SALVADOR, BRAZIL. Mother and daughter were enjoying a sunny Saturday afternoon in their backyard. They looked at each other tenderly, admiring the Afrocentric features of each other’s faces. The sun’s rays sparkled on their silver earrings, which swayed from side to side in the wind.
The daughter, sheltered in that comfortable position between her mother’s tights, was anxiously awaiting her braids, like someone waiting for summer in a harsh winter. That feeling reminded her of a flowing and maternal Kora melody she heard by the beach.
Strand by strand, her mother applied a generous amount of coconut oil and African shea butter in her daughter’s curly hair. She lathered her wise hands and colored the yard with that sweet fragrance. Through her fingers, passed the memories, the pain, the battles and the joy.
Mother and daughter, in that ancestral silence, understood each other. They knew that there was much more than words being shared at that moment. Those agile hands knew the way very well, like a compass indicating the paths of light. They knew where each braid should be.
In their memories, like the sounds of the ngoni, the mother’s fingers were healing and recreating. Mother and daughter felt united by a bond that transcended time and space. The braids came to life, giving light to darkness, they were like maps falling over the daughter’s slender shoulders, gaining routes and power.
The last nagô braids were finished with agility as the mother was securing the ends of the daughter’s curly brown hair and smearing them with babosa leaves. She kindly handed her daughter a yellow mirror with rounded corners, all in gold.
The little girl looked at herself and a smile slipped from the corner of her mouth. In her reflection, she saw the features of a young woman, but with the posture of an African-Brazilian queen.
Mother and daughter looked at each other and their pupils, like those beams of sunlight, shone brightly. They didn’t know it, but in those golden rays of sunlight, blazing in their eyes, their ancestors were celebrating an ancestral reunion.
