New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  87 Tangmere Court

  My father insists on holding my hand. His grip is so strong I feel my fingers numbing in the red gloves Mama bought me from the secondhand shop on the high street. We’re hurrying along the walkway that cuts across the green on the estate where Mama lives. At the metal door Dad presses number eighty-seven and says, into the intercom, “Mum, it’s me.”

  The door buzzes open and we walk to the lift. Dad is still holding on to my hand, half-humming, half-grunting a tune I can’t make out. I think like me he feels as if there’s a heavy stone in his stomach because I know this is not what he wants for Mama.

  We step into the lift, I press five and the doors slide shut. Scattered on the floor are chips—the thick-cut ones sold in fish-and-chip shops. There’s also a flattened Coke can and a small puddle. The lift smells of pee as it does on Monday mornings; by midday when the cleaners have been it will smell of the hospital where Papa’s body was taken after he died. I shake my hand free of Dad’s to pull off my glove and somehow I drop it in the puddle.

  “Leave it,” Dad says reaching for my hand again.

  I’ve ridden in this lift lots of times since I was a baby. My earliest memories are of Dad lifting me to press button five. As I grew a little older, I stood on tiptoe to reach it. Now I am taller than the number pad.

  Dad takes deep breaths before rapping his knuckles on Mama’s front door. It flies open instantly and Mama stands before us with a wide smile.

  “You’re in good time!” Mama is in good spirits. Dad exhales and releases my hand.

  That Mama is ready is a good sign. Her white hair is tucked away under a short black afro wig and she has on her beige coat with a chocolate fur collar buttoned up to her neck.

  The inside of 87 Tangmere Court is as warm as an oven, but Mama’s flat no longer smells of freshly baked bread or fried plantain. That all changed the day she put a pot of rice on the stove to boil and then went out shopping on the high street. She returned to smoke billowing from the kitchen window and blackened walls. The house smelt of burnt rice for weeks. Then Uncle Simi removed the stove to stop Mama cooking.

  The landing is empty apart from two black bulging suitcases. Papa’s black umbrella hangs on the rail. It’s strange to see Mama’s place empty. Till today, it was full of furniture and boxes of stuff to take back home.

  I follow Mama into the living-room, only then noticing she has her navy shoes on the wrong feet. I turn to Dad as his eyes too fall on the shoes. Neither of us says anything.

  Mama’s living-room looks spacious without the thick navy curtains, the heavy bookcase stacked with big books, the sofas and side-tables, the television stand and the gold-framed portraits on the wall. Only the navy carpet with yellow diamond shapes that Uncle Simi hammered to the floor remains, and in the centre of the room a small table on which Mama’s handbag is perched.

  Mama is talking nonstop. She’s been listening to the radio and there’s a build-up of traffic so we might have to leave early for the airport. Airport? My stomach churns. I realise why she’s in high spirits. Dad keeps very quiet. Mama carries on talking. She’s decided to leave the wall clock and the welcome mat for the next occupants. The new tenants will probably appreciate a copper clock shaped like Africa because it’s different. “I can always get another one. There are plenty back home,” Mama says.

  Dad grunts gently in response, not wanting to agree or disagree.

  From the balcony he carries in two plastic chairs with rusty metal legs. For years they have lived stacked on the balcony, until a lightbulb needs changing or the ceiling painting, or there are more visitors than sofa space. He asks Mama to sit, and he sits heavily on the chair splattered with dried paint. He keeps checking his watch. I fear Mama will notice and be anxious.

  “So should Papa and I expect you at Christmas?” Mama asks, looking at me as she used to before. Today she seems both the old and the new Mama: she remembers me but has forgotten that Papa is no longer with us. I’ve settled myself on the carpet with my back against the radiator.

  “Yes, Mama,” I say brightly, though something flutters inside my tummy.

  Dad shifts uncomfortably without looking at me. His right leg is shaking, as if he’s in a hurry to go somewhere.

  “Great!” Mama picks up her handbag and starts rummaging through it. “Your Papa will be pleased to see you,” she says, taking out a set of keys. “Here they are. I thought I’d lost them.”

  “Mum, you won’t be needing those,” Dad says.

  The Africa-shaped clock chimes ten, distracting Mama. “What time will the car be here?”

  “Any minute now,” Dad says.

  A lump forms in my throat. Soon we’ll be leaving 87 Tangmere Court. I can’t imagine never coming here again. It’s been Mama’s home for years.

  She and Papa moved in twenty years ago when he was exiled from his country. And from the moment they arrived in the UK, she was planning for the day she would return home. To her house with six bedrooms and two living-rooms, one the size of the entire floor area of the flat. Her house with its five acres of land where she grew Chinese cabbage and tomatoes and spring onions and sweet potatoes and maize, depending on the time of the year. Home where she said the sun shone fiercely twelve hours a day and children younger than me weave between cars selling sachets of iced water from metal basins balanced on their heads. For twenty years Mama bought stuff to take home, “when the cruel dictator who kicked your Papa out of the country is no longer in power,” she always said.

  It’s hard to believe I am seeing the water stain on the ceiling for the last time. It’s a stain Uncle Simi has painted over, year after year, but it returns after a few months. The yellow starfish stain reappeared even after Mama took the council to the Arbitrator, who ruled that she be paid for the inconvenience of having to repaint since the council wouldn’t fix the leak in the flat above. But the last time Mama didn’t seem to notice. That was about the time she started to change. The change was gradual but I noticed first because I spent a lot of time with her. Her place was near the school I went to, so I saw her every day.

  “Strange how?” Dad asked when I said that Mama was behaving strangely.

  I told him she kept forgetting things.

  “It’s called old age,” Dad said, laughing. “One day we’ll all get there.”

  Now two years later, Dad knows it’s something more serious than old age.

  “By the way,” Mama asks again, “did you confirm my arrival time to your father?”

  Dad grunts and mumbles something.

  “Or will it be Mususu picking me up?”

  Dad’s leg shakes more at Mama’s mention of Mususu, whom I know about from her stories of home. He was the loyal family driver who risked his life for his employers. Mama told of how she and Papa one night hid hunched under two big upturned drums in Mususu’s small kitchen as soldiers tore through the main house looking for Papa. When they didn’t find him they left and a neighbour kindly offered his car. It was Mususu who drove Papa and Mama six hours to the border so they could escape to the neighbouring country.

  “I’ve bought Mususu a shirt and a watch,” Mama says, forgetting that she lost contact with Mususu over ten years ago. “Let me open the case to show you.”

  “It’s OK, Mum.” Dad stands and glances at his watch. “There’s no time.”

  I managed to convince Mama and Papa that at nine years old I was grown-up enough to walk to and from school by myself. I had begun to feel embarrassed at Mama turning up at the school gate in her hat and long coat, sometimes with Papa. They looked odd among the other children’s parents, who wore jogging bottoms and trainers, and occasionally while waiting smoked or used the F word.

  Mama said the UK was not like home, where children were safe, and polite, and respected elders. But Mum insisted I was old enough to walk on my own. “Tell your mother,” she said to Dad, “that in every part of the world, there is peace and danger. Kondani is growing up. They can’t go on treating her like
an egg.”

  So on Mum’s orders, Dad convinced his parents to allow me to walk home alone.

  One day six months later as I let myself in after school, I heard Mama talking. She was on the balcony tending her plants. I went into the living-room and there was Papa sitting rigidly in his high-back chair. His black skin had a grey tinge. He had a dot of froth in the crack of his mouth on both sides. Other than that, he could have been sleeping.

  I had never seen a dead man but one look and I knew for sure Papa was dead. And right there in the living-room, I felt warm pee trickling down my legs.

  I didn’t know which to do first: tell Mama that Papa was dead, call Dad, or go to the bathroom. I decided to call Dad. Still wearing my backpack, I stepped over Papa’s outstretched legs, picked up the cordless phone and took it to the bathroom. As I closed the door I could hear Mama talking to herself on the balcony.

  I dialled the emergency numbers in the order Mama had stored them on her phone. Dad didn’t pick up. Uncle Simi did. I whispered that Papa was dead but Mama didn’t know. He told me he was on his way and would call an ambulance. He asked me to go downstairs and sit with a neighbour.

  After Papa died, Mama would grieve one day, act as if he were alive the next. Mum enrolled me in a school nearer to our house.

  I saw Mama one Saturday a month when it was Dad’s turn to deliver food from a woman hired to cook for her. We would pack the lunchboxes into Mama’s freezer. She complained that the food was too oily, too salty, too dry, but her children were adamant; she was not getting her stove back.

  The visits to Mama made me sad. The two things she loved most, Papa and cooking, had been taken from her and I think it made her confused. She would laugh at things that were not funny and get angry at small things. Then one Sunday Dad and I passed by to visit.

  Dad was halfway through taking off his coat, when Mama asked, “Junior, who is this child?”

  I will never forget the shock on Dad’s face. He pulled his coat back on and, not even checking the fridge, excused himself to go to the shop to buy milk. Left me with Mama, who eyed me suspiciously. She did not ask about school. Or tell me not to hunch my back because ladies sat up straight. She didn’t tell funny stories like the one about once imagining she would marry Mohammed Ali or Nelson Mandela but in Papa ended up with Ali and Mandela rolled into one, so stuff them both. That day Mama did not talk to me.

  When Dad returned, his eyes were red. He put the milk in the fridge and told Mama we were leaving. As we walked to the lift, Mama called Dad back. She stood in the doorway and pointed at me:

  “The girl has stolen my TV remote. It was on the table, now it’s gone.”

  Dad looked from her to me. “Mama, this is Kondani!” Dad spoke loudly, his face creased in frustration. “You know she wouldn’t take anything without permission!”

  I worried that the neighbours would come out. I didn’t want them to know what was happening to Mama. I pleaded with Dad that we leave.

  We left her standing defiantly there, arms folded across her chest.

  Dad, Aunt Malaika and Uncle Simi had conversations that ended with: Well, let’s wait and see. Because sometimes the old Mama returned and all would be well.

  They argued over what to do. Dad wanted her to stay in her flat where the familiarity would comfort her; a live-in carer could be hired. But Aunt Malaika felt Mama would be lonely and suggested Mama stay with her. The brothers disagreed; Aunt Malaika was never at home, so Mama would be alone anyway. Then Mum upset Dad by suggesting Mama was put in a care-home. Dad said homes were not African. That would be like abandoning Mama. People would say they had failed to look after their mother.

  “Who minds what people think?” Mum said. “It’s about her being somewhere she can be cared for.”

  Late one night the police knocked on our door. Mama had been found wandering in the streets. She couldn’t remember her address but asked the police to call her son. Luckily she remembered Dad’s name.

  After that incident Mama’s children were forced to come together to resolve the situation.

  In the living-room Mama is rattling on about home and things she’s bought for Papa when the doorbell rings. Dad springs up, grabs one of the cases and starts wheeling it out. He asks me to wait with Mama, who announces that she needs the bathroom.

  As I wait, I look around one last time. I remember the flat with light-blue walls, then white, then cream. I go into the bedroom that used to be mine. A last look through the window. The view has changed; new apartment blocks and parking spaces have shrunk the green play area.

  Dad returns for the second case and we exit 87 Tangmere Court for the last time. We troop along the corridor, me carrying Papa’s umbrella, Dad wheeling the case and Mama now wearing a hat atop her wig, her shoes still on the wrong feet. We enter the lift, for the last time. It smells of bleach and my glove is gone. The lump in my throat grows bigger. I wonder if Dad feels the same way.

  Uncle Simi gives me a bear hug when we get to where he is parked. He delves into his pockets for something to give me, a habit he has not outgrown even though I’m a big girl now. He hands me half a roll of mints. Dad embraces his brother. They are so different. Dad tall, slim, clean-shaven; Uncle Simi like a big teddy bear, with long thick dreadlocks that used to irritate the old Mama.

  A white lady steps forward and introduces herself. “And you must be Mercy,” she says to Mama.

  Mama smiles, “Hello, are you accompanying us to the airport?”

  There’s a silence. Uncle Simi and Dad avoid looking at one another.

  “Kondani, say goodbye to Mama,” Dad urges. I’m not sure if I see tears in his eyes.

  Mama looks at me the way the old Mama did. “Be a good girl, OK? I can’t wait for you to come and see for yourself what I’ve been telling you about home.” She squeezes me against her soft wool coat, then lets go and says with a smile, “Don’t worry. When you come, Papa and I will meet you at the airport.”

  I nod. Grunt gently. Like Dad, I don’t agree or disagree. Today she’s more of the old Mama than the new one. It worries me because the old Mama may realise what’s happening.

  That she’s not going home but to a place where she can be cared for.

  Suddenly, after months of praying for my old Mama, I want the new one. The new Mama who doesn’t know that she will never go back home. Because I think it’s best for Mama not to know.

  Ama Biney

  A Pan-Africanist scholar-activist with more than 20 years’ teaching experience in the fields of African history and politics, she has taught courses in African history, Caribbean history and African American history. She is the author of The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah (2011), and compiled Speaking Truth to Power: Selected Pan-African Postcards of Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (2010) with fellow Pan-Africanist Prof. Adebayo Olukoshi. She was editor of the Pan-African weekly electronic newsletter, Pambazuka News from 2012 to 2014. Currently she is an independent scholar engaging in Steve Biko’s mantra of writing what she likes.

  Creating the New Man in Africa

  Imagine a poster with the words: “New men wanted in Africa!” Most people would find the statement amusing, but that is what Africa urgently needs. This specific demand has to be part of a radical transformation in attitudes and outlooks that the continent must undergo, alongside fundamental socio-economic development as the twenty-first century continues to unfold.

  Thomas Sankara, the Burkinabé revolutionary who was committed to socio-economic and political change in his country, had the courage to state that the waging of revolution would also “upset the relations of authority between men and women and force each to rethink the nature of both” (emphasis mine). He was also correct in declaring that “. . . the revolution cannot triumph without the genuine emancipation of women.” Equally, I would like to argue that the revolution cannot triumph without a transformation in the thinking, mentality, attitudes, or consciousness of African men/boys. And for that to happen, we need to address ma
le domination in African societies.

  Human beings are taught not to question male domination. Both boys and girls are socialised into accepting that boys are to be loud and girls are to be quiet.

  Boys can be angry and aggressive and girls are allowed to cry and show a “soft” and nurturing side.

  Boys can be inquisitive and ask questions, while girls are expected to be passive and submissive. Boys and men cannot cry, for that is being “emotional”, which only girls and women are allowed to be. These are some of the gendered stereotypes and expectations of how boys/men and girls/women are expected to behave in Africa (and around much of the globe). In academia, the term employed to describe this phenomenon of male superiority and female inferiority is “patriarchy”.

  In Africa, many cultural expectations are ingrained through socialisation and unquestioned cultural customs and practices to reinforce patriarchy and gendered expectations. Patriarchy is a system of ideas that intersects with other forms of domination such as class, homophobia, sizeism and racism. Patriarchy is invisible; it is like the air we breathe in that we do not recognise or feel its presence; yet it surrounds us and is unconsciously (and consciously) ingrained in our thought patterns and actions. Patriarchy manifests itself in Africa in many ways, such as the predominance of male political leaders, despite African Union protocols and the fact that several African parliaments, including Rwanda, Mozambique, Uganda and Senegal, have a large number of female parliamentarians. Men continue to disproportionately occupy top leadership positions; the bulk of agricultural work in Africa is carried out by women in the rural areas and it is women who dominate the informal economy, while the “formal” economy is dominated by African men. Conflict in Africa, particularly war, is waged by men and when we see images of peace negotiations it is two men from opposing sides and not women that we see shaking hands. Women are absent in photo-ops in all peace negotiations (unless it is a woman who is behind the camera taking the shot? But I doubt it). Yet, who creates and fuels war?