One of the reasons I'm not joking about keeping memories through my photos and videos anytime I'm with family, especially when I travel home, is that in years to come, what will be left of us will just be memories, and I need to keep those memories intact in a more memorable way compared to the days of old when we didn’t have the opportunity to record people or take photos of people easily. It’s not like I’m wishing for death to come quickly—no—it’s just that I know a lot of people, family members who left us, and their thoughts and memories faded away after months they were laid to mother earth. And we can’t even reminisce deeply about how we were very much connected when they were alive.
I had an uncle, an elder brother to my dad, who died many years ago, and it’s so unfortunate that we didn’t have phones then, and I don’t have any of his photos. That man, although he had his shortcomings, especially with how he oftentimes wasn’t in agreement with his siblings, you see, with us—the children in the family—he didn’t joke with us.
Back then, we worked on the farm, and families shared boundaries together in farms, and that’s where we were usually fond of him because anytime we went to the farm and he was around in his farm, it was a must that we go and join him to eat his food. Like, it was a must because anytime he was done cooking, he would walk to our farms to call us to come and join him. And you know, farm food has a special taste that makes one never feel belly-filled because one can’t resist the taste, and it becomes more irresistible if a bushmeat caught in a trap was used to prepare the meal.
Gosh! Those moments with him were heavenly—it’s one memorable bond that I can’t forget in a hurry.
For those of you who know what going to the farm is, I mean not the backyard type of farming, but the one where you journey far into the forest, work and stay there for long hours, and even cook food to eat there, you’ll know how tiring it can be to agree to go to the farm. But whenever there’s a trigger—like a special meal to be prepared or when it’s maize season—one would just be willing to go to the farm. That uncle made agreeing to go to the farm more interesting to us because of food.
What a memory!
Thanks for reading
This is my entry to neoxianprompts of the month
Photos used are mine
