All the grandchildren of my maternal grandmother call her ‘Mama’. I was not around to know the reason why we should call her that way. From the time I understood that word, it was meant for her. However, when her grandchildren say ‘mother’ in general terms or talking to people, we normally refer that to our own mothers. Fortunately, it follows that I call my mother, ‘Usi’, big sister in our local tongue. So I was rescued from further confusion of having two Mamas at the same time.
As I have never met my paternal grandparents, she thus became the only blood grandmother I knew.
Grandmother married grandfather during the Second World War at the age of 30. In a place where the common marriage age for women was under 20, she was an exception. Actually, she had been beyond marriage at all. Firstly, by the standard of the society she lived in at that time. Secondly, grandfather, we were tol
