A Remedy of Love
By Rich Knight


Ediomi. In Nigeria it means God’s covenant. And at age 7, Ediomi Utuk, the child of Nigerian immigrants living in a moderately cozy apartment in South Orange, N.J., needs God more than ever. She has sickle cell anemia, and it rattles her insides. The anemia toys with her deficient red blood cells, making her tremble all over.

But as the pain ricochets through her entire body, her parents ask God for the strength and courage their second daughter will need to make it through the night. She’s been couch-ridden for the past two weeks. “Drink to stay healthy, eat to gain energy,” her father says in a powerful Nigerian accent, as a sort of mantra. Her eyelids begin to flutter. She dozes off.

Sickle cell anemia, while present in more than 8 percent of the black population at birth, is still the last thing on Affiong Utuk’s mind as she carries Ediomi’s older sister, Eviongo, inside her when leaving her homeland in Nigeria. It is 1980, and her husband, Efiong, has been in America for more than a year, getting an education after receiving a scholarship from the Trinity Theological College in Nigeria for his excellent academic achievements. But he’s not here to snag the coveted “American dream.” No, at this point, Efiong doesn’t even know what the American dream is. What he does know, though, is that education is the intelligent man’s gold.

In order to raise the blessed family he desires, he has to take all the opportunities he can get. So when Louisville Seminary School in America saw his stellar grades and offered to ship him over for a free education, he took the ticket to pursue his dreams of one day becoming a pastor.

When Affiong arrived in America and the baby was born, it was official—her first child was now another member to uphold the family’s anemic tradition as it runs in their history. The past catches up with you, even in America, the land of hopes and dreams.

It is 1987, and Eviongo, who is only 3, is now very sick. Back in Nigeria, the corresponding villages might have provided some sort of comfort to alleviate some of the pain. Here in the states, with no relatives and no tribe in at least a 3,000 mile radius, the three of them are trapped. To add to their misfortune, their accents are strong, and alienation is beginning to set in. They are immigrants. They are Americans. They are everything in between.

The health care they are getting in America is too precious a commodity to pass up, and treatment for sickle cell in Nigeria is not as effective as it is here—village aid or no village aid—so the couple is stranded in this foreign land with little relief but each other.

The parents get multiple jobs, with the father preaching and working at a library and the mother working as a nurse’s assistant. While they both speak English, it is a bit rough around the edges. With the birth of her daughters, Affiong vowed to teach her children English instead of her own native Nigerian language. English is the language of her children’s future, and she feels it would only burden them to live with the African heritage when there’s so much available for them here in the States.

And now Ediomi, the second child in the Utuk family, carries the sickle cell trait. An American baby with the lifeblood of Nigeria coursing through her with the crippling anemia itself, she tosses and turns on the couch uncomfortably, struggling to make sense of this vile recessive gene inside of her, tearing her up like confetti.

But when she finally wakes up the next morning, the pain has subsided. Her loving family is rubbing her relaxed forehead. This small, close-knit family at her side, waiting for her to awaken, this is her own native tribe.

Her family waits for her to get better, praying together, and using the only remedy that they do have in abundance:

Love.

http://www.newarkmetro.rutgers.edu/r...lay.php?id=179