A girlfriend or a boyfriend end up being family once
married, a friend is family when s/he is closer than a just friend, a brother and
a sister is family by blood, in African traditions, fighting communities would
settle the scores by marriage hence a family, all human activity leads to
making up of ‘families.’ At the end of it all no man is an island.
As a young boy born in a family of more than five I
would walk home late after a usual playful day that would get my mother angry
as I never had enough of playing, but I knew it wasn’t the playing that was the
problem it was the constant dirty clothes that even after changing to clean
ones I’d take little or no time to make them dirty, yes I was lucky to be born
a time when computer games were for the rich and anything that would keep me
running was all that I needed to play, a reason for my dirty clothes.
My older brother, who is my best friend, was the wave
that made all this injustice to our mom possible. He would make all sorts of
playing materials e.g. a paper soccer ball that would ensure all the kids in
our hood buzzing with excitement as they played; only problem is we would be
the first to play and still be the last to get home. We were the double
dragons a name after our favorite cartoon, one of the many that only
kept us indoors.
My younger sister was the center of attention as she
was the lastborn for a long time before mom had our lastborn brother. She
wanted everything for herself; this was one of the few things that made us
tease her when mom wasn’t around only to have a whooping latter as she did her
usual reporting of events while mom was away. She is still a darling.
In the evening it was all about mom, her cooking was
and is still out of this world. I still believe that she is an angel sent from
heaven to make her kids joyous with her cooking; wait until you taste some of
her cooking then you will underestimate my words because no one can describe
her cooking. She would tell of her Campus life the way she enjoyed going to the
disco, we would all laugh as she danced to the lingala tunes mostly from
Kofi Olomide, Awilo longomba, Papa Wemba, just to mention a few.
Mom demonstrated what love actually meant rather
than just stating it. It was a bright August day several years ago. The schools
had closed for the holidays and my brother and I were up to our usual mischief.
This time, as most times were, the recipient of our naughtiness was our younger
sister. We had decided to practice out yet to be a tapped culinary skill, which
was against the rules, in mom's kitchen. Chapati made from a mixture of maize
flour, wheat flour and cocoa mixed with sugar was our end result. My sister
watched on in silence undoubtedly recording everything with her watchful eyes
for reporting. As we sat down to enjoy our mess of a meal, she asked if she could
join us. This was met by thunderous laughter as my brother and I assumed she
was crazy to even think we would share our illegally obtained meal with her. We
chased her away amid assurances from her that 'atatusema'(she will
report us).
We taunted her more, cleaned up the mess we had made
in the kitchen and went to do more mischief in the neighborhood. After a busy
day, we got home late, dirty as usual, only to find out that mum has already
heard about our misadventures at home. She reminded us of the illegality and
danger of our behavior as a cane was brought to her by our sister, a smile on
her face, for punishment to be meted out. I did not wait another second, mum
was a professional caner as she was a cook, and soon I was on my heels with my
brother in tow. We ran and hid in a thicket around our house and as it got dark
our fear turned to regret. Off we returned home but the thought of receiving a
few more of the cane, for good measure due to our fleeing, made us decide to
spend the night in the chicken house.
It was while there we experienced how much mom loved
us. She went door to door and asked if anyone had seen us, as we later learnt,
and the light in the house was on the whole night as she sat hoping we would
return. While in the chicken house we heard her pray for our safety and express
her regret for her anger and the panic in her voice was palpable.
Our return home in the morning was met wish
happiness. She never asked a single question. She gave us a meal, clean clothes
and prepared a bath for us. There were no speeches. Just a thank you to God and
we could see happiness in her eyes.
Sad that we lost her, her voice lingers to each and
every one of us like she is always around. She was and is our unifying factor,
the glue that keeps us together, guess that’s how things are supposed to be, we
have been sad but years seems to take the somber away but we still remember
every bit of her as we all took everything that’s beautiful from her, a reason
family is always important.
By
Jackson Mulera & Gibson Munai
A copy of this article was first published on Baby Love Network
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