Written piece
The Pattern I Never Imagined
Daniella Liba Gamvah Pasiah
Cameroon
About this piece
This poem reflects what I learned from my grandmother, who first sewed dresses and later became a farmer. I worked with her on the farm, once avoided farming because of how hard it was, but later found myself studying agriculture in a new land with its own challenges.
Life folds the fabric differently,
stitching us into designs
we never expected to wear.
I grew up in Cameroon,
watching my grandmother sew.
Every thread carried possibility.
Every colour carried a story.
I watched her guide stubborn cloth beneath the needle,
stitch after stitch,
until scattered pieces became something whole.
Even the fabrics she once avoided using
could still become whole in her hands
when there was no other choice.
But my grandmother did not only learn to stitch cloth.
She learned to work the soil too.
During summers, my sister and I followed her to the farm,
our bodies carrying the weight of sun and earth.
I promised myself
agriculture would never become my life.
So I searched for futures far from the soil.
When other doors closed,
the soil opened one for me.
The very pattern
I never imagined would become mine.
I found myself far from home,
holding unfamiliar language in my mouth
like thread refusing the eye of a needle.
Before people saw my heart,
they saw my differences.
My accent.
My silence.
My unfamiliar stitching.
The soil I once tried to distance myself from
began teaching me something different.
That growth is patient.
That survival is its own kind of art.
That the same hands capable of stitching fabric
can also learn to cultivate the earth.
My grandmother and I
were never so different after all.
She stitched fabric into clothing.
I stitch myself into unfamiliar soil.
Sometimes the stitching still pulls tight.
Sometimes the pattern still feels unfinished.
But I think of my grandmother —
of the way different fabrics,
different colours,
different threads
could still become one cloth.
That is what life is:
not choosing every thread we are given,
but learning, despite the knots,
how to weave them
into something that still holds.