…mother’s album
drove me to the past:
running on the Rukuba hills,
sweet potatoes & fresh fruits…
I was born in Plateau state, Jos and though, we left when I was just around 5 or 6, I still have shards and bits of memories about Jos coupled with all the stories my parents tell us about the place. I remember our house at Rukuba road, I remember Command Secondary School Jos where my dad worked, the Terminus Market, the barracks, a central mosque, tomatoes, fruits, trees, the roads.
I remember always turning back in the car when we pass a particular sculpture and I remember the sculpture, “a woman with long breasts breastfeeding a child”. That sculpture was intriguing to me as a child.
I remember asking questions about it and wanting the car to stop so I could at least take a lengthy look at it. It was always painful when as we drove, it fades out of my view. Years later, I still have this memory in my head, this image, and I know if I ever get to visit Jos soon, I will satisfy myself by looking more closely this time at this sculpture that has followed me from childhood.
The Sculpture by Rahma .O. Jimoh
Originally published in Lucent Dreaming.
mother's album
drove me to the past:
running on the Rukuba hills,
sweet potatoes & fresh fruits,
click-clacks of pots & tasty steam,
shopping at the Terminus market in
between the stalls of noisy traders &
the sculpture of a woman with breasts
dangling sideways & a child strapped
on her back, faded always into space.
i hoped to touch her but we left in the
bloodbath of pines & tomatoes when
the crisis broke at the south-central
mosque. we left the shards of jolly
memories trapped forever in
the monumental pages of
mother's album.
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