WHEN MAMA CRIES

Oh my goodness having gone for four weeks feels like a lifetime. Gosh! My mjangoz I can assure you I didn’t see that coming. I left for a village in Tanzania but now I am back having a revelation. That nobody can take my own blog to heart as much as I do and not everybody will comprehend the value of my writing passion. I am sincerely grateful to have loyal readers. (You know yourselves) Take this from me, that this blog will hit the stars in due season before we all know it. Can I hear an Amen?
Speaking of appreciation, I bet you know who is being celebrated in this season mjango. If you do, then sing along with me,
Naskia sauti, naskia sauti
Sauti ya mama, sauti ya mama
Sasa ni saa sita, sasa ni saa sita
Kwaheri mwalimu, kwaheri mwalimu.
Mjango if you did not sing this song in your early days, totoh you are the ones who learnt how to ride bicycles with three hind wheels.
It is all about Mothers. The loveliest people in humanity. Sue me if that is a lie. Where would we be without mothers? What would we be without mothers? Would we even be without mothers? If I was to be asked when mother’s day should be, I’d say every day. But unfortunately, I was never asked.
I have to warn you that you might shed tears on this one mjango. I know you say that weh ni mwananume, but when that tear comes, don’t swallow it with so many intentional blinks.
Have you ever seen your mama cry? Well, I will tell you probably when she cried.
She must have cried when you were first laid on her hands right below her sweaty face; after fighting with the pain of getting you into this crazy world. See some of you were just stubborn right from birth. It is not a habit you picked along the way. You refused to come out, some for no reason, others heard rumours that the world was ending; so what would have been the point of coming into the world only for it to end the next day? Others just ate too much in the womb, mindless (it is what you would expect of a baby) of the trouble it would cause mama during the D-day. Again because you must have heard the news that there is starvation due to famine in the country. And so they had to use a knife on her to get you out. The hard way it is. After all that, she definitely could not hold her tears behind the joy of seeing her breathing baby, in the latest birthday suit according to the fashion world, with chubby cheeks and milky white eyes. How cute.
Maybe she cried when something real bad, and I mean bad bad, like life threatening; happened to you as you were growing up. You know what happened best.  Instead of giving instances, I would rather we have a moment of silence…
Thank you.
She shed a tear when she saw you perform your best in primary school. Seeing you receive a prize for being one of the best academic champs, especially when everyone thought you were a dunderhead. (‘Kichwa maji’ in Swahili.) She still believed in you all the way up. Seeing you shinning in co-curricular activities. Be it acting, dancing, singing (when we were kids all of us could sing. Wait until we grew up jameni.) And sporting. When on stage, you would always peep to confirm whether she was paying attention. And of course, she was paying a lot of attention. To you, she was an audience worth a thousand people watching.
My mum never ceases to remind me how my childhood hommies and I break danced in a school parents’ event kitambo sana. She even remembers the events of that day more than I do.
I made fun saying, “Ukiniambia nidance ivo sahii, utachoka tu.”
She giggled. “Aaai, you are still young.”
“Young aje na niko karibu kukuletea wajukuu.”
She laughs again in amusement. I can never forget how mama laughs. Whenever I want to remember that laughter, it just plays like a tape in my head.
She cried when she was praying for you late in the night alone or in a kesha. In fact maybe she mentioned your three, four names and the rank you have amongst her children as if to stress to the Almighty that it is you and you alone that she is referring to. Those days you used to be a troublesome adolescent mjango. The lost lot in your family, maybe even your extended family. Your name could not leave the tongues and gossip chats of the mama mbogas, wamama wa chama, wamama wa kanisa and even your own aunties.
Other mamas would swear not to have their daughters even cross paths with you lest you wink at them and Bang! If you were one hell of an energetic spoilt brat, I should add two more bangs. So Bang! Bang! Yes that was you mjango. They would not have their sons associate with you because of a habit they feared you might infect them with.
It was worse if you are a girl. You would hear things like:
“Unaona vile mschana wa mama (nani?) anatembea tembeanga na tuvijana hata si wa rika yake…”
“Eeh wakubwa wakuubwa… Ona hata vile huwa kanavaa mwathani.”
“Hako ni kamalaya tu…”
Then the big one comes.
“… Ati? Nyi mnasema ivo, si nimeskia tayari akona mimba.”
Mjango, you see why your mama just had to cry while praying for you? Pleading with God to change you some way? It’s not as if she didn’t try talking to you either. She did, a thousand and one times. But with your ‘Don’t care attitude’, you turned her down with silence or worse, counter attacked her with liquid fire words; that a 99.9% probability had it that it turned into a fiery argument, 99.9% probability that she tried beating you up and 70% chance that you ended up the poor victim, beaten up like God knows what.
All that could be heard in the process was, “Hutani…o…ngelesh…a ivo na mimi ni ma…ma yako! Eh! U… Umeskia?”
At the end of it all, you had a red hot ear, slap printed cheeks, balancing tears of rage (Tuongee ukweli, some cried.) Umefura uso while clicking endlessly until your tongue hurts. Funny enough, if your mama is like mine, that night you would be the first one she serves. Well, that is after mzee wa  nyumba gets his lion’s share. At first, you would pretend that you are not hungry, ati ulichapwa mbaka appetite ikaisha. It does not stop there. You become timid, afraid that anytime from then, if you’d hear mzee wa nyumba clear his throat, then this would follow,
“Na ukimaliza kula, ulete ile kitu yetu na ulale…”
“Niende kulala?”
“Apana ulale apo ju ya meza!”
Kwisha wewe! However, you realise later that mum never said anything to him about it. Mbaka wa leo.
She shed a tear when she saw you graduate in campus. Deep within her she must have said, “I cannot believe that is my son/daughter.” All because you made it through campus, where she feared (like she should) that you would lose it all there.
She will wipe a tear, when she sees you on your wedding day:
A handsome gentleman (to her) looking sharp in a sleek suit. I suppose it will be imported from Italy, Dubai or somewhere. Who cares even if it will be a second hand suit? For all I know it will not matter to her. Though mjango just make sure bloggers, not mpasho, not ghafla and not TheMjango; finds out that. Hautapenda baba. I’m just saying. All she will be concerned about is that her son is getting married to the girl of her dreams that she personally approved. I repeat, she personally approved!
Or a beautiful young lady in a snow white plus Cinderella plus wedding gown. Your pretty face glittering through the veil. She may be slightly envious of how beautiful you are. But altogether proud that that beauty is on none other than her very own precious flesh and blood. She will be rather sad that you are no longer going to be in her house. She will say that you are always welcomed but you will not show up as many times because… because you will be having a man to take care of. Because you also want start a family and be a strong mother like she was. She will feel like a part of her has been ripped off though she will force herself to accept it. Don’t say I didn’t say that she will be happy for you at the same time mdada.
Mjango, son , daughter, on that night after your wedding, she will sit at her favourite spot in the house, (or even your favourite spot, your former room or something) after pulling out a dusty photo album from old cartons. Cartons as old as you. With that, she would slowly walk down the memory lane of your life since childhood. She would get to certain points on the album and laugh alone so hard as if she is high on something illegal. She would get to other points and shed tears passionately.
I bet my mum would remember when I contracted chicken pox. (Yea damn, I know.) The day she first took me to school and I cried as if I had received a prophecy that she would never come back. At that time, like a kid would think, I thought she didn’t want me anymore. She would pull out my kindergarten file and laugh her insides out until she has to wipe tears behind her reading glasses as she reads what to her makes a lot of sense through every single page. Mjango, just the other day she surprisingly showed us our files that I could not even remember existed. (My bro and I) And boy oh boy, I laughed at my childhood work until it became a serious matter that I could not laugh at any more. But I cannot resist saying that I laughed at my brother’s file to the latter. It left me saying, “No wonder.”
She would remember the school trips I went to while in primary. She especially loves the one I went to in class three. I refused to eat fried chicken we had for lunch that day. I wonder how she got wind of that though.
“Victor you used to hate kuku.”
“I grew up, you know. And my appetite was not left behind.”
“Ehee, si ata kuku unachinjanga mwenyewe sasa…”
She would remember how they (My dad and her) took me to form one. The night before admission, she was pampering me, “Itaa (Her motherly way of calling me ‘Victor’. She calls me that when soothing me.) Utaenda tu io shule umeitwa. Si ni sawa?”
Later after high school, “Now no more academic clinics eeh? Si tutamiss kupanga line kuenda kuona walimu wa kila subject. Kwanza ule wa maths ukiwa form three.”
Hehe, hey mjango I need to wrap up. I can have an entire newspaper talking about my mum. I’d love to hear your story too.
But that is about our mothers. We love them don’t we? And we will respect them right?
Celebrating mothers is celebrating womanhood in general. A mother is not necessarily a mother because of her ability to give birth, but because of her heart that brings up a child, like you and me in the right way; to the best that he/she can ever be.
So when she cries, she is definitely crying for your sake. See to it that she cries for the right reasons as from now.
Feel appreciated and loved mjango in this season if your mama departed in peace sometime or long ago.
Why don’t you do me and you a favour mjango, by sharing this with your mum? Tell her TheMjangoSeries wishes her a Happy Mother’s Season.
#AyeMjango