Gates Hub Blog

After reading a post from this blog about Healthy Friendships and Relationships , I decided to share my story. My name is Jumoke! This is my life in words. Photo by Stormseeker on Unsplash   LOVE OR NOT? I grew up in a home without love This won't be my portion, I swore My  mother was always broken and shattered She cried and suffered- that is all I can remember I promised to never fall in love So my heart would never be torn My mistake was to think it didn't matter as I got older He came into my life when I lacked a friend and partner I forgot my childhood take on love In ignorance, I gave it a chance, and what? My fear became reality with tears and scars The dotting young man became a dictator and heartless ruler I had made a mistake by considering love! This was her mistake, my mom My life was the epitome of my mother's She had endured life to protect her only daughter I failed her! I failed her!! I thought. What if my mistake wasn't loving? What if it was a mistake...

For the first part, CLICK HERE : Part 1 Part of the curses that usually followed a child of awua was infertility, surprisingly, Itohan conceived. Apparently, Ogie was never a cursed child of awua and till date no one knows who his father was.  There was a clash! It cost the life of Itohan who was heavily pregnant for Ogie's child. Osato's father was murdered, his mother was nowhere to be found. Sasint  on Pixbay In friendship, we are each others' primary confidants, motivators, and activity partners in life. They lost all they had but each other. They trained together to become warriors as they kept searching for their mother, originally Osato's mother. History has it that, in the course of searching they killed numerous threats. Their strength was watching out for each other. Mentally, either of them would have broken down or lost hope if they were alone; they were alive because they were friends. Life happens and we cannot always surmount the shades it throws at us...

  Photo by Kevin Gent on Unsplash . In 1900, the Benin Empire had been conquered by the British and was renamed 'Nigeria' as suggested by Flora Shaw in an article in The Times of London on January 8, 1897. Just before the defeat, there was a clan of personae non gratae, unaccepted outcasts whose actual name is yet to be known. What makes historians and archeologists inquisitive about this tiny bit of history? The clan started when a brother and sister went into exile in 1830 to avoid shame and death. A serene family, living in the middle of nowhere took them in thinking they were a couple- that was the impression they gave. The siblings committed incest, a taboo ( awua ) in the Benin culture. Esewie (the sister) was pregnant for a male child- Ogiemién. She died immediately after childbirth. Meanwhile, Degbueyi (the brother) kissed the dust a few days after their flee as though the punishment for their  awua  followed him. Ogiemién, however, grew up with the kind family a...