My mother has a scar at the bottom left of her face, right at the centre of her jawline.
She got it when she was very young.
My mother was not born rich. She born into a polygamous home, run by a man who cared more about gambling than he cared about taking care of his children. When he died he left two wives behind and plenty children. My grandmother alone had seven children. Even though my mother was not the first child, as my grandmother already had a child from a previous relationship, as the eldest of all her siblings, she became saddled with the responsibility of fending for them from an early age.
Every day, before dawn, she would wake up to prepare and hawk pap before running to school. However, she slept during most of her lectures and ended up not learning as much as she had wanted. It's a story that she tells with so much sadness and resentment.
"Who knows what I'd have become if I had been allowed to learn?"
But hawking was not the only thing she did to support her widowed mother. She also went snail hunting. If you are familiar with this particular type of fetching, you'd know that it happens at night. Because that's when the snails crawl out.
The hunting was dangerous. You could fall into a pit, get stung or, even worse, get bitten by a snake.
On a particular day, she got into an altercation with another girl and the girl bit her, so hard that she ripped off a piece of flesh from my mother's face, leaving her with a permanent scar.
I used to see the scar, but I never knew its story, until she told me during one of those days she was angry and screaming at me. She told the story just once and she never repeated it again. It must have hurt too much to remember that day she got scarred for life because she was so poor.
Now picture a scenario, where my mother had taken it upon herself to start sensitising people against the use of violence. Imagine that, for the purpose of connecting with the audience and creating a bond, she had to tell this story over and over again. Imagine if that girl, now a woman, heard that my mother's been narrating that story and told my mother: "You need to move on. I have moved on."
Well, my mother would have every right to tell her to go and fuck herself and carry on speaking.
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You cannot hurt people and still want to dictate how they should hurt or for how long. You took control of the narrative the day you decided to mete out evil against another human being. But the day that human being rose above your arrogance and began to report what you had done to the world, he or she became the new owner of the narrative, and as such, now owns the right to tell it as many times as he or she pleases, even until eternity.
The reason why most people regret the bad things that they did, it's not so much because they regret doing them. They just hate the fact that their victims never forgot like they did.
Germany wishes that the Jews would let go of the Holocaust.
America wishes that African Americans would let go of slavery.
Europe wishes that Africa would let go of colonialism.
But nobody is willing to grant them their wish. Even when the victims won't speak, those who care will do so on their behalf, with the same zeal they are demanding for the evil that was buried to be exhumed.
Write about the extermination of Native Americans by Columbus.
Write about the extermination of the Aborigines of Oceania by the British.
Write about the extermination of the Congolese by Leopold II of Belgium.
Write about the extermination of the Armenians by the Turkish.
They also demand for great men and women of history to be put on the stand.
Let's talk about Mother Theresa. Do you know that she would deny medication to her sick patients because she wanted them to experience a level of pain that she believed would bring them closer to God?
Let's talk about Ghandi. Do you know that he was a racist who believed that slavery was right as there were men who were inferior to others by the virtue of their race and skin tone?
Let's about Winston Churchill. Do you know that he was a white supremacist who encouraged the use of poisonous gas against minorities so that the Aryan race could triumph?
---------
History is not here to pander to the feelings of evil doers, neither is it here to keep survivors in the perpetual state of victimhood. History is here to remember: the good, the bad and the ugly.
A people who don't know or remember their history are bound to keep repeating it.
People will remember the good that you did, but even more vividly, they will remember the evil that you did. The world does not forget just because you have forgotten. And the world does not change just because you have changed.
The person you are today is for the benefit of those who will know you today and tomorrow. But the person you were yesterday will forever be engraved in the memory of the ones you hurt.
It's a truth that you must learn before you decide to go out there and hurt people.
If accountability was based on the care and memory of the offenders, there would be no history, there would be no progress and there would be no justice.
She got it when she was very young.
My mother was not born rich. She born into a polygamous home, run by a man who cared more about gambling than he cared about taking care of his children. When he died he left two wives behind and plenty children. My grandmother alone had seven children. Even though my mother was not the first child, as my grandmother already had a child from a previous relationship, as the eldest of all her siblings, she became saddled with the responsibility of fending for them from an early age.
Every day, before dawn, she would wake up to prepare and hawk pap before running to school. However, she slept during most of her lectures and ended up not learning as much as she had wanted. It's a story that she tells with so much sadness and resentment.
"Who knows what I'd have become if I had been allowed to learn?"
But hawking was not the only thing she did to support her widowed mother. She also went snail hunting. If you are familiar with this particular type of fetching, you'd know that it happens at night. Because that's when the snails crawl out.
The hunting was dangerous. You could fall into a pit, get stung or, even worse, get bitten by a snake.
On a particular day, she got into an altercation with another girl and the girl bit her, so hard that she ripped off a piece of flesh from my mother's face, leaving her with a permanent scar.
I used to see the scar, but I never knew its story, until she told me during one of those days she was angry and screaming at me. She told the story just once and she never repeated it again. It must have hurt too much to remember that day she got scarred for life because she was so poor.
Now picture a scenario, where my mother had taken it upon herself to start sensitising people against the use of violence. Imagine that, for the purpose of connecting with the audience and creating a bond, she had to tell this story over and over again. Imagine if that girl, now a woman, heard that my mother's been narrating that story and told my mother: "You need to move on. I have moved on."
Well, my mother would have every right to tell her to go and fuck herself and carry on speaking.
--------------
You cannot hurt people and still want to dictate how they should hurt or for how long. You took control of the narrative the day you decided to mete out evil against another human being. But the day that human being rose above your arrogance and began to report what you had done to the world, he or she became the new owner of the narrative, and as such, now owns the right to tell it as many times as he or she pleases, even until eternity.
The reason why most people regret the bad things that they did, it's not so much because they regret doing them. They just hate the fact that their victims never forgot like they did.
Germany wishes that the Jews would let go of the Holocaust.
America wishes that African Americans would let go of slavery.
Europe wishes that Africa would let go of colonialism.
But nobody is willing to grant them their wish. Even when the victims won't speak, those who care will do so on their behalf, with the same zeal they are demanding for the evil that was buried to be exhumed.
Write about the extermination of Native Americans by Columbus.
Write about the extermination of the Aborigines of Oceania by the British.
Write about the extermination of the Congolese by Leopold II of Belgium.
Write about the extermination of the Armenians by the Turkish.
They also demand for great men and women of history to be put on the stand.
Let's talk about Mother Theresa. Do you know that she would deny medication to her sick patients because she wanted them to experience a level of pain that she believed would bring them closer to God?
Let's talk about Ghandi. Do you know that he was a racist who believed that slavery was right as there were men who were inferior to others by the virtue of their race and skin tone?
Let's about Winston Churchill. Do you know that he was a white supremacist who encouraged the use of poisonous gas against minorities so that the Aryan race could triumph?
---------
History is not here to pander to the feelings of evil doers, neither is it here to keep survivors in the perpetual state of victimhood. History is here to remember: the good, the bad and the ugly.
A people who don't know or remember their history are bound to keep repeating it.
People will remember the good that you did, but even more vividly, they will remember the evil that you did. The world does not forget just because you have forgotten. And the world does not change just because you have changed.
The person you are today is for the benefit of those who will know you today and tomorrow. But the person you were yesterday will forever be engraved in the memory of the ones you hurt.
It's a truth that you must learn before you decide to go out there and hurt people.
If accountability was based on the care and memory of the offenders, there would be no history, there would be no progress and there would be no justice.
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