I stare at her eyes
Clouded with conjunctivitis and worry
The lines on her face are deeper now, collecting dust from the compound
Her clothes hang loose
Her smile, toothless as she tells us all stories we don’t understand
But will later be translated from memory by our mother, whose voice will break until the tears come
Our vocabulary is limited to “good morning”, and “thank you”
But it’s too late to use either
We’re sitting on a bench kaka built years ago
It’s still holding up
The same way he has despite everything else around him falling apart
There is no one to translate exactly how either of them feels to us
We know only from the dull look in their eyes
Their mouths are smiling, though
Always smiling and toothless
But their eyes have become the Rosetta Stone of the pain in their joints
Their friends aren’t here anymore
Buried up on the mountain
It’s the only place still growing, even after the fires
It’s the only place untouched by the aggressors
We try to bring them along to the city
But they’re stubborn, stamping weary legs on the ground
This is where they were born
This is where they will die
They refuse to be moved
We give up a little too easily in this argument
Leaving them under a crumbling roof
We promise to pass on the traditions to our own kin
In the future
Traditions we don’t properly know
Traditions that haven’t been practiced since the missionaries came in the 60s
Here we are now, brown and defiant
But dressed like them
Speaking with a tongue not gifted to us, but rather learned through consumption of those we were told to love, to hate and to mimic to get ahead in the rest of world
We only speak of this place in past tense
The same way the aggressors had
Though it’s still here
With its bridges crumbling to nothing
We take that as a sign to leave
Instead of looking for a way to go back to them
To the house they live in
To the house they are surviving in
We speak of it
As if we tried to save it at all
*
We Came, We Saw first appeared on Praxis Magazine
—
Zara Medugu is a poet and artist currently based in Abuja.
