When I saw the house again I almost laughed.
It was not because the house was funny, Because it looked exactly like how I felt inside.
The house had cracks in the walls like rivers.
Parts of the fence had fallen down.
The paint that was once white had turned into a mixture of brown and grey.
Weeds had taken over the compound as if they had paid rent to live
This was the house where my grandmother lived for over forty years in our village in Enugu State.
It was the house where my cousins and I gathered every Christmas.
It was the house where goats wandered into the kitchen.
It was the house where everybody knew everybodys business before sunset.
Now the walls of the house were crumbling.
Somehow the family was crumbling too.
It all started after my grandmother died.
Before she died nobody cared about who owned what land.
We were one big family.
If you came to the village there was food waiting for you.
If you had problems somebody would help you.
It was not perfect, There was peace in the family.
Then suddenly peace left.
My uncles who had not spoken for years started appearing.
Everybody had opinions about the land.
Everybody had rights to the land.
Everybody had stories about promises my grandmother supposedly made before she died.
Some people said "I was the one taking care of her."
Others said "She told me this land was mine."
Some people even said "You people only come during Christmas."
Village family meetings can be very tiring.
One meeting turned into two meetings.
Two meetings turned into ten meetings.
Voices got louder and louder.
People stopped greeting each other.
My cousins who used to play football now walked past each other like strangers.
The funny thing was that while everybody was fighting over the property nobody noticed that the house itself was dying.
Rain was entering through the roof of the house.
The walls were getting weaker.
The veranda was breaking.
Nature did not care about our family problems.
It just kept doing its work.
One day during another family meeting that was turning into a shouting competition a loud sound interrupted everybody.
A part of the wall of the house had collapsed.
Like that everybody went silent.
Even the people who could argue a lot kept quiet.
We all walked outside, Stared at the fallen wall.
Looking at those broken blocks on the ground felt strange.
It was as if the house was trying to tell us something.
The house was saying "You people are busy fighting but look at me I am falling apart."
That moment changed everything.
Maybe it was guilt that changed us.
Maybe it was shame.
Or maybe we suddenly remembered that before there was land to fight over, there was family.
One of my uncles spoke first.
He said "We can rebuild this wall but can we rebuild ourselves?"
Nobody answered immediately.
The truth is, broken things are not always easy to fix.
Sometimes pride gets in the way.
Nobody wants to move
Little by little things changed.
The weekend some family members contributed money to rebuild the house.
Others brought cement.
Some people brought labour.
The younger ones carried blocks, Fetched water.
It was not magical, it worked.
People still argued sometimes.
Old wounds did not disappear overnight.
The work brought people together again.
As we rebuilt the walls of the house we started rebuilding our relationships
I learnt something from that experience.
Not all crumbling walls are made of cement.
Some walls are made of anger.
Some are built with silence.
Some are created by pride and misunderstandings and years of not talking to each other.
If we are not careful those walls can collapse too.
To this day whenever I visit the village and see the house standing strong again I smile.
The walls of the house are not perfect.
You can still see marks from where repairs were done.
Maybe that is the point.
People are like houses.
Families are like houses.
Life breaks us sometimes.
With effort and forgiveness and a little patience even crumbling walls can stand again.
The house is like our family.
The house is like me.
I am, like the house.
We can all stand again if we try.
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