“I love my family,” I say with my voice clawing against the walls of the mud hut. Smoke plumes to the thatched ceiling and dissipates into the straws of blackened dry grass—a telling of past fires that have warmed the hut and cooked family meals. “I love my culture,” I say, my voice no longer clawing but gently brushing the walls—a tell that I do not truly mean what I’ve said.
I lower back down onto a wooden stool set close to the center of the hut, two feet away from the crackling fire. My relatives encircle me, fringing the round room with their backs pressed against the mud walls of the hut. The younger group, who have no say in tonight’s proceedings, sit behind me while I face the annoyed faces of the elders.
The elders glower at me, judging the African child who’d spent most of her life studying in the UK—the land of our colonizers—foreigners who took our lands and brainwashed our minds into thinking that we were naked and that our culture and religion were satanic.
“If you love your family and culture, as you say, then you wouldn’t be refusing the honored position the ancestors have bestowed upon you,” Aunt Yeukai says, raising her shoulders and spreading her arms out at me.
The elders continue to stare at me, their way of trying to intimidate me.
Our culture has its ways of training a child: the bendy twigs from branches, slippers, an open palm, yelling, silent treatment, and the narrowing of eyes. I, no longer a child, could no longer be whipped, although it would have made for a thrilling display, thus leaving yelling, the silent treatment, and the narrowing of eyes.
The yelling stopped a few hours ago after my initial refusal. To their shock, I yelled back, an act seen as disrespectful
