Diary of an Ambivalent Black Girl: Log Date 08/26/20
By Chika Ojukwu
Collage by Chika Ojukwu
I vividly remember the music.
The music always seemed to get under your skin and vibrate through your soul, ultimately lighting up something that you never thought you had.
The music is what I remember from the celebrations both big and small that I attended in my Nigerian community as I grew up.
These were the tastes I had grown up with; ever since I was a child I went to Abia state meetings, danced the night away at traditional Nigerian wakeepings to send off the dead, and played intergenerational soccer games at the annual Igbo picnic that brought Nigerians from far and wide.
Without a doubt, this was my home.
Or so I thought.
While this was my home, my physical house was located nowhere near the places I would go off to during the weekends and see the beautiful shades of brown that reflected the light and sparkled with uninhibited joy.
I lived in modern suburbia, where I was accustomed to the picturesque image of a house behind a white picket fence and clean cut grass. Here, no black person was to be seen beyond the 4 walls that encased me.
This is the place I would wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. Here, there was no music to be found, but only the tears of a person who was uneasy and unsettled by what was in front of them.
And for a while, knowing I had an escape in the Nigerian community across town helped.
Yet, in the end, I had to adapt.
I attended elementary, middle, and high school in the same neighborhood and had to introduce myself to new customs and traditions. I had to lighten up my accent and learn how to Americanize my words, I had to transform myself into something that was palpable for my peers to understand.
I rarely spoke of home because the places that I spoke of, the holidays I celebrated, the beliefs that ruled my world, were now seen as weird and uncomely.
And as the years went on, there were fewer parties, fewer picnics, and fewer wakeepings.
I began to forget the names of childhood friends and the taste of certain foods.
Despite it all, life continued, as it does.
At the moment, I’m beginning college and preparing to one day leave the suburbia I was raised in and the Nigerian culture I was born from.
I don’t know what the future holds or what path I will take.
What I do know is that it will not be the isolating silence of the white suburban cul de sac that will follow me. Instead, it will be the rich fabrics of my culture, the many cousins I have known, and the music that reverberated through my bones.