Cry, just cry.

From Europeana on Unsplash.

Next Sunday, when everybody is at church, Mngueshima will rise from her bed and walk to the drawer where all the documents of her educational achievements are kept. She will pack her certificates and stare at them for long before she will begin. She will tear them to pieces starting from her master’s degree certificate down to the First School Leaving Certificate. She will tear them one by one till there is no hope of ever joining them together. She will do all this with her face expressionless.

She will then bring out the shredded papers to the front of the house and make a fire. As the flames will dance from side to side, Mngueshima will feed them with the pieces of her shredded credentials dropping them into the fire one after another like one throwing pebbles into a stream.

While she is feeding the fire with evidence of her schooling, her mother will return from church and ask her what she is burning. Mngueshima will reply that it is some waste papers which she is tired of keeping. Her mother would shrug and say something about missing Sunday service before walking into the house. Msaan, Mngueshima’s brother will walk in and recognize a piece of the NYSC certificate and shout. Mngueshima’s mother will come rushing out of the house asking what happened and Msaan will explain. He will paint his explanation so much that it will sound as if Mngueshima had committed a treasonable felony.

“This girl, you want to kill me,” Mother will say putting her hands on her head that way people do when someone dies. Mngueshima will remember she had said the same words when their neighbor’s son who lives in America had asked that Mngueshima be sent to him as a wife and Mngueshima had refused.

Everyone will gather round Mngueshima in their beautiful-looking Sunday wears. Everyone will be shocked at what Mngueshima had done. The youngest of the siblings will pick a stick and scatter the fire as if to check if one of the certificates had miraculously survived and was hiding underneath.

“Mngu, how will Mr Asue help you now? He promised to see what he can do,” Mngueshima’s aunty - Sewuese, who had slept with almost everyone willing to employ her and yet was unemployed, would ask.

Mngueshima will remember Mr Asue—a tall, lanky man with cracked lips who smelt of something between gin and processed cassava. And because the man worked in the office of the chairman of the State Civil Service Commission, Mngueshima had visited him with her Aunty Sewuese so that the man could help her secure a job. They had stayed for some minutes when Aunty Sewuese remembered she needed to buy something and asked Mngueshima to stay back while she went off to get it.

The man had then come directly and asked Mngueshima to “remove your panties so that we can do fast before she returns.” It had been a plan which infuriated Mngueshima a lot when she discovered. It will make Mngueshima huff that her aunt still had the shameless temerity to say it.

The family members will stand still, waiting for Mngueshima to give them the reason for her action. The fire will gradually die down having feasted on all the shredded credentials which she had acquired over many years. The papers which had the powers to pronounce her qualified or not. The papers which Mngueshima’s parents had starved and denied themselves pleasures to pay for her to acquire. The papers which many people longed to achieve. The papers on which were written the words ‘second class upper division’. The papers that proved that Mngueshima was found worthy in character and learning. Everyone will wait for an answer.

Mngueshima will remember the numerous times she had taken the credentials from town to town, office to office and yet no good had come out it. She would also remember the people she knew who didn’t have such papers yet worked in places where they paid them hundreds of thousands of naira.

Mngueshima would also want to tell them that there were people who did not hold claim to the least of such papers yet lived the life she longed for and only knew would be hers in the afterlife. She would want desperately to tell her family members what had led her to do what she did.

“We need to go and see the pastor,” Mother will start. “It’s like my enemies are winning. This is the work of the devil.”

Mngueshima will remember the pastor very well and hiss. A long hiss that will surprise her mother and make her open her mouth in surprise. It is the same pastor her mother sent her to for prayers some months back. The same pastor who had struggled with her in the office, begging her to allow him to insert the cap only. The same pastor who got Matilda pregnant and had forced her to abort the baby. The same pastor who had told Mngueshima that his wife’s vagina was too large and watery and oozed an unpleasant smell just to have sex with her. Mngueshima will want to tell her mother, but she wouldn’t because her mother will never believe.

Msaan will walk away, muttering loudly about how Mngueshima needs to be taken to a psychiatrist. This will hurt Mngueshima, and she would want to speak, but the words would get stuck in her throat. She would look at Msaan and wish he knew her pains. The pain of graduating on top of your class and yet having nothing to do to earn a living. The pain of knowing much yet not producing results. Mngueshima will wish Msaan knew the pain of seeing your parents, who went through hell to pay for your education wallow in penury and yet being unable to cater for them. Mngueshima will bow her head to hide the tears clouding her eyes. Her mother will still stand beside her, expecting an explanation. She would watch her daughter bow her head and would shake her head and walk into the house.

“You are a total disgrace to this family,” Aunty Sewuese will say. “What have we not done to help you? We are hoping you will bring us some happiness, but it is obvious there’s an evil spirit in you. You are too foolish. Where on earth has it been held that someone tore her certificates and burnt the pieces?”

The insults will hit Mngueshima hard, and she will turn and look at her aunty sternly—a poring look filled with rage. And yet Mngueshima will not feel that her aunt had insulted her. She would believe it was her country that had insulted her. A country where the qualified were always ignored and the favoured considered. A country where the voice of one man was always louder than the voices of more than two hundred million people. A country where one person could steal billions of naira and no one would raise an eyebrow. A country where the rich keep making friends within their circles while the poor keep fighting each other.

Mngueshima will know that whatever insults she has received in her life had been caused by her country. Aunty Sewuese will say more words of disdain before flouncing into the house.

Mngueshima will wipe the tears flowing down her cheeks with the back of her palm. She would want to sob but would kick against it. Mngueshima will turn round and see her youngest sibling still standing there with the stick in hand. The little girl will slowly sit down beside her elder sister and put her arm round Mngueshima. She would hold her tightly like a mother trying to give a child a hug of assurance.

Mngueshima would look at the girl trying to fight the tears in her eyes from flowing down her cheeks. Like one who has been looking for the right thing to say for a long time, the little girl will whisper into Mngueshima’s ear, “Cry, just cry.”

Mngueshima will open her mouth and bawl.