Skip to main content

THE RUDIMENT.
        
            On the Wednesday of 11 November 1998, at Kitale District Hospital, I lay, wrapped in a lesso, beside me, Moses, my twin lay too. Quite but terrified were we of the new, acrid and cold world we'd just been born into. The light, of course, was so piercing that my eyes remained close. I had just been born! Mrs Gladys Naliaka, my mother whose name I came to know four years later lay too. Just like me and little Moses, she too lay tired for having me and Moses living inside her womb for close to 274 days. The labor she had just experienced 20 minutes earlier draw her into deep sleep. Later on we were to have our first taste of her love and care, both of which we required at that  moment of our beginning life.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

GOING OVER           Mom had to be taken home of course. My aunts came over, i came to know, later the following day. None liked my mother. To them, my dad didn't deserve a woman of her kind for a wife. She was a witch who had cast a love spell to Harun Wanyonyi Wafula, my dad. My late grandma wasn't any different, she too wasn't enthusiastic about her son having such a young woman for a wife, mom was about 19 years old.           The journey from Kitale District Hospital was a silent one, my mom narrates. she further explains it as a silent one. How could they talk to a person they disliked that much? She never minded though.           This was on a Friday. My dad was to leave for job in Eldoret. He was a mechanic at Raiply woods company. This meant mum was to be left ll alone with me and little Moses. Grandpa was the only one mom thought she was to be left with. On Saturday morning dad left early for the bus stop, the struggle began. As it was approaching the end
REVAMP           Things worsened for mom. Mother-in-law was too rough, mom resorted to be resilient but the pressure from the on-laws was too much to bear. The only person mom trusted for as friend had died, dad was so busy with work for him to notice  what she went through, she had to revamp her earlier plans to go back home. This time, she had to be smart and careful, she had no option, that was the only thing she had to do for the better life she wanted.                  Mom had an ego. She narrates how she could not accept to be in an affair with any man from her neighborhood. None deserved a beautiful woman like she was. Unlike many hyperactive women in the village, mom stayed home, cooked and washed all day. When the chores were done, she either slept or sang the catholic hymns she learnt at the local catholic church she attended. It is in this, dad won her heart. Dad had visited his sister, Gladys, she was married to a certain man. The two met and this is how their marriage
PARTING SHORT           Situations could not allow mom to stay longer. The negativity she faced was so intoxicating for the young mom she was. Mom had to leave. Early one morning, at around 5:30 she set out on a journey. A journey she was determined to do once. She was done with this. The ridicule, contempt and disrespect from the in-laws was more than she could bear. She was loving though to me and Moses of course. She did bathe the both of us, changed the diapers and breastfed us. Her boobs were dripping she narrates. She then silently closed the door behind her and left. The morning was chilly, birds chirped from the many trees that fenced the homestead.           She met a few early risers  of course. Mum is shy and was even more shy back then. She walked herself all the way to the central business district. As early as it was she could manage to get any form of mechanical transport. The buses were few those days.               The bus she boarded was almost full when she arr