The Early Years

I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

First things first

I was born into a family of loving parents, privileged in a way that the Western world doesn't usually see on a television advert about Africa.  My early childhood recollection was loving parents that loved each other and a house full of laughter. My parents were both tertiary educated people with ambition for their children, great friendship and to me appeared very much in love. I would later realise I searched to model this relationship in my life. 

My family are passionate people a bit like the Italians. We love our food, we love family debates and no one speaks below volume number 5.  I am the eldest of four children, originally five but one was recalled at the end of his tour of duty on earth when he was only two years of age. 

He has plans for me?

My earliest memory of sensing something wasn’t quite right with my family is maybe when I was six or seven years old. I remember my father being brought home, in a metaphorical straight jacket, by medics from the United Kingdom. He had been away to study when he had a mental breakdown and had to be brought home. Isn't it funny how when you discover something about your life, it sometimes becomes the core of who you later embrace or battle to overcome. I have observed when an experience happens it causes a single thought to occur. This thought may be a word, an image, a memory, or even all three scrambled together which has a huge potential to define who you later become.

My father was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. This moment, I would later discover, was the defining moment of the discovery of a self image I would battle with for most of my years.

It’s difficult to accurately paint a picture of what life was like for me, for most times I was happy but I would be confused the times my father relapsed into a mental health crisis. My father was my buddy, he taught me to understand my value and worth. At the back of my mind however there was always an internal battle to curb the anxiety surrounding the resurfacing of the many faces of my dad.  Anxiety erodes you, it depletes you until you can no longer recognise yourself nor remember the original fear. My dad’s breakdowns initially were far and few between but would increase in frequency as he grew older.

Are we at war? 

The strength in most African cultures can at times be its greatest curse. Africans believe in community living, every older woman in the family is mum, every older man dad. To this end everyone somehow feels they have the permission and authority to voice opinions and issues directly into families even when it isn't their place to do so. 

My father’s relatives despised my mother.  It sometimes felt to me that I was fighting many wars on different fronts. To the young me, it was difficult to comprehend the anmosity when in my mind I naively felt it was time for the whole extended family to pull together. It was at this moment that seeds of rejections were sown that would have an impact on how I forged relationships. 

My mother is a strong woman, a visionary not afraid to voice her opinion. I have long come to accept that no matter how much I have fought it I have turned into my mother! In hindsight I can understand why she posed a threat to my paternal relations.  

Who am I?

It became apparent to me very quickly that my father was different. None of the other dads I knew visited the special hospital that became my dad’s temporal home because they had turned “funny”; well none that I knew of anyway. Isn’t it interesting how when you face issues it may appear that you are the only one going through stuff? I have since met more people than I could have ever imagined, at my young age, who have gone through issues of parental mental illness. 


At a young age I struggled to comprehend the many faces of my father,  the judgement of society and to wrap my head around what seemed like a tsunami of hatred spewing from my paternal family. It’s hard to embrace who you are when your identity rejects you.  

Nobody told me it had to be kept a secret. I just knew it was not something you could share with your friends in the playground or around their dinner table when you went for a sleep over. My experience has been that my culture generally will shun mental illness. It is not a “respectable” illness. I suspect people may have coped better if my father was bed ridden with a terminal illness! I have since recognised this attitude in some of the people from first world countries too. It’s that look of badly disguised discomfort and the careless ignorant statements made about people with mental difficulties. Sad judgement on the human race!

Round peg in a square hole

Society also has a funny way of helping you decide which box you fit in. My father was an intelligent educated man, providing for his family in a way that most fathers couldn’t. I learnt that this didn't count for much to society however "well to do" you considered yourself when your family included mental illness.

I can’t remember when it happened but the gossip started within my parents social circles. Their friends may have talked around their dinner tables and eventually the rumours filtered on the playground. Children are vicious. If parents could have the opportunity to eavesdrop children on the playground, they would be more careful about what they said in front of them.

What do you do when someone finds out about the thing you have worked hard to keep buried deep inside you? When you can't pretend anymore because someone knows? I noticed I was treated differently by some of my friends. (Some of my childhood friends however have remained close to me and transformed from friends to becoming my brothers and sisters).

One thing is certain, once in your lifetime you will get hurt, something or someone will take who you are and rip it into pieces, but through it all you have the choice to learn to be strong and no matter how often the waves come you hold on to the knowledge you were born to conquer. I however needed something to anchor to, something to give me hope something like a faith.

The turning point

My parents were strong Catholics. I was expected to meet the sacraments (if I forget to tell you about these remind me later) and to attend mass every Sunday. Catholicism shaped me but that is a story for another day, I have a lot of respect for Catholics. At the time I remember thinking he was a funny God if he wanted me to pray to him with all the dysfunction going on around me. I secretly resolved there was no God but never had the guts to voice it out. We had bishops, priests, nuns and all sorts in the family imagine what a devil child that would have made me.

It was in my sixth grade that I had a bit of a crisis as only a 10 year old could perceive. I lost my Brownie uniform belt, not the uniform, but the belt! It could only be in one place, the ironing room, this was one of those rooms my mother always kept shut especially when her friends came over because when you opened this room it looked like a clothes explosion had just occurred. It was this morning that I closed myself in this tiny room suffocating by the clothes around me that I said something like this to God, “Go on then, if you are there find that belt for me so I don’t lose points for my team at inspection”.... Silence. I got up and said something like “I thought as much”.  As I walked out of the laundry room I tripped and tumbled and fell head first, Brownie belt tangled around my feet!
There was something there after all.

It often takes years for our souls to become damaged and deeply wounded, and the healing process is the same. God’s ways cannot be compared to a microwave – I’ve learnt in some cases it operates much more like a slow cooker.