CHAPTER 1
The Beginnings of Who I Am

Reflecting on who and what has shaped you has the power to help you craft your future.

Everyone calls me Bola for short, but my full first name is Mojibola. As with most Nigerians, I have multiple names, and my first name was given to me by my paternal grandmother. It's a name from Yoruba culture in southern Nigeria and directly translates to, "I woke up to meet wealth." In Yoruba, the word wealth, "Ola," doesn't actually refer to money. Instead, it refers to the wealth associated with joy, happiness, abundance, and well-being. In many instances, when a child is named by the Yoruba, they're named based on the prayers, hopes, and aspirations the family has for this new child. When I reflect on this, I imagine that when my grandmother named me, she had many prayers and aspirations for me, especially given the day and age she lived in.

My paternal grandmother was the only grandparent I got to know. Two of my grandparents had died long before I was born and the third died when I was only four years old. So I grew up just knowing the one grandmother whom we affectionately called "Mama."

Mama was born in 1908 and got married young. She was the fifth of the seven wives my paternal grandfather had. (Yup, my grandfather had seven wives.) Polygamous families in Nigeria were quite the norm, and my family was no exception. Culturally, polygamy had a lot to do with financial and societal status. Marriages were brokered by fathers on behalf of their daughters; the fathers either felt they were making the best decisions for their daughters or they used these marriages as opportunities for financial gain in the form of steep bride prices. For the groom, the ability to marry multiple wives and to have several children was the perfect display of this financial and societal status. However, with multiple wives and children to feed, in many instances, that display of status was short-lived.

Mama was not formally educated under the then-British colonial system that is pretty much the mainstream standard in many parts of the world today. And by "not formally educated," I mean she couldn't read or write and was considered illiterate. As she barely spoke any English, the only words she was able to say to me in English were, "good girl." She just loved to say those words to me over and over again whenever she saw me. She was a petite little lady with tribal markings on her face and traditional tattoos in green patterns covering both her arms, and she was always dressed in her traditional Buba (blouse) and Iro (wrapper). In my eyes, Mama was the sweetest grandmother ever.

As a young woman in the earlier part of the 1900s living in a small town, her expectations were to get married, be a good wife, have children (preferably male children), and care for her family. Becoming an independent woman during that time was taboo. And it was even less possible for someone who was considered illiterate. Despite this, my grandmother managed to become a successful trader in her own right, traveling to different parts of Nigeria, trading her various goods, and in turn creating an income that she used to take care of herself and her children. When she wasn't traveling around trading goods, she was working on the family farm. You may be thinking it was a family farm with tractors, an irrigation system, and animal pens, but it wasn't that kind of farm. This was a small and simple farm powered by hard work, sweat, and hand tools. The "irrigation system" was the rain that fell from the sky.

For Mama, working was a necessity. I can imagine she encountered many financial (and marital) challenges as a mother of five children, one of the youngest of seven wives, and the wife of a husband who had this huge financial obligation of providing for several other children (my paternal grandfather had 18 children in total). She was part of an extremely large family where there was not enough money to go around to take care of all the wives and children. And so, it was not uncommon for mothers in these types of family settings to get creative and find ways to earn money so they could support their own children-and that was exactly what my grandmother did with her trading business.

When going to school became an option for her children, my grandfather was against it. He did not believe in the foreign education the "colonialists" had brought to Nigeria. He was not convinced of how it would help his children in the future. Plus, it was expensive, so off to the farm everyone went. My grandmother, on the other hand, despite her lack of education, wanted better for her children. She chose to do what she could to earn money so she could help some of her children get a formal education, despite the societal expectations that were set for her as a woman.

I remember as a teenager we would visit Mama in my dad's hometown of Oke-Mesi, a town located in the southwestern region of Nigeria in Ekiti state. It was a three- to four-hour drive from Lagos, the city we lived in. I was always excited to visit Oke-Mesi because I would get to see Mama and my dad's other siblings. At the time, Mama was well into her eighties and losing her memory. And while I didn't always understand everything she said in the dialect of Yoruba that she spoke, I would sit with her and listen to her tell me stories of her life and of people in the town.

Source: maps.google.com

If any of my aunties were around, they would also tell me stories of how strong Mama was and how she took care of her children. For instance, I learned that Mama gave birth to my uncle, my dad's younger brother, on her way to the family farm, which was a few miles from town and a journey she did on foot. She was with a few other women in my family, who helped her with the delivery. They found a clearing along the bush path and she gave birth right there, outside. I was told she cut the baby's umbilical cord, put him in the basket she was carrying, and then turned around and walked back home. This story blew my mind, especially when I think about how I delivered my own children-comfortably in a hospital bed with nurses, doctors, and plenty of anesthesia. This story shared by my aunties truly highlighted how strong of a woman Mama was.

I remember other times I would be visiting Mama and she would bring out these little wood carvings of her babies from decades ago who had died from one illness or the other. As she held the wood figures, she would cry profusely. I learned that it was quite common for women of her time and from our culture to have these types of carvings if they'd lost babies. She cried over these carvings all the way into her nineties because, as with any mother, she never forgot any of her children. Every time I saw her, she would always pray for me and pray for my future children. She wished me well in whatever I chose to do. Looking back, Mama was the first role model I had.

As I learned Mama's story of how she navigated her life as a young woman, one thing that became exceedingly clear to me as I visited was the big difference between my dad and his three sisters-particularly his twin sister. As a child, it just seemed normal that Mama didn't speak English and that she couldn't read or write. It also seemed normal that my dad's others sisters didn't speak English and they also couldn't read or write. But as I got older and started to realize these stark differences, I began to wonder, Why could my dad speak English and read and write while my aunties couldn't? Why did my dad have a PhD while his twin sister didn't even have an elementary school education?

As I began to ask questions, it became clear to me that it was because traditionally the value and expectations of the male child were not the same for the female child. If anyone was going to go to school, it would be the sons, who would later become the heads of households and decision makers in society. And the daughters-well, their expectations, much like my grandmother, were to get married, be good wives, have children (preferably male children), and care for their families. So that's just what happened. As a result, my aunties on my dad's side, in a sense, were punished by tradition.

When my grandfather finally agreed to formal education, my dad (who was 13 years old at the time) and later his younger brother, were the only ones who got to go to school, while his sisters remained at home. Today, despite the educational barrier between them, my dad and his twin sister remain best friends. But it's exceedingly clear that my aunt's life is much different from my dad's. She became a small-goods trader, traveling around the country selling her wares, just like Mama, and now lives a simple life back in their hometown. When I see her, our conversations are full of stories, and just like Mama, she calls me "good girl," using the few English words that she knows. I often wonder what my aunt could have become if her potential had not been limited and she had had the opportunity to receive the same education as my dad.

Looking back to when I was younger, I now realize why my education and the emphasis on me doing well in school was of utmost importance to my dad. For him, education was the key to getting out of poverty and changing the trajectory of his family. His educational...