✨🌬🔥The ancestors are my backbone🌬🔥✨ ••••••••• 👑 queen mother, Iyoba Idia, of the Benin/ Nigerian empire. This was; birth place of Yoruba Culture. The @africanancestry test I took said that my family was of the Tikar tribe of Cameroon. In the late 1400s, Portuguese exploration, colonization, and pillaging came to the shore of the Ivory Coast. While many countries unaware of the onslaught that would be the transatlantic slave trade was just beginning to show its seed of depravity in the rich black soil, Idia didn't send Ivory or slaves to the Europeans, she sent her ONLY SON. Unfortunately, while Southern tribes like the Tikar were being captured, Idia saw a way out through Magic, Knowledge, and straight up BADASSERY🙌🏾 She saw that the Portuguese would take and take so she SENT HIM THERE, leading in battle and her court FEROCIOUSLY so her son could take the opportunity to rise above the ranks of the leaders prior to him; he was recovering knowledge from all corners of the world, learning the tricks and trade of the people who'd eventually try to push North from Cameroon into Nigerian territory to enslave free cultured people. While her son was aboard learning the ways of the world, Iyoba Idia was a WARRIOR QUEEN. She sure up their borders, protecting her people establishing the city of Bini, now Benin. Of course, as we know, slavery overtook the ivory coast once the more countries arrived, mainly the Brits and Dutch. With them, they brought strife and stripped us of our cultural identity, our heritage, our land, birthrights, and names but today we can learn from the past. This is just ONE part of Idia’s story; her life was a mystically technicolored tapestry and because of women like her I know that I HAVE TO and CAN go above and beyond my own dreams or expectations. Her spirit, her story has moved me since I was a child. Her face is a reflection of my own. Her Ori is one with mine. #iyobaidia https://www.instagram.com/p/BtxXswPF-Sc/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=88oalefneniy