A car pulled up to the gate. It was Uncle Chibuzo, their father’s oldest brother. He drove his shiny green BMW into the compound and parked it beside their father’s black Honda.

“Ugonna, Sunny, how are you?” he asked, hopping out.

“Fine,” they both said, each giving him a hug.

“How is school? Studying hard?”

“Yes, sir,” Ugonna said.

“Always,” Sunny said.

“I hear your brother went off to university today.”

“Yes,” Ugonna said. “He’s probably meeting his hostel mates right now.”

“You should be proud.”

“We are,” Sunny said. She gently kicked the soccer ball up, kneed it, and caught it in her hands.

“You are pretty good,” Uncle Chibuzo said. “You want to be like your older brother?”

“No,” Sunny said. “He’s not as good as me.”

Uncle Chibuzo laughed heartily. Too heartily. Pff, he has no idea, Sunny thought, annoyed. She wished he’d been there when she’d made five goals in a row last week playing with her classmates.

“This way,” Ugonna said, taking the lead.

Their father had been expecting their uncle, and he was already waiting in the living room. As they greeted each other, slapping hands and laughing, Sunny and Ugonna tried to sneak away.

“Sunny,” Uncle Chibuzo said, “bring kola.”

Ugonna silently laughed, covering his mouth. And as Sunny turned away, she rolled her eyes. The ceremony of breaking the kola nut, more simply called “breaking kola,” always relegated her to servant because she was always the youngest girl in the house. “Whatever,” she muttered, going to the kitchen.

She placed a kola nut on the small wooden plate. Then she added a large dollop of peanut paste and a small pile of alligator pepper on the side. She brought it out to her uncle and father and tried her best not to look as irritated as she felt.

“Ah, kola has come,” her uncle ceremoniously said, smiling wide with all his teeth.

“Very good,” her father added.

Ugonna just stood there, clearly as impatient to have this over and done with as Sunny. She stood before her uncle because the kola was always presented to the oldest man in the room. She held the plate steady so that the balls of alligator pepper wouldn’t roll off.

“Look at you presenting it like a miserable human being,” her uncle snapped. “Wake up. This is not just something your elders do. It’s an important ritual. You young people don’t know anything.”

Sunny wanted to heavily protest. She wanted to say that she knew more old ways than he ever would. She’d faced real masquerades and had her own juju knife, for goodness sake.

“Kola is important,” her uncle said. “Not just to Igbo, to all Nigerians. The Yoruba grow it, the Hausa chew it, Igbos talk and talk about it. For us, Ndi Igbo people, the kola nut, the oji, symbolizes pure intention. It connects us to our ancestors. Oji is the channel of communication beyond the physical world and into the spirit world. Nothing starts without breaking kola.”