Where do I start to tell the story of Showgirl? Is it the day she was born, the first daughter of her mother or the day when she first danced and earned that nickname showgirl that was to be her moniker for the rest of her short life? Is it the years of toil and grime? Or endless days in the farm outside of Benin, where her mother planted yams, melon, cassava and plantain to feed their ever increasing family. Or that shade in the market where her mother sold yards of clothes that Showgirl sometimes had to watch so her mother could run the various errands life sent her on?
Do I tell Showgirl’s story from the times she attempted to write the SSCE? Did she fail because she had no head for books or because she spent too many hours in the farm or the market store that she came home too tired for anything other than her bed? Still she attempted to make something of herself. She signed up for computer classes.
However, she soon was disillusioned with this. She saw no way out of the abiding poverty except an escape to Europe. After all, everyday all around her she saw young men and women return from Europe with great wealth. They built houses for their families, bought cars and generally screamed success. All they said was required was handwork and a determination to succeed and did Showgirl not have all of these in abundance?
So she sat her mother down and sold her the idea, her mother cried and begged but her plea fell on deaf ears. Showgirl’s mind was made up. Her mother went out and borrowed some money. It was an investment so that their future might be better.
Showgirl left on a fine day, she told her mother the trip would only take three days but it was to take her a lifetime. She never even saw Europe, only the lights of Italy and Spain as she stood on the Libyan shore.
For three years, she suffered through the Libyan experience as she searched for a sponsor to take her across the sea to the life she had sacrificed so much for. Her mother begged her to return home but she wouldn’t or couldn’t. The desert spirit had completely taken her over. It was Europe or bust.
Back home, her poor mother had not heard from her in six months and was almost frantic with worry until one day when a car pulled up outside their house. Out of it came a woman who said she knew Showgirl. She said she has moved to Morocco and that her son was willing to sponsor her. However, her mother had to go swear in a shrine that her daughter would definitely pay back the outrageous sum charged for ferrying her to Europe.
Swear in a shrine? It went against everything her mother believed, no, she wasn’t a Christian at the time, she served the gods of her forebears but an oath was not a dimension she had strode before. They wouldn’t let this woman speak to her child without this oath and what would a mother not do for her child?
So she swore and she did speak to Showgirl but it was one of the last times. Not too long after she was called away from her farm to say her daughter was sick. She ran to the phone booth and heard the dying voice of her first daughter. Mummy she said, I should have come home and now I die in a strange land.
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