Carrying my Heritage. by A. Gautam "The tortoise said that trouble is its own; that's why it carries trouble on its back."

An Igbo Proverb

Mama tells me stories from long ago

The words she carried in her mouth

From her mother who heard it

Perhaps, from the first mother ever

She doesn't wear a mask to dance

But her face bears traces of our past

I ask her for another story

About the thirteen months in our calendar

"Our time is our own, son," she says.

"Tomorrows are carried in yesterdays."

Her closed eyes take me to my land

I am an Igbo again,

Perfectly happy under the open sky

Content underneath my skin

Stories echoing in my blood

Speak of my great grandmother

Beyond the things I see and I don't

Bigger than the pigments and fragments

Of my immigrant identity,

I am whole again, home again.

Based on this poem, the Igbo people

A. value honesty and hard work.

B. have a rich oral tradition.

C. consider nature as divine.

D. do not migrate very often.