When I was a kid my mom used to have so many sayings that we supposed to keep me check. This was one I thought was funny and always remembered. It’s for little kids so if you have a little niece or nephew play this for them, maybe they’ll like it. I did my own retelling of it! I liked how it sounded on the first take so I decided to post! Let me know what you think!

Take 1: Etun and the Hunter of Zanzu Forest

I’m starting to play with audio storytelling. In writing this piece I wanted to find a way in which to speak about the diaspora. The shared experiences of being in bondage and finding a meaning. I know most people are tired of the slave narrative lol, but outside of that it’s a poem that tries to play with sounds and texture.

I told my mom I was moving out for work. I am moving to Philadelphia to get away from an environment that has energetically drained me that it should have been allowed to. This is how my mother has spoken and responded to me on multiple occasions, and I’m tired. 

I dislike being around her, she has been a lesson in having to love people afar. Many times in our lives we believe that we have to stay near people who throw poison because we share the same blood. 

I understand where my mothers pain comes from. It comes from her mother, who got it from her mother; and probably from hers. How far back does this linage of trauma run? One only knows. But I know that I refuse to carry the trams of a grandmother whose name I do not know. Daughter after daughter spirits are broken, devalued in the home, leading to a lack of self love. It is a curse that has been passed on for far too long. 

I chose to break the cycle, through blood and fire I shall cleanse this sin from the bibliography of my womanhood. Rewrite a new story for my daughter shall know self love. Raise in a hole forged by love. My daughter will never know a mother who speaks to her the way my mother does to me the way above. 

P.S. It is not lost on me the potential  connection between colonization and the dynamics that play out in my home. My mother was born in 1967 Nigeria. Seven years after the country gained independence, and was then quickly thrown into a civil war, like many counties after they gain independence. It creates a power vacuum, and one military leader after another looks to gain power and control for themselves. I wonder what my reality might have been like if those were not the circumstances the women who came before me came from. This proves again that White Supremacy is the root of all forms of trauma including the mother wound.

The Mother Wound

Peace and Salutations! 
My name is Ofonime Idiong and I identify as a storyteller. My passions lie in exploring what it means to be human, but more directly what it means to be a Black Human. Pan-African student

For more please visit my website: ofonimeidiong.com

Ofonime Idiong

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