Memories scatter around me
Pictures and picture frames that carry moments of joy
Moments with a lover, a dear friend
My new family of choice
Reminding me of the life I’ve built
In this here land of the free and brave
Cards that wish me well
Give hope in times of some heavy situation
Tell me how wonderful I am
Remind me turning 30 is not the end of the world
I smile; the tears roll down unprovoked
Memories scatter around me
As I decide which of these are worth holding on to
Which are worth paying the extra-pounds fee for
Which ones I will cry over if I never see again
My collection of journals since I was 16
My collection of art pieces from around the world
My collection of tea sets
My academician turned writer impressive library
Memories scatter around me
Tears streaming down my face
4 days straight
They start; They stop; They start again
It’s not like this trip is sudden
But this trip feels real and more of a sure stay
Like Ghana will stick to my bones this time
Unlike my mother and her brother I will not
Let “over the hill” catch me on this side
But is that what I really want
Me, my people’s hope
Me, the immigrant child abandoning
What they have worked hard for
Memories scatter around me
I try to decipher which articles
Women and gender
Sex and sexuality
Theology and activism
Character and first person narrative
Are important to mail to myself
Will I ever use these articles again
That which these professors
Have bequeathed me
In this tradition of academia
Ten years of schooling that has made
Me into the woman I am today
Articles they thought important and necessary to impart to me
Articles and readings and excerpts they thought I should
Imbibe
Assimilate into my life
Regurgitate in arguments
Defend in intellectual musings
Espouse in high brow academic company
Will I really be using them later
Will there be need for them in my new life
Do I want to impart these Western ideals to eager students
Do these ideals stretch across continents
Memories scatter around me
I read old papers
Past professors’ encouraging comments
Past professors’ obvious discomfort with some of the subject matter
I chose to discuss in final papers
Past professors’ questioning some of the arguments
I thought I had carefully crafted
Past professors’ challenging me to “tell-the-real-story”
I read old papers that assure me that I used to be
That I am and will continue to be
Fucking brilliant
That the magnas and summas cum laudes were not just to placate
The minority in the class
That somewhere inside I have all this knowledge
Now a part of my DNA
Now what to do with it
Is the million dollar question
Memories scatter around me
Seems I’ve lived a thousand lives
Well really just 4,
Each of my degrees
Seemed to take me in a different direction each time
But in reality; in hindsight
They were all/ are all
Just my hybridities coming together
My interstitiality laid bare
That which makes me a complex human
Who cannot be placed in a box
Who cannot be labeled
Perhaps if there was a place for each our many selves
To be all of who we are
Some might not feel so freakish
Some might feel empowered
Memories scatter around me
As I sit in the middle of the piles of old essays
And intelligently crafted articles
Having a conversation with an ex
Who has watched this all happen
Almost right from the beginning
Albeit at times from the shadows
In part of the conversation I heard:
But you didn’t really get any practical degrees
I jumped to defend my degrees
But then it felt futile
She was right
They were mere pleasure for pleasure sake
I loved learning/love learning
Why wasn’t that enough of career
Everyone thinks when you get degrees like mine
You automatically want to teach
Well dammit
I don’t want to teach
There are callings for each of us
Teaching is not one of mine
But then when pushed against the rock and asked to pick
A box
Take the MBTI or the Enneagram
To “figure” out where I fit
I pick one
One that I think sums up everything I’ve enjoyed so far
I pick Pastoral Care of Students and Fostering Community Life
I hear:
What does that mean
Memories scatter around me
I find dreams for that women’s retreat center I wanted to build
I find plans for that wholeness center for women dealing with trauma
I find applications to UN and Fulbright and Rhodes
I even find plans for that orphanage I was going to run in Ayiti
After I made my first mind-blowing trip there ten years ago
I find ideas I used to dream big about
Tears roll down rapidly again
I find that I have let lack of money block the way
I let feeding myself, living on my own, being an independent woman
Surviving racism and homophobia and other isms
Block my way to
To accessing my dreams
Those things I once held high and didn’t regard as lofty
Now are just that
I hit the reality-check wall and let the bump that formed on my forehead
Cloud that spirit that fearlessly boarded that flight to Columbus, Ohio
In the middle of the worst winter they had had in ten years
Getting off that plane that 10th day of January in the brand new year of 1996
America held so much promise
It gave me what I desired most
An education in which women were encouraged
To see themselves as equal to men
A sense of self-worth not defined by a man
A definition
A label to hang my hat on
To explain the complexities of who I was/becoming
The freedom to be different
To choose a path like none before me
What it didn’t do was caution me
That carving this road less traveled
Would mean
I would sometimes get lost in the woods
Lose my cutlass and walking stick
That no one would be able to rescue me
Because only I knew where I was going
That even I would sometimes not know where I was going
What it didn’t give me was an intense desire to
Return to where I came from
To make a difference there
It didn’t give me a renewed appreciation for where I came from
It left me frustrated at my people
At the place I was first named
It left me wanting a mini America in Ghana
Scared to return there because I couldn’t possibly
Navigate a place I hadn’t been an adult in
I watched my friends
Some White people
Go there
Live there
Love it there
Move there
Marry my men
Have clear skinned babies
All the while wishing I was them
Wishing I could do what they had done
In reality I had done what they had done
Just in reverse
I had moved here
Lived here
Called it my home
Almost married their men
Discovered I loved their women
So if I had done it before
Why couldn’t I do it again
Only this time in reverse
Memories scatter around me
My envy showing through my poetry
My essays
I was angry
How dare they move to my country
Begin schools
Make change
With my new found lenses
I critiqued their motives
I tore down their reasons for moving to a developing country
I saw the privilege they enjoyed there
Knew most of them didn’t enjoy that in their own country
Knew I’d never enjoy that in their country
So why did I stay
To get more degrees
To go back to prove to them
That I too could survive another country
That I too was smart enough
Pretty enough for their men and women to want me
To prove to my own people that
The past seventeen years hasn’t been wasted
They still think it is wasted because I have no
Husband and three kids and one-on-the-way, to show for it
I have no career that could be labeled
Dentist, Lawyer, Doctor, Banker…Teacher
Just a bunch of papers, unframed
A lot of ideas and fragments of dreams deferred
They want to know
How will you pay your bills
Who will hold you when you are lonely
Who will take care of you when you are dying
I have no answers
Musings of An African Woman 
Kuukua, so beautifully you write of the pain and the hope! This came to me, perhaps you will hear it too. Patricia
that which is calling you
has not ceased
from your tears rises the song
of your heart
from your feet flows
the drum
of your heart
that which is calling you
Thank you for the poem that came to you. It touched my heart a week ago when I read it but I have just been so busy. Thank you. Blessings!
For once, I’m “writeless,” or should I say “wordless.” Bravo for sharing this Kuukua. It’s very revealing.
KK, your writing is intense, deep, full of pain, despair, self analyses. KK, I felt deeply moved by your words and so sad at the seeming futility beneath the words, but I smell and sense hope in your coming home, for home sweet home and with your own people, among your own people you just might find some hope and peace. Take heart my friend, all is well. I really hope to meet you one fine day.
Thanks Celestine. We will meet. Don’t worry I have a dream of meeting all my FB and Blog friends in person one day. So long as we are in the same country di3, no fears 🙂