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I need to establish a story to get you in track before you can fully understand the meaning of my “nickname”, given to me by my mom.

I am a gift to humanity. That is my nickname, Gift. The name is “Wumpini”, translated from Dagbani, the native language of the Dagomba ethnic group of the northern region of Ghana 🇬🇭.
I am a gift of my mother, and also from my mother, to humanity.

The back story.

Why or how am I a gift?

There lived a beautiful young lady, borne into a family of 9 siblings including herself. She was the middle child, of 4 brothers and 4 sisters.
Two of the brothers being twins and two of the sisters also being twins. Blessings in order.

The young lady loved her siblings very much and will not stop about how they’re a perfect balance of siblings. She feels blessed to be in the middle of this perfect arrangement of siblings.
Later on in life she had to move across the country to the northern part of the country from down south in the coastal region (central region) to live with her uncle’s wife (her father’s brother’s wife) for only heaven knows how long.
She would always complain to her auntie how she misses her siblings. And tell her auntie how she thinks she has a perfect family. An equal number of brothers as sisters(for her. How she dreams to have children like that of her own someday.

Fast forward later on, she was enrolled in a community school and when she got off age (about 20 years old) she met a man who’d just come from studies from Kuwait. This man was on the board of her school and also was a supervising tutor. The man was doing pretty well for himself, you know, just coming from abroad. They got talking and the man had to go back to continue his studies. When he comes back this time he was coming back for good.
This lady, no different from any lady, was not talking to one man but what had made this guy win was the fact that he promised her a brand new sewing machine, it would be one of its kind and he would bring it on his return to the country.
Still holding tight to her dreams of a perfect family and arrangement of children, it wasn’t long until the man came back and really brought the sewing machine. It was as he had said it was. One of its kind in the whole town if not the region.
This man had proven himself and the young lady was off her feet. So it was a “yes” to the magic question.

Then my mom and dad got married.

A step closer to the “point”.
In my mom’s perfect family of siblings arrangement the first born is a man, followed by a female, then twins(all men), then my mom, then a male, then a female, and then another set of twins (all females). This makes it four boys and four girls and then my mom.

We’re here!

Her prayers were that her first born should be a boy(so that he can take care of his younger siblings) and then there should be a mixture of boys and girls, like her and her own siblings.

Lo and behold! Her prayers were answered but not quite, because even though the first born came out a boy he didn’t make it over 18months and passed away. (My people will say, “and went back”) Quite difficult time for my mom it was.
She tried again but this time it came out a bouncing baby girl.
Then she tried again and the next one was also a baby girl.
Then a third baby girl.

Don’t get me wrong they loved them all but my mom was looking forward to some mixture of both sex in her children so she resorted to doing several acts of worship and praying for a boy.

Now I was ready to come out and see the world and give my blessings.
So on the four try; after the third girl I came out. Happiest day for my mom. The joy I brought her. She thanked God for the blessing.

My mom would introduce her new born(me) to people as “God’s gift”(WUMPINI, in our local dialect). She would play with me and be calling me her gift from God. Finally my mom had the child of her dreams for years, a boy, me, WUMPINI.

This is how my nickname “Gift” came about!

My mom passed away about three years after she had me when she conceived twins and had a compilation during delivery. My sisters and aunties told me.

Thank you if you read this far.