I am mosaic
By Dianne Danquah
I still cut plantain the way an Aunty in Ghana (who I met once) taught me.
I still braid my hair the quicker way I was shown when I was supposed to be focusing on math equations.
I listen to some musicians because my brother played them out loud or shall I say “put me on”, as he likes to boast.
When I finally learn to drive, I will always park “ready to leave”, as my mum does, because her dad told her to.
As much as I am me….I am mosaic.
I’m sure you know what a mosaic is, but for the sake of this piece, I’ll rejig your memory. Mosaic art is the creation of a larger picture using smaller pieces of glass, marble, tiles…..or coloured paper like we used in primary school.
Another definition of the same concept is “a combination of many different parts forming one thing”. By design that is what human beings are. We are genetically made up of a part of our mother and a part of our father, who was made up of a part of their mothers and fathers, who were in turn made up of a part of their mothers and fathers. I could go on forever, but I’m sure you get the gist. Tracing back 10 generations, each person has 4,096 ancestors. Tracing back a further 10 generations from this point, we would have over a million. This is unfathomable to me. My brain simply cannot handle this reality.
Imagine the ways of life passed down through generations. Through the years, of course, new traditions are introduced, as others are viewed as archaic, but some things just become ingrained in our mosaic, cemented into our beings.
Outside of family ties, influence is everywhere. Through YouTube and now TikTok, someone in another country can teach us how to do something, without ever knowing our names. When we were younger and the internet wasn’t as developed, it was everyone around us that contributed to our mosaic. Our teachers, friends, neighbours and experiences (that told us to repeat something or made us learn our lesson). When I was around 6 years old, I remember vividly a strong lesson I learnt. As children love to explore, my wondering eye caught something on the kitchen counter. So, I took my little self and climbed up the counter. I took a small bite……, as the taste dispersed through my mouth, I either screamed or began to cry. It wasn’t cheese like I had thought it was, it was laundry detergent. To this day, I don’t really like cheese, unless it’s on pizza or in a burger. I wonder why…
When we get older it seems the mosaic is complete. But the funny thing is we often don’t see it in its true form, rather we look at it from 10,000 feet above the ground when it looks like one big picture. I like inspecting my mosaic, it reminds me that I am not an isolated being and I’m not self-made. Being self-made is the desired state in this neoliberalist world, it seems to be a bigger achievement if someone says, “I made it here by myself”.
I don’t know everyone’s story, maybe some people are “self-made” - who am I to say they aren’t? But I have a small inclination, that even if they can’t recognise it, someone contributed to where and who they are today. There’s no shame in that. In fact, I think that makes an even better story. Are we not in awe of mosaic art? The collection of smaller pieces that form a larger picture, each telling stories of origin.
Daily our mosaic is being created and the process will probably never stop until we leave this earth. We will all go to new places, meet new people, and do new things. As much as others will contribute to your mosaic, you will contribute to theirs, in ways you may never know.
I’m sure the Aunty I met once in Ghana, 15 years ago who taught me to slice my plantain in the middle and cut it diagonally, while I hold it in its skin, didn’t realise the small culinary habit she left on a little girl.
