Memories of an African Childhood (0-11 years)

My Mom

I had promised to write about my mom. This is it!

My mom is called Paulina Chesiele Barusei. Paulina is the English equivalent of Pauline. Chesiele? Well I don’t know what it means but it is my mom’s childhood name and therefore cannot ever be discussed by me or any of her children (Blush , blush… ).Barusei is her husband’s name. In my society, children generally refer to their mom as mama or mom. Not us, we are so close to our mom such that we mistake her for our friend. So, quite against the grain, we call her Paulina or even Polina. She is loving, genial, affable and easy to get along with.

She bore the ten of us. Did I hear you say, omg!? Hell no, this is not a record in our village; one of my distant aunties has 18 kids, one, two, three…eighteen! All my mom’s sisters have more kids than her! A study in fecundity?  Maybe.

Paulina (to neighbors) Polina (to us) Pauline (in her ID card) is the fourth borne daughter in a polygamous family of four wives and many kids that I cannot have the time to research on. Her dad was a wealthy old man ( God rest his soul in peace). He never visited us, simply because he was paid the bride price in full so he had no other business with us. He didn’t know my mom’s name. He knew his daughters by the names of the places where they are married.

I never got to know him well till when I went to high school. He didn’t know my name either, and he didn’t ask. Not that he didn’t care. He would have forgotten it anyway. He had a lot of stuff going.

Sorry for digressing. Hey, my mom is illiterate. She wanted to go to school but her dad could not hear of it, simply because one of her elder literate sister and another illiterate one were married off at the same time and the bride price was the same (twelve cows). Her dad then concluded that education did not add much value to a girl’s life. (Girls then were reared to be exchanged for cows).They instead was forced to look after his cows.

In spite of the lack of education on her side, she put all her efforts to educate us. And she is a beauty too. She has a natural gap in her upper teeth (unfortunately none of us inherited it) and a man-made one on her lower teeth( removing one tooth was part of the initiation then , well apart from the mandatory FGM) She is tall, think she is my height, and for your info, I am 6’’1.

She loved me when I was young (and still does). I used to feign sickness so she could take me to hospital and on the way home would buy me a soda and a chewing gum (which were wrapped with papers bearing drawings of popular Safari Rally drivers Joginder Singh, Shaka Mehta and others. To show off in school, you will stick the paper bearing the drawings on your forehead!)

One day, my dad had told me to catch a stray wild puppy and put a leash on it. The crazy dog bit me. Polina had to take me to a far off hospital to get. Though I was mad with my dad for it, the proceeds of the incident included taking a bus ride (a rare thing in those days) and eating in a hotel!

That momma is a poor housekeeper. Just like me. But she is a good farmer. Just like I would have been (I inherited 100% of her genes minus the gender). One funny thing, mom could smoke occasionally and drink once in a blue moon. She was a Catholic but not the one you could call devout. Hey, she could get angry and beat us. I was not mischievous then, (I am nowadays) so my brother took the lion’s share of the lashes. When you made a mistake, all you could pray for was for a visitor to happen along, only then will you be spared the rod, otherwise, it was served with dinner.

Almost forgotten that my mom is a poor cook. Very. Just like me. All foods were cooked by boiling. Greens, potatoes, beans, peas name them. Meat was and still is a rare commodity in that village (unless when a cow dies on its own during droughts, old age, complicated birth or got injured). So, there is no sufficient empirical data to warrant a conclusion on her meat cooking.

The only exception that used to baffle me is that she could cook pancakes on Christmas (got too curious had to ask her where, when and how she acquired the art. She was taught by Roman Catholic missionaries when she was a teenager, that was her answer)

My mom is entertaining and loves entertainment. She used to take us to village circumcision dances in December holidays at night. Cannot forget how she used to cover us with a blanket (we were the first four of us then) and leave a small hole for us to watch the dances just like a chicken does with her chicks. I am also a party animal. (Another of her negative/positive trait in me.)

And there is this day she took us to watch the rallies (popularly known as Safari Rally then). I was pretty young, maybe four or five. I am not sure. I had no idea the race cars made a lot of noise( the way I was anxious to watch my childhood racing hero Joginder Singh). When the first car came blasting brrrrrrrrrt brrrrrrrrrrrrrrt, I screamed and peed on myself and grabbed my mom! They laughed and made jokes of me the whole month. Poor me!

There was this day again we had gone to watch our local Catholic Church act the Betrayal and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ one Easter evening. When it got to the part where Herod ordered all children below the age of three to be killed and the actors mocked killing babies starting with the one in front and advanced towards us, I screamed and asked my mom how many years I was and whether I would be killed by Herod. My mom assured me I was four and would be spared. I was scared shitless though sure that my mom would not let me get killed.

My mom is generally happy and laughs a lot. There is this house we used to live in that was in the middle of a maize field. Surrounded all over. My mom could laugh at night as we had our often very late dinners as we exchanged jokes and neighbors used to wonder what fun we had in the middle of the maize fields( tomorrow, I will tell you a story about this house, my child hood story cannot be complete without a tale of this house)

For she is a very affable mother, our home was the official gathering place for village folks in the afternoons.  I am sure my mom is cracking jokes with them now as I write this story( as she drinks tea with a lot of tea leaves you will think it is poison.)

I love you Polina!!