Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo

Author:Chibundu Onuzo [Onuzo, Chibundu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781646220830
Google: i4MyzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2021-06-02T23:00:00+00:00

18

The days passed. Monday grew closer. If Adrian’s schedule was free, we went round Segu, sometimes by bus, sometimes with the driver, and always with Adrian’s voice providing background, history, context.

‘Liberty Square, where Kofi was sworn in, nineteen seventy-eight.’

It was an Olympic-size stadium with seating on three sides. The fourth was open to the ocean and the breeze that blew in served as a sort of air conditioning. The design was clever.

‘The euphoria of that night,’ Adrian said. ‘The place was packed. The whole country wanted to be here.’ I imagined the stands full of people waving flags and cheering for my father.

I didn’t mind Adrian’s trivia. I liked knowing that Segu taxis were once black, but after independence, in a show of patriotism, drivers repainted them blue and white after the flag.

Other details were more obscure, e.g. ‘Bamana has forty species of sunbirds, a close relation of the hummingbird’.

It was like travelling with the QI Facts book, novel at first but grating by lunchtime. Adrian had not lost any confidence. He was a white man in Britain and a white man in Bamana.

Sometimes I wanted to shake him off and attempt the city on my own again. After all, half my DNA was from here. If I were an animal, I would have some instinct for the place, but each time I remembered that first trip to the market and the chorus of ‘obroni’ that had rung after me with every step. With Adrian, at least, we were a pair of obronis.

While Adrian was teaching, I stayed in the hotel and took my meals in the French-themed restaurant. I loitered in the lobby. There was some art for sale: tourist pieces – bright paintings of village scenes, crude wooden replicas of the intricate carving I had seen in the British Museum.

I was reminded of my first exhibition in a Hampstead gallery just off the high street. It was run by Robert’s manager’s wife, Martha Reuben, a tall, elegant woman who wore silk scarves to hide the wrinkles on her neck. The Reubens came to dinner. I cooked and Robert carved.

‘What do you do?’ Martha asked.

‘I’m a housewife.’

‘And an artist,’ Robert added. I couldn’t tell whether he was being supportive or whether he was trying to make me seem more exciting to his boss.

Reluctantly, the canvases were brought out. Martha insisted on buying one. It was her way, I thought, of showing gratitude for the seasoning of the lamb. The next day she called to ask how many canvases I had, could I paint more, did I want a solo exhibition?

The works didn’t sell. At the opening, Martha invited a crowd that pressed into the medium space, their backs turned to the canvases, their eyes tracking the flutes of champagne drifting through the room.

Martha said my work was ahead of the market. I painted subjects cut out of newspapers and magazines. I laboured over their hands, their watches, their shoes, but instead of faces, I painted a storm of colour.

The

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