Between Two fires
A Tribute to the Women Who Leave and Build
They say when a woman marries,
she leaves behind more than just her last name.
She leaves her village,
her mother's language,
her childhood cooking stones,
and the way the sun used to rise on her side of the world.
My mother is Kumam.
My father, Lango.
But this story isn't just theirs.
It belongs to every woman who left home not in shame, but in sacrifice.
She didn’t just marry a man.
She married his customs.
His people.
His silences.
His family’s judgments.
The unspoken expectations of an entire clan.
She learned new greetings,
how to peel cassava their way,
what words to use and not use.
She laughed when they laughed even when she didn’t get the joke.
She swallowed her accent and made room for theirs.
But make no mistake:
She didn’t become less.
She became more.
She stitched her identity into the gaps.
And in a compound where her name was foreign,
she planted herself like a tree
and raised a forest.
A Woman Who Leaves Still Carries
She may change her clothes,
but she still cooks with her mother’s measurements.
She may kneel in a different homestead,
but she still walks with the lessons of her grandmother.
She may whisper in Lango,
but when she’s alone she sings in Kumam.
Even when they say “our wife,”
she remains her own woman.
My Mother, The Bridge
My mother never stood at a podium.
She never raised her voice at the council.
But she built her speech into the way she packed our bags for school.
The way she kept quiet when angry.
The way she loved us hard and soft at the same time.
Her sermons were in the sacrifices
not the stories.
She gave me both strength and silence.
She gave me roots and reach.
And though I walk the world with a Lango name,
my spirit speaks Kumam when I cry.
Between Two Fires
To every woman who crossed the line between tribes,
who loved in a language not her own,
who raised children with customs she had to learn from scratch
this is for you.
You didn’t just adapt.
You rebuilt.
You didn’t just enter.
You endured.
You may have left your father’s gate,
but you opened many more for your daughters.
For My Mother
This article, this little earning
is just one way to say
I saw you.
I see you still.
When I speak boldly in class,
write poems,
dream big
I know that I come from a woman who did bigger things in quieter ways.
And I will honor you with every word I write.
For you didn’t just raise a daughter.
You raised a Lango heart
with Kumam roots
and the courage of a woman who built a home between two fires.