The storm howled like a wounded beast. It tore down sails and snapped masts in two with the English ship sent hurling, against the jagged teeth of the African coast. It was a tragedy that had been foretold by the high priestess of Uzoama.
"A sinking boat would bring to Uzoama the next high priestess."
By dawn, the sea had swallowed everything, wood, cargo, and men alike, only a baby was washed ashore. The only one thing remaining: she was a baby girl, pale as the moon, wrapped in wet linen and drifting in a broken crate.
When the fishermen of Uzoama village found her, they paused in fear, wondering if this was in fulfilment of the prophecy or something else.
Some whispered that she was a spirit-child sent by the ocean, a trickster to lure them to death, because she was of a completely different complexion and a straightened hair. Others saw her tiny hands clutching the air, and their hearts softened. At last, Mama Ifunanya, an old widow with no children of her own, stepped forward.
“She should be who was foretold, who would be the next high priestess of Uzoama,” she said, cradling the child. “And what the gods give, we can not throw away.”
So the baby grew in Uzoama, not as a stranger but as one of them. They called her Nnenna—“the mother’s child.” Mama Ifunanya strapped her to her back with bright cloth, fed her millet porridge, and sang her the lullabies of the village. Nnenna’s skin stayed the color of unripe yam, no matter how hard Mama Ifunanya tried to bathe her with the local"Uli" leaves, to darken the colour of her skin, her tongue still shaped the rhythms of Igbo speech, and her laughter echoed in the compound like every other child's.
By the time she could walk, Nnenna chased goats in the dust, played suwe with the girls, and learned to pound yam with a pestle nearly as tall as she was. The villagers shook their heads in wonder. “Her skin may be strange,” they said, “but her heart beats like our own.”
Though some village elders often muttered, “we believe that one day her foreign nature will reveal itself.”
Mama Ifunanya would only smile and say, “A child becomes what you pour into her.”
Years passed, Nnenna grew tall, her hair, straight and fiery gold that glinted in the sun. Her nose was pointed and most times, she spoke through her nostril, but when she danced at the new yam festival, it was the dance of Uzoama, when she sang, it was in the women’s chorus, and she was quick in learning healing herbs at Mama Ifunanya’s side. To her, Uzoama was the only world she knew. She had never seen the sea that had once destroyed everything the was hers, except as a far blue line beyond the coconut trees.
One harmattan season, white sails appeared again on the horizon. The news spread like wildfire: foreigners had anchored offshore. They came with shining guns, iron pots, and words the villagers could not understand. Among them was an English trader who stopped short when he saw Nnenna at the marketplace. His eyes widened.
“A miracle,” he gasped in his own tongue. “An English child, here!”
Through halting words and gestures, he demanded she be returned. He claimed she was his countrywoman, not meant to live among “savages" like them, but the villagers were divided. Some elders thought it best to give her up, better peace than trouble with the strangers. Others protested, “She is not theirs! She is ours! We nurtured her! She came through prophecy! She's the next high priestess of Uzoama!"
Confusion tore through Nnenna’s heart. She did not understand the man’s language, only the way his pale face mirrored hers. That night she spoke emotionally to Mama Ifunanya, “I am truly your child, our different colours notwithstanding, you are the only mother I know."
The old woman wept. “The gods gave you to me, my daughter. I carried you on my back, fed you from my hands, taught you to sing our songs. If blood makes family, you are not mine. But if love makes family, then you are mine forever.”
The foreigners pressed harder. They offered gifts of mirrors and cloth if only the village would release her to them. When the chiefs hesitated, they threatened with muskets. Nnenna stood before them all, her voice trembling but fierce.
“I know no land but this one,” she declared in Igbo. “My tongue is your tongue. My mother is Mama Ifunanya. My blood may be from across the waters, but my heart was nurtured here. I do not want to be sold to strangers.”
Her words silenced the courtyard. For a moment, even the wind seemed to pause.
Then Ogbuefi Nnaji spoke. His eyes, usually hard, softened. “We feared your nature would betray you, child. But you have shown us nurture can shape destiny. You are Uzoama’s daughter indeed.”
The crowd roared in agreement. The foreigners, seeing their prize slip away, spat curses and returned to their ships.
Nnenna lived on, neither fully English nor fully African, but wholly herself. She grew into a healer like Mama Ifunanya, her pale hands mixing herbs, her golden hair catching the light of evening fires. She eventually became the high priestess, the greatest Uzoama had ever known. Just like the prophecy, she communed with the spirits, as the previous priestesses did and was fully accepted as the guardian and the custodian of the gods of the land.
She became a story, a proof that love could bend destiny, that nurture could tame the ocean’s mystery.
And when she sat by the shore at night, listening to the waves, she sometimes thought she heard the sea whisper her secret name. Yet she never answered. For she was Nnenna, daughter of Uzoama, the white child of the village and the high priestess of the gods.
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