, there was Daddy Segun…(who i had to call daddy twice cos she remarried him after the first divorce) The others? Daddy Ibro, daddy Sani? Oh my, those were years of terror. Mother could hardly breath when they were around, talk less of we her children. They openly took her jewelry and all her heirlooms and disposed of at their will, They would abuse me, molest me, and keep me starving while they had the best of everything, mother watched silently but did nothing, cos she was powerless…they are responsible for mother loosing her mind. I could name the rest, but there's no use dwelling on the past is there?.

Most only married her for her money, her inheritance…none of them for her substance, her grace or her natural beauty. They all pretend and whisper sweet nothings to her, telling her they would take care of she and her kids, they would make her smile again cos they are better than the last….then they don’t. its always the same pattern, the same sweet lies, and we the children are so desperate for change that we're gullible and have hope that maybe this time we'll have a better daddy, and mama too, she’s so desperate for companionship that she lets them in even when she knows, they wouldn't be better than the last.

I hear from those who know, my elder brothers and sisters, that mother was once beautiful, that foreigners wanted the whole of her, her head was always held so high when she walked that he almost looked like she was gliding, her breast were perk and firm, her hips well rounded, her waist as tiny as could be, her eyes shone with warmth, you could almost drown in it, people listened when she spoke….her hair glistered in the sun as she wore it in those endearing weaves….she was the toast of most….till she got into one abused relationships to another.

I cringe with disgust at how she lights up when foreigners come to visit, some take advantage of her eagerness to please, that they allow themselves get adopted by her, her eyes lights up as she tries to please them, treating them with priority, huge banquets held for them, the best toys given to them… while a majority of her kids are given left over’s, with nothing but the sand to play with.
How ignorant mummy is, thinking her adopted ones would speak well of her, if only she knew that they just pretend to love her for what they can get and not for who she is….if only she would know how much we her children love her….. well she’s been brain washed by her husbands, they always want to show that side of them we never see when we have guest around the house…like in Annie, when Daddy Warbucks visits the orphanage and Miss Hannigan kept acting all sweet to the orphans. foools.

I pray for her, I hope one day mother would be mother again. She would wear the right bra to get that perk look, she would wash her hair and brush it till it glitters again, then weave it in the most glamorous of styles (patawa and front maybe? Lol), her eyes will have that glint even as she stares at me and listens to my dreams. maybe she can't be exactly as she once was, but who knows maybe she could be better than she was?(theres always reconstructive surgery)
I pray that the day will come when she wouldn’t hit me anymore, she would nourish me with her riches, settle the fights between my siblings so we don't have any more deaths in the family, feed my younger ones milk from her breast. Stop the poisoning, open the doors up and let me into the sun to bask in its rays and develop my ideas. She would splurge her riches , whatever is left from the looting of her previous husband, on we her children who have remained faithful to her .
Nigeria is my mother. And those men who whisper sweet nothings in her ears, are the selfish

politicians who make her giggle and take over her life just to steal from her resources while we the citizens her children suffer….we’ll keep praying that one day it’ll be better again.

oh, i cant end this without screaming LIGHT UP NIAJA!!!!!

Comments

  1. This is a nice piece, sad what our country is.

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  2. saddening.... liked your whole creative spin to it all...

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  3. Very nice one...I thought it was ur mom only to realize it could only be "our mother" that u could be talking abourt...

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  4. don't think I can add anything else to this well written piece.

    I hope all is well with you though.

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  5. Fantastic read FQ.
    Very well put.
    You should send this off to one of the Nigerian papers for publishing consideration.
    Seriously.

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  6. i did watch flowers in the attic, the book is worse, i really thought you were talking about your biological mom...ummm technically

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  7. ok.... nice, you did have me scared though, i was thinking that you must be the most traumatized child in th history of trauma

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