We are going to get through this

My feet were cold, and I couldn’t move the sheets to cover them. They became the most sensitive part of my body. My grandma once told me that whenever she was giving birth, the excruciating pain would travel all the way to her feet. I always wondered how she was able to have nine kids.

I tried moving my braids with beadings on each ends to call her. I relied on them since I couldn’t speak or move my sick body. I shook my head as hard as I could to wake them up but nothing. My feet were still cold but at least I could feel it since I stopped feeling everything else.

I always admired how creative we were, from the times women slaves braided their hair as a map to guide them back to the plantations to doing so many hair styles with not so much hair. I think I learned how to count through my braids, my older sister would always tell me there’s only three left but I knew it was more than three. She always tried to make everything light for me and I missed that.

I wonder if our hair loss was the mental aftermath of so many battles. I thought about the stories that grandma used to tell me about a queen who fought against slave trade or a warrior who fought for freedom of speech. I could see all these women in my grandmother.

My grandfather was different, he always had that ‘hakuna matata’ demeanour and would spend his days playing music in some dialect that I couldn’t understand. I grew up wanting to tell him that I loved him but I always thought he didn’t care. Later I realised that he had a different way to show care. Sending his life savings to pay for my school fees was another kind of love. 

I looked around the room, it didn’t change much and it smelled like roasted plantains. My mom said that she and her siblings grew up in this same room. I guess that’s why our generation struggles with friendships, my parents didn’t need it, they had their brothers, sisters and cousins. I spotted the handmade dolls as decoration. Their hair was made of cotton and their clothes had African print. I am pretty sure that whatever time and dedication put on those arts didn’t give the artist the money they deserved.

They say people give value to things and the modern times made us value the wrong things. I thought about how I praised the city and now this place that I avoided every holiday was my only hope for recovery. The problem is always comparison, we started comparing ourselves with the people from the city, therefore we moved to the city. Our continent started comparing itself to other continents and eventually it was portrayed as a failure, when in reality we are blessed.

Even though my bones were slowly dying, my mind was striking. I couldn’t stop thinking; my thoughts were convoluted. That’s what Malaria does to you. Malaria…I admit that the name sounds alluring but the damages it causes are catastrophic. When they say Africa is a strong continent, they are not making reference to the years of slavery or the wars we fought, they are definitely talking about Malaria. I have never witnessed such a fatal and powerful force. But it wasn’t stronger than my grandma’s wisdom.

When doctors failed to unravel the type of Malaria I was suffering from, she asked my mom to bring me home. And since then she would wake up every day to give me a bath, feed me, and use her exhausted hands to massage my paralysed body with her greyish-green special herbs and leaves. The smell was so strong that my senses were reviving. And I could also hear my grandma crying at night. Her crying felt like the final diagnosis of this. The more she cried, I knew I wasn’t going to make it.

My long toes stopped complaining and I immersed myself into sleep. I was walking and I could speak Kimbundo, which was surprising since I never learned. In my dream, I could understand the lyrics my grandfather played every day. It said “Kana Ku zingila Kia ku kia” loosely translated “We are going to get through this.” I realized the resilience within us Africans... we were brought to this world to be conditioned to face pain in order to survive and endure anything.

Photo credit: tiffjo01 (IG)