It was a late afternoon when I came home from school and sat down with my mom to talk about her unique childhood. We sat down in her room with blankets covering our toes. Her room is so much more cozy than mine. She hadn’t told me much about her life growing up but I knew she had moved quite a lot. We connected over new stories that I hadn’t heard like how my mom’s aunt took her as a child and raised her. I also got to learn about how hard life was for my mom being raised by people that weren’t her parents.
Some stories had me thinking about how privileged I am; others were just funny. I realized that we were both introverts; I was surprised by this because my mom is a really good speaker. Growing up she would always pressure me to speak up. I never thought we would share the experience being shy as kids. As this conversions went along, I got to hear stories about my mom’s life in South Africa, being a refugee, and her love for education.
Me: Were you happy as a child?
Mom: (decreases voice) I won’t say, I think whatever the situation is. You know I did not grow up with both my parents. I did not grow up with my parents. So when you grow up with other people that are taking care of you. Lots of the time it’s, you know, that’s life for you. Whatever you find yourself in and you have to find your own happiness. Um it wasn’t the best situation but I cant say that I was sad because I just look at it as if that’s my life. Kids that were there without their parents and were living with maybe aunties and so far and so forth. We were the ones that did a lot of the work. In order for adults to be nice to you.
Me: Can I ask why you didn’t live with your parents?
Mom: Why I didn’t, it was a complicated issue. My sister’s mom stopped at the house to say hello to her sister. But then her sister was not there, and I must have been around one at a time. So since my mother was not home and um she thought I was cute as a baby so she just took me.
Me: Just to recap, you didn’t get much attention at home so you tried very hard in school. How often did girls try in school?
Mom: School is just a way of, just the sake of you being in school. Only a few girls were determined. Um I was one of those, but it gave me the satisfaction even though I didn’t know what I wanted to do with that education but it gave me the satisfaction for people to respect me for once.
Me: In school, who was your best friend in South Africa and what were they like?
Mom: My best friend was a girl called Youwanday. Her father was Nigerian, her both parents passed away a little while ago. And then her mother was from Barbados. Her upbringing was completely different from mine. She had very educated parents, her both parents had a phd and her mother was a medical doctor and with a phd in accounting too, so she had two degrees.
Me: And then I know that you guys were from two different environments but what about her made her so, made you wanna be friends with her?
Mom: Oh, she was very very very very caring. When I went to South Africa, my English was not good like that, because like I said the home that I came from, we did not speak english at home. And then at school, we try to avoid speaking English at school.
Me: How was it moving country to country growing up?
Mom: Guinea was very interesting because Guinea we had absolutely nothing, we were refugees so the United Nations had to give us food, the United Nations had to give us a place to be so it was completely different.
Me: Adding on to that, did you know what the war in Liberia was about and which country it was with?
Mom: Um, the war it’s just people being greedy, everyone wants to be president. Someone wanted to be president and then you have this tribalism, because we speak different different languages. Some people didn’t like that other group of people that spoke a different language than them. So even though the person that took the war to Liberia wanted to overthrow the president. But then the citizens themselves have reason now to fight each other.
Me: Now going back to your previous response. How were you able to travel between countries like Botswana?
Mom: My older brother was living in Botswana at the time so I went to live with him. And um but he was working for most of the time. So when he’s not home I’m by myself. But then South Africa was like that too for a while. We also went to Souh Africa together.
Me: It was great hearing about your life group up. What is something that would make you proud of me in the future?
Mom: To be a good person and to me a good person is a person that is considerate of other people. Be observant of other people too. To know that just the way you get hurt other people to get hurt like that. Watch what you say to someone and to be understanding of certain situations.
