Smile for me

* CHAPTER ONE *

AMANDA' S POV

𝑫𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑫𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑫𝒊𝒏𝒈

I can hear my phone beeping like crazy. I pick up my phone to see a notification from my calendar

𝑫𝒆𝒄𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒚 𝒆𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕
𝑴𝒐𝒗𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒚 𝒚𝒊𝒌𝒆𝒔!

I cringe as I read the contents of the notification. The 𝒚𝒊𝒌𝒆𝒔 I put there was exactly how I felt at this moment.

When my mom first told me we were moving back to Nigeria I laughed in her face. I really thought it was a joke but the stern look on her face told me otherwise.

"Why are we leaving ? I thought we were happy here ? I thought you never wanted to go back there ? I don't want to leave !"
I folded my hands on my chest to show how serious I was, but my mom knows me too well.

"Sit down 𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒉𝒂" (beautiful)

I moved to sit close to my mother on the sofa. She was looking so tired and exhausted and I knew exactly why. She has been over working herself with this whole "moving back" thing. She needs to rest. She picked my hands and intertwined it with hers.

"Don't you miss home ? I mean your real home? So many things have changed backed there and our people want us back, they said we've forgotten who we are and have abandoned our people and all our traditions"

  I looked at her intensely

  "Mom you're lying , that's not why you want us to move back ! Tell me honestly , you don't have to lie to me anymore. I'm an adult and I'll understand you. I want to know why you want us to abandon everything we've built here just so we can go back to that place"

"We're not abandoning anything at all, we can rebuild our lives all over again, we still have each other"

I sighed and stood up from where I was sitting

  "𝒏𝒏𝒆 tell me the truth" ( mother )

  She smiled softly at me. My mom always loves it when I speak 𝒊𝒈𝒃𝒐 especially when I call her that.

She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders in defeat.

"I wanted to tell you this a long time ago but I didn't want you to worry" she was biting her lips and playing with the tips of her 𝒂𝒏𝒌𝒂𝒓𝒂 wrapper I got her for Mother's Day. (ankara wrappers are popular in Nigeria and the whole of Africa)

"Tell me what mommy, what happened?"  I walked towards her and sat down where I was sitting before. I looked at her face, she looked really worried.

"A month ago, my school decided that at the end of the school year some teachers were going to be shortlisted, and some subjects scrapped form the curriculum. As soon as we got that notification I was really scared for my self."

She looked at me with sad eyes. When we first got here, my mom had already applied for a teaching job in one of the high schools here , St Philip's High School ( SPHS for short ). She was really interested in this school because it was a Christian school like the one she taught Christian studies in Nigeria and apart from that; they were open to changes and accepted criticism from everyone including teachers especially when it was for their benefit so when my mom suggested to them that some Nigerian languages like 𝑰𝒈𝒃𝒐 and 𝑯𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒂 be taught for some of the Nigerian students in the school, they accepted it with open arms, she was over joyed, so she taught 𝑰𝒈𝒃𝒐 language as well as Christian Religious Studies (CRS).