My local mother

I met my mother for the first time when I moved south in 2005. She is a diminutive woman in physical stature but that is it, she is like the character in Toni Morison’s ‘Beloved’ who is a small wiry, girl but whose strength is incredible. This is my mother. She comes up to my middle arm but she could lift me up if she wanted to. I seem to remember her doing that to me once which is perhaps why it came to mind. She is such a servant hearted woman, she seems to take joy from giving to me and making my life better. We have not lived in close proximity for the last few years but we still call each other and ask how things are going. In fact it is New Year here and she called me at the crack of dawn. I didn’t answer the call because it was so early but I was not at ease; wondering if maybe she was calling because things were getting bad in the south. I had closed the office for a day because the place was so bad and my guys were feeling scared. Their threshold for insecurity is high so when they are afraid I take notice and do what I can to make them feel safe again. Needless to say I rang her back, to discover as the most part of me suspected, that she was fine and with her family celebrating New Year. I must have been the first person she called on this New Year. I am honoured and touched by that. I thought about her after my phone call and acknowledging her life is why I am writing now. She had two daughters and a deadbeat husband. They were refugees in the neighbouring country to the west. One of her daughters married a deadbeat. No surprises there. But it was bad, really bad, so bad that at some point she did what many women here do when they find themselves in an intolerable situation of misery and no escape – she self immolated, she burned herself to death. Mostly this is done in the bread oven in the ground, by pouring a flammable liquid on oneself and then getting into the oven. She died. My mother still weeps when she remembers the horror of it, as you would imagine. She now lives with her last remaining daughter and her deadbeat husband. They live on the side of some desert hills on the way out of the city. I used to visit there and have tea or a meal with them. There is no sanitation in the house and the compound is used as a latrine. The curtains are de-mining posters made of cloth. We dissolved into laughter on one visit as it was wet and walking from the car to the house we were skidding everywhere in the mud as it caked a layer on our shoes and made it ever harder to get a grip. We recall that occasion when we meet as one of the happy times. At work she is the backbone of making it comfortable for everyone else as she cooks and cleans but they don’t honour her for it. When I was there I would make the women eat in my house with me. There are stories below about the conversations we would have, the massage they would give me when I was having a particularly tense or upset day. But now that there is no one there to encourage equality between the sexes or the professional hierarchy, she is relegated to eating in the kitchen, not even with the other women. Her life at work is hard; she serves others. Her life at home is hard; there she serves her family too. They probably see her as a burden and do not honour her or let her rest there. Her body aches all the time; the cracks in her feet are deep and cause her much pain, the bones in her hands ache, her shoulders and neck ache. She melts at wholesome physical touch. I am a physical person and like to cuddle the people I love and even those I don’t know but who look like they need a cuddle. (You may know that, I may do it to you). I used to cuddle her or massage her if she was in particular pain and it would more often than not make her cry. Perhaps with relief at some positive physical care, perhaps with an overflow of emotion having not been touched in that way much, despite our ability to converse in simple terms I was not able to understand when she expressed more complex articulations of what she felt. So this is my mother, she is strong willed and stubborn, she is bitter at times and sour, she is strong and resilient and caring, she serves others with little thanks and I thoroughly enjoy her company.