MUM STORIES: I am becoming my mother

Wife. Career woman. Grandmother. Subsistence farmer. Teacher. Comforter. If there were a single word to describe all these things that my mother is, then perhaps that is what I would call her.

Mama is a good planner and knows her diary like the palm of her hand. Her day is always scripted on her mind even before she starts it. She knows the duties that each of my two nephews and niece have to take for the day if they are not in school. For her, discipline comes first, and as a teacher she knows that idleness yields truancy in children.

NEVER COMES BACK EMPTY-HANDED

If she is not going to work, Mama heads to the shamba to check on her crops, and do some weeding. She will engage my two nephews at the farm, and have my niece deal with some of the small household chores like washing utensils before she follows her to the farm. At the end of the day, Mama never comes back home empty-handed. She will get food from her shamba, from cowpeas and cassava to green vegetables and bananas. She will later prepare a sumptuous meal for her family. Once in a while she will cook one of her kienyeji chickens.

Before I left Mama’s house for university and later Nairobi (iLovi), I used to wake up at 5am. I had no alarm clock or a watch but I had mastered the cockcrow like a clock. I knew my diary on the palm of my hand just like Mama. I knew how to bring tea to boil even without firewood but with the dry maize stalks at the cowshed. I knew how to rush to the river and fill several jerrycans of water before women in the village made long queues that would make me camp at the river for a good part of the day. I would later work out how to transport that water home in the course of the day.

Not only that, I knew how to collect firewood, and graze cattle in the fields when not tilling the farm with a few womenfolk. I was also this girl who would herd the cattle in the grazing fields whenever a herdsboy decided to ran away. Some of these herd boys deliberately ran away whenever I was on holiday from university and I had no choice but to graze the cows.

SURVIVAL SKILLS

My three year’s stay at home before I joined university really did expose me to what rural life can do to a young woman. I was in my late teens, but the life had taught me so many life survival skills most of which I use today. Growing up without a brother too, taught me unique survival skills that most girls who grow up with their brothers tend to lack. I started interacting with fundis, checking if trenches at the farms had been done as instructed, ensuring that coffee left the farm to the factory, and dealing with the officials at the coffee factory and such others. This exposed me to the technical aspects of running a home.

But of course, I am not waking up at 5am when I am not going to work, or when I have no project that I am working on. I treasure my sleep. I still marvel at the kind of energy that Mama exudes in her late 50s. It is not a wonder that she never grows old, I would so much love to age like her. But I always struggle to wake up early in the morning. My alarm will always ring, and then I deliberately switch it off and pull the blanket. Then after a few minutes of sleep, I slip out of bed feeling glad that I have cheated the alarm.

Just the other day, my daughter called from her room “Mum, alarm yako imelia. Amka…” (Mum your alarm has gone off. Wake up…). And I thought to myself, I better change; I better be like Mama. And yes, I am slowly enacting a few changes. Sticking to my diary, no run-ins during the day; and waking up early.

CORRECTING WRONGDOING ON THE SPOT

I am slowly taking into my Mama’s ways. I can slowly see that image of my Mama while growing up slowly creeping into me. For instance, I have learnt to correct wrongdoing on the spot. I do not wait until my daughter forgets to correct her. I do it on the spot and I have learnt how to do it with an open mind. I ensure that she understands the wrong that she has done, and how to change it. I also engage with her teacher at a higher level than before. I have come to realise that teachers notice so much in children that they cannot tell us, not unless we probe.

Playing truancy for me was not easy. Mama, being a teacher at Kamuthanga Primary School, kept a close eye on me. I had no other option than to maintain discipline both at home and in school. Those were the days in the mid-1990s when children were still being caned. There is this one time that she was the teacher on duty and she caned me for some wrong that my friends and I had done. I felt as though she had punished me unfairly. I did not question her, but I reported her to my father that evening. He apologised and promised to deal with her accordingly and this made me feel so good. The child in me wanted to see her punished. The following morning, as I left for school, I happily reminded her that I had reported her. 

The coin is slowly flipping. Many are the times when my daughter feels like I am being unfair and decides to report me too. Then she feels so happy about it. The other day she told me, “Mum, leo uko na makosa” (Mum, you have done something wrong today). This caught me unawares. Noticing this, her nanny laughed. I had just stepped into the house from work. I sat down and composed myself. After a glass of water, I enquired from her what it was about.

My fault was that I had rearranged her room the previous day in a manner that she did not like. I did not want her bed close to the window, though she had insisted and I remained adamant. I held her hand and together we went into her room. I explained to her why, then we moved a few items a bit, not the bed of course; and she liked it. I felt the same way that Mama must have felt when she ‘won’ such little battles. That was my Mama. She knew how to negotiate until she got her way.

And yes, when I look into the mirror I see a young version of my Mama in me. I celebrate all Mamas out there; our mothers and mothers of little children like myself. Mothers who know how to ‘win’ little battles every day.

Happy Mother’s Day Alice Mwololo!