MANTALK: Help a mother, build a society

An encounter with a struggling mother and her son offers perspectives on how we all should treat women and their children. ILLUSTRATION| JOSEPH NGARI

What you need to know:

  • The sky was getting dark with heavy clouds and it seemed it would pour at any moment.
  • There was good chance that they would be rained on if it poured in the next 20 minutes. But they seemed unperturbed, like they only had each other and it was enough.
  • I pictured that boy earlier, sitting by his mum’s feet as she roasted maize or sold beans and chapatis to construction workers.

I was sitting in traffic the other day, riding shotgun in a lady’s car. The sun had set and traffic was slow. The streetlights were on and light spilled onto the sidewalks and splashed on the road. It was a beautiful evening. We were headed to the bar to listen to rhumba because it was Rhumba Night and I grew up listening to rhumba. She hates it so I dragged her along because the world needs as many rhumba lovers as it can have and we are entrusted with the task of recruitment – I mean, how else will the Congolese feed their children? This is more than music; this about the preservation of a people.

So there we were, crawling along in the traffic on one of the lovely bypasses our government has built. My elbow was cocked outside the window and I was staring at the people walking on the paved sidewalks. Then I saw this tall woman carrying what seemed like her wares in a small gunny-bag slung across her back. She had a leso tied around her waist. She was with a child, a small boy of about four. He was being a baby – restless and playful, running and giggling around her, tagging at her leso as they walked slowly to wherever it is they were going.

The sky was getting dark with heavy clouds and it seemed it would pour at any moment. There was good chance that they would be rained on if it poured in the next 20 minutes. But they seemed unperturbed, like they only had each other and it was enough.

I pictured that boy earlier, sitting by his mum’s feet as she roasted maize or sold beans and chapatis to construction workers. I pictured him playing at her feet as he waited for her to make a meagre profit that she would use to buy him food, cloth him, and maybe take him to school. Maybe she had more children at home who were doing homework and waiting for her to come back. Maybe her husband repaired bicycles or cobbled shoes under a shade or worked on a construction site or in Industrial Area as a manual labourer. Maybe she was a single mother, raising that child off the sweat of her own back.

The boy pranced and played with his mum and they laughed a lot. Watching them, I felt such admiration and envy. I admired how happy they were even though it was about to rain and they remained oblivious to this fact. I envied the boy because he had a mother and it brought him such security and love. When you have a mother you never imagine that anything in life can ever go wrong that she can’t fix. That conviction is empowering. I could have been wrong but the woman looked like she had money struggles; she wore old bathroom rubber sandals put together by wires and her feet were dirty and her child was in old clothes.

I turned to my friend and said, “I want to give that woman money.” She looked at them and said, “That would be nice, you should!” But then I said, “What if she feels insulted? Some people are very proud after all.”

Because she is a woman and women think faster and broader than us, she said with Solomon’s wisdom, “Give her son, instead.” So I stuck my head out of the window and said hello to the son and he hid behind his mother, clutching at her leso. I asked her mother if he goes to school and she looked unsure whether to talk to me or not. So I asked if I can buy him milk and she said ‘sawa’. We pulled over to the edge and I checked my wallet; I only had Sh300 so I turned to my friend and she handed me a Sh1,000 bob note which I handed the small boy.

The small boy did something amazing; he immediately handed the money to the mother because sons take care of their mothers and immediately he did that, the mother broke down in tears, turning her head away from us, saying thank you many times as they walked away from the car. She never looked at us because I suspect she didn’t want us to see how much she needed the money; she was preserving her dignity. My last image of the two was of the boy looking quizzically at his weeping mom. It broke my heart a little, to be honest. We drove on in silence and when I turned to look at my friend she looked just about to cry. “People have such problems,” she muttered, shaking her head.

This story has got nothing to do with the usual frivolous drivel that I spew here about men and women. I promised myself that I would write about that mother and her son and say that every time you see a mother with a child – a hard-working, blue collar mother with a child – and you have something small to spare, hand it her. Unlike fathers, anything you give a struggling mother like her will definitely go into sustaining the children. And most children go to school purely off a mother’s toil and determination. I would know. 

And mothers, especially single mothers, need all the help they can get because it must be tough. You give a needy mother help today and you are not just helping her, you are empowering a society. Kindness; pay it forward.

Have a blessed and a giving Sabbath.