Mother's Unconditional Love

There are like a million incidences I can give as proof that my mother loves me. Like her waking us up in the middle of the night, to pee in the toss container so that we don't susu in bed hence she doesn't have to beat us in the morning as we wash our beddings. There's however one incident that made me change my mind about being adopted. It was one of those feared yet loved Saturdays. Feared because Saturdays meant turning the house upside down and scrubbing everything. Our work as kids was to scrub and fetch water from the river as we watched over the cows....basically everything. Because we loved to play too much and shower meant lifting the basin and moving aside too quickly to ensure the contact with water was minimal, my mother took her time to scrub our dirty blackened necks and bodies every Saturday.....most painful experience ever. We loved Saturdays because it was chapati day. We were not allowed to talk, breathe or hover around the special chapati preparation place until all the chapatis were ready and had been counted like 315 times. Our work after the thorough cleaning was to quietly brag about how we were eating chapos that evening and smirk as other kids choked in jealousy.

This particular life changing Saturday was just like any other. The house was all white and squeaky from all the cleaning plus lots of chapos. We were enjoying our supper when the meat I was enjoying went to the wrong place or what my mum used to call, wind pipe. I couldn't breathe and swear my eyes were all popped out. My mum panicked and did that slapping on my shoulders, turned me upside down (this woman is “Rambo”) as she screamed for help.

Finally as she was saying mtoto wangu amekufa, the meat jumped out from my throat and I breathed again. As I sat there in shock crying, my mum breathed a sigh of relief then slapped me as she shouted "Usiwahi nishtua hivyo tena". I looked up at her and I saw tears streaming down her face and I knew for sure that I was not adopted and that the spanking and slapping were nothing but a sign of love.