African Culture

Her smell. Her touch. The warmth of her body. I remember it all. I remember the last time I saw her; the last time I was able to smell her, touch her, feel her. We never did have it easy; I only ate every couple of days, and I had been given a blue cup that I carried around with me begging everyone I saw for water. She gave me everything she could, everything she had. Even when we were hungry and cold and thirsty, she’d still be humming me to sleep, telling me everything was going to be okay. I don’t think I ever saw her without a smile on her face. Until the day they came.
“Mama!”
I cried for her, but I couldn’t stop them.
“Mama! Mama are you okay?! What’s going on Mama? Where are those men taking you?”
But before she could answer, she was gone. They took her away.
I was alone after that. Four years old with no Mama. My brothers would be killed in the streets a few years later, and I would have to watch them die.
My family never did anything wrong. We never bothered anybody. We never hurt anybody. But we had to pay a price as though we had. My mama was taken away from me by drug dealers and cons. My brothers were killed by them. And I was alone.
It wasn’t a good life there. I went days without food and water. Mama always told me to be grateful for everything I had, but it was really hard when I realized that I had nothing.
I knew I had to get out of there. I knew Mama would want me to be elsewhere; somewhere where I would be happy and healthy and safe and free.
It took a lot of courage to leave. Although I didn’t have much to carry with me, I had a lot to leave behind: the memories of my childhood, Mamma, Dayo and Mosi, the boys and girls I used to play with around the huts.
I didn’t have a beautiful home. I didn’t have a lot to eat or drink. I didn’t have a television, or a warm bed to sleep in, or even the comfort of safety. The thing that hurt the most, though, was that I no longer had a family to wake up to every morning. I didn’t have brothers to play or fight with. I didn’t have Mamma to hum me to sleep.
The people who are still back there, in Ethiopia, they don’t have those things, either. I’m sure they have it just as bad as I did when I was a child. But to them, it’s home. It’s where they were born, and it’s where they will probably die.
Not everybody gets out like I did, and not everybody wants to.
I still see it sometimes, in my dreams and in my thoughts. I wonder how Ethiopia is doing, and I wonder how the people are.
I might go back someday. I might not. But I will never forget what I left behind:
Mamma, my brothers, my friends. Ethiopia.