Letter To Father

Dear Dad
It's hard to believe 7 years have passed since you left. It's feels like an eternity. It feels like yesterday.
For a long time i was angry and bitter and self-destructive. If you had ruined my life as i knew it, as i had planned it, I refused to rebuild.
Well intentioned people told me to pull my socks off. Time would heal the wound. You can't grieve forever. Get over it.
Well intentioned people, who've never experienced loss, for most part talk rubbish.
Off course you can grieve forever. Off course the pain doesn't feel so raw. But it doesn't disappear. Nothing fills the void. No one fills the void.
I waited for a phone call or a card for my birthdays although i knew it couldn't be.
I resented (and still do sometimes) "complete", "whole" families no matter how dysfunctional.
You broke my heart.

I went home last year for the first without you. I've just come back.
I had my first hands on experience of the whole NGOs and development business in Africa. You were right: it is messy, it is incoherent and sometime (often) harm full, it is frustrating. And just like you, I can't stand by and do nothing.
I'm working with an African Women's charity now. We've got everything to make our life difficult: Women, Black, speaking out on gender-based violence and talking about accessing positions of leadership!

I'm better now you know. I worry for the little sisters but that what big sisters do I guess.
I think we're doing more than OK. I think they are doing great. But that's normal they are my sisters. It has been hard but we've managed.We are stronger than we thought we were. And we have each other.
I wish you were here though. I wish you could see the person I have become and be proud of me.
I went home. Where i was born, where you are buried.
I went on your grave.I didn't remember the road was so steep. I didn't remember the cemetery was so small. I didn't remember the trees were so tall.
It took me nearly seven year to realise you would never be coming back.
I'm not angry anymore Dad. Not so bitter. I am trying to grow. The void is still there.

Unsettling settling

I haven't posted anything for the longest while. I have been lazy but i have been very busy. Really busy. Starting a new job, commuting to and back the new job, settling into the new job, house-hunting, moving into a new flat, buying furniture, moving into new offices, unpacking at home and at work....
In the next few weeks when i have an Internet connection at home I will be able to post the content of my Togolese notebooks and rectify the fairly bleak image i seemed to have painted of my time there.

In the mean time, being a London girl is no easy task:

In the train at peak time one morning, a handsome man dressed in a sharp grey suit, white shirt, grey tie, with a leather brief case. I'm already fantasising about our lavish life style in our £1 million property.
Ticket inspectors come aboard and ruin my imaginary romance:
Prince Charming didn't have a ticket and got fined.


Last week in the bus, sitting next to a dashing, no ring on his left hand, young man, reading!
My heart skipped a beat.
And another
He was reading Diametics: The Original Theory" by L.Ron Hubbard, founder of the Scientologist Church.
I do read Science-Fiction but I am not ready to make it my religion.