Head Above Water

I discovered Buchi Emecheta one muggy Saturday morning, sitting behind a long table in the refectory of Uzommiri Study Center, an Opus Dei club for children in Enugu where I grew up, to which I went faithfully every weekend. I believe Uzommiri was only for girls (or maybe boys came on a different day) and our activities often involved arts and craft, games and baking. I don’t recall any of the games we played or the craft we made or what we baked but I remember sitting in front of a screen and being mesmerized by the story of this Nigerian woman in England who was both a single mother and a writer.  In my memory, the documentary showed her children, spread out like tentacles around her. Years later, when I started writing in Belgium as a young mother, I drew strength knowing that Emecheta had done it before me and had done it successfully under more trying circumstances.

Buchi Emecheta was born Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta on July 21, 1944, in Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria. Coming two months early, she had not been expected to survive. Her mother, Alice Ogbanje Ojebeta Emecheta was a former slave girl, sold into slavery by her brother to a relative in another town to raise money for silk head ties for his coming-of-age dance. (Ogbanje Emecheta’s story is the inspiration for Emecheta’s 1977 novel, Slave Girl.) When her mistress died, Ogbanje Emecheta returned home to freedom. She trained as a seamstress. She married Jeremy Nwabudinke, a railway worker. The couple moved from Umuezeokolo, Odanta, Ibusa (now Delta State), their ancestral home, to the then-capital city of Lagos to seek their fortune. They had two children, Buchi and her younger brother, Adolphus Chisingali Emecheta. Like many in their situation, the family went back to Ibusa during the holidays so their children could stay rooted in their culture, their values and their ancestors’ way of life. In Ibusa, Emecheta and her brother helped on the farm and listened to folktales.