Dad: “I want you to cremate my body and take me
back to Africa and put me next to my mother.”He told the hospital not to call me or contact me until he
was dead. ͳey called me just before he died, because they
felt like that was wrong. I new up there, paid for the
mortuary, everything.
I called one of his cousins to tell him. He started telling
me about all this property I got in Africa, and that I’m
actually a princess in his old village. ͳat my dad was like a
king in the village, but he ran away because of the war.
ͳen he was saying, there’s back taxes that I need to pay
and all this stuĉ. And if I come, I have to come with some
type of security, because it’s still a war going on in the
village, where my grandmother’s grave is. And I have to
claim this land for the family, before the government mnds
out my father is dead, because they’ll conmscate it from the
family, and then we won’t have nothing, and that’s what
they living off of.
I didn’t know about any of this. ͳis feels like it’s a
movie. Hopefully, not a tragedy.
I just know that I married a man who promised to mnd
my daddy. I got ten years with my dad. I learned a lot, but I
also feel like he punked out on me.
Now he wants me to go to Africa. I don’t know. I am
trying to mnd the funny in that. I still can’t mnd nothing
funny about it, but I’m trying.