The Mapmaker’s Daughter

My father made maps that were technically wrong.

He didn’t put in roads or street names. He drew the city the way people remembered it.
Here was the mango tree where I fell and learned to ride a bike.

Here was the corner shop that gave free sachets of water when NEPA took light.
Here was the bench where Grandma told stories until the stars came out.

People came to him when they were moving away. “Can you draw my Port Harcourt?” they’d ask.
He’d sit with them for an hour, listening, then hand them a sheet of paper with blue ink and places that didn’t exist on Google.

When he passed, he left me two things: a box of pens and a half-finished map.
It was of our own street. But the center was blank.

For months I couldn’t touch it. What was I supposed to fill in?

Then one Saturday, my neighbor’s daughter knocked. She was maybe 10, holding a notebook.
“Aunty, can you show me where the best rain puddles are? For paper boats.”

I laughed and took the pen. I drew the gutter by the school. I drew the big crack in the pavement by the church. I drew where the sun hits the wall in the afternoon and dries them fastest.

She took the map, ran off, and came back the next day with three other kids.
“Can you add the place where Mr. Tunde sells the sweetest gala?”

That’s how the blank got filled. Not by me. By all of us.
Now the map is messy, crowded, with arrows and notes in different handwriting. It’s wrong by every official standard.

But it’s the only map I’ve seen that tells you where to find home.