Ebiere told her boss she was taking a week off for “mental health.” He laughed and said, “You? You’re the strongest woman I know.” She didn't correct him.
Mama Patience hugged her. The old woman smelled of shea butter and firewood. “Same thing,” she whispered. “The road that takes you away is the same road that brings you back. There is no other road.” Evi Edna Ogholi - No Place Like Home
The Echo of Red Earth
The next morning, she walked to the creek. It was still black. But she saw something surprising: a single green shoot, a mangrove seedling, pushing through the oil-slicked mud. Ebiere told her boss she was taking a
“No matter where you roam, no matter how far you go… there’s no place like home.” The old woman smelled of shea butter and firewood
“I never forgot,” she said. “I just buried it under marble floors.”
She remembered why she left. She was nine. Her father, a fisherman, had died because the creek he fished in was coated in crude oil. An oil company’s pipeline had burst. They paid the village a pittance. Her mother sold her gold earrings to pay for the bus to the city. “Don’t look back,” her mother had said at the bus park. “Make a life where the water is clean.”