Original children's story set near Owerri, Imo, about the Mbari clay-house tradition (original work; not a transcription of any oral text)
Chidera liked to keep things. In his room in Manchester he kept football stickers, bus tickets and every drawing he had ever made, in a box under the bed. "Everything I make, I keep," he told his mother.
So when they visited his great-aunt Mama Adaku outside Owerri, in Imo State, and she told him about the house of clay, he did not understand it at all.
"When I was a girl," Mama Adaku said, "the elders of our village chose some men and women to build an Mbari. Do you know what that is?"
Chidera shook his head.
"It is a house for Ala, the earth. Not a house to live in. A house of gifts. Open on all sides, with a roof, and inside, figures made of clay. Life-sized. Painted. Ala herself sitting in the middle with a child on her knee. Amadioha, who sends the thunder. Farmers, drummers, a woman carrying a pot, a man on a bicycle, animals, even a leopard. Everything we knew, made in clay."
"Who made them?"
"The chosen ones. They went away from the village to build it, and nobody was allowed to see until it was finished. It took years. They dug the clay from anthills, because anthill clay is strong, and they built and painted and built." She smiled. "I carried water for them once. I was not supposed to look, but I looked."
Chidera's eyes were round. "Then what? Is it still there? Can we go and see it?"
"No," said Mama Adaku. "It is gone."
"Gone? Somebody broke it?"
"Nobody broke it. The rain did. The sun did. That was the plan. When the Mbari was finished there was a great feast, and then the people walked away and never repaired it. Every rainy season it melted a little more, until it went back into the ground it came from."
Chidera was horrified. "But they worked for years! Why would you make something so beautiful and let it fall down?"
Mama Adaku looked at him for a long moment. Then she said, "Tomorrow we go to town."
In Owerri, at the Mbari Cultural Centre, there was a Mbari house built to last, with cement in the clay, so visitors could see what one looked like. Chidera walked slowly between the figures. Ala was there, calm and large. The thunder god. A woman with twins. The colours were bright: red earth, white chalk, black, yellow.
"This one is kept," he said, relieved.
"Yes, so children like you can see. But this is a picture of an Mbari. A real one is a gift, and a gift is not a gift if you keep it. When you made that drawing for your teacher, did you keep it?"
"No. I gave it to her."
"Was it less beautiful because you gave it away?"
Chidera was quiet. Then: "It was more. She put it on the wall."
"The people who built the Mbari were saying thank you to the earth for the yams and the rain and the children. You cannot say thank you by keeping. You say it by giving. And the earth took the gift back, slowly, the way she takes everything, and gave them a new harvest."
On the last day of the visit, Chidera dug some red clay from behind Mama Adaku's kitchen and made a small figure of a boy carrying water, the way she had done as a girl. He painted it with white chalk. Then he set it in the garden, at the foot of a pawpaw tree, in the open, where the rain would reach it.
"You are not taking it to Manchester?" said his mother.
"No," said Chidera. "It's for here."
What you give to the earth, the earth gives back in its own time.
Moral: Not everything beautiful is meant to be kept. Some things are made to be given, and the giving is what makes them beautiful.
Original story for AllAboutAfrica. Try it at home: make something with your child and give it away the same day. Talk about how that feels.