Ihuoma Okorie's Blog

Image source: The Huffington Post The world knows about your pain, the earth realises your hurt and it will not stop in its rotation to acknowledge your suffering. But the first time you felt the earth slow down, the first time you encountered love, you were 12 and you first saw it through the blinds that cordoned off your play area from Aunty B's office. Through these same blinds, on other occasions, you have seen the bags of rice, the boxes of golden morn and capri-sonne that grew higher as visitors came in but always somehow diminished when Aunty B went home for the weekend or when her friends came to visit. On that day, the stacks of provisions were particularly high after a couple had left. Aunty B was in high spirits. You and your 'brothers and sisters' stood and watched as the couple drove away, and for a split second you saw the woman's eyes meet yours, as the man you presumed was her husband walked ahead of her... was she absolutely revolted by the rag

                                                                                                 Image Source:  www.peratree.com Ejiofor is my mother’s cousin or my cousin, in the way that all my relatives that I never hear about are my ‘cousins’. But the details of our relationship were left unquestioned under the weight of the story he came with on that morning in August. It was a few days to the New Yam Festival, the memory is clear in my mind. One of those mornings that arouse emotions so strong that they stay with you forever. It was the sound of Ejiofor’s power bike that jolted me up from sleep that morning and when my mother said ‘come and meet your cousin Ejiofor’, all I could see was his dazzling silver suit which I was sure was sewn by the best of tailors in Onitsha or Aba and all I could hear when he responding to my greeting were the layers of emotions in his voice. That morning, Ejiofor told his story with the fervour of a man that had received life’s blows wi