“Are the two of you sisters?” My mum and I get this question a lot – in church, the market, school visiting days – literally everywhere. This is because she’s just fifteen years older than me. A beautiful woman who carries our family on her back and whose hands can snap the cornerstone of our house in place any minute it is shaken by the winds of time.
She became expectant with me after she was forced to cut her education short – this was immediately after class eight. Her hope for a bright future was crushed, (she had topped her class that year) and marriage seemed to be the only choice for a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl growing up in rural Kenya in 1999.
You would think that this early marriage and teenage pregnancy would be the end of her, that she would wallow in wishful thinking and regret. That wasn’t the next line in her script. She understood that the grass beneath her feet will always be green if she watered it.
She donned the armour of indomitability and held hands with her husband to build their home, from scratch. Being a stay-at-home mum meant that order in the house was solely her responsibility. So, she did the cooking, cleaning, farming and child-rearing.
These chores tired her not. In fact, they unlocked vigour she didn’t know rested inside her. She took to farming with her breath and might because her life and her family’s depended on it. Never has she complained about her back hurting from all the bending and tilling. She raises her head only when checking how much acreage of land remains before she’s presented with an immaculate farm.
She does all this while I watch – like an umpire, from the sidelines – unable to help because I cannot keep up with how she wields her jembe. As she works, I listen to her stories, or as I like to call them, her unrecorded podcasts. I imagine these podcasts are titled: My mother’s dreams, Work hard child and Lovers called parents. This is how I spend time with her in her office. And she inspires me more than anything or anyone else ever could.
She resumed her education when I was ten. This was five children later. Everyone thought she had lost it, but she quieted the noise and pursued what set her heart on fire. Coincidentally, I was in high school at the same time that she was. My siblings and I grew up with a mum who wore uniforms, went to school early in the morning and studied late into the evening, just like we did. This, to us, was a reason to believe more and more in education and its usefulness in bridging intergenerational equity. We watched her gracefully juggle mountainous secondary school commitments, being a wife, and motherhood. She pulled through; she cleared her KCSE and continued to be the best mum our family could ever ask for.
Every time I am overwhelmed by life, looking at my mum’s smile, the skip in her step, and the confidence in her gait nourishes my mind and buttresses my feet on my goals. She is my hero because she doesn’t let life row her boat. She owns her journey and steers herself against the tides of time and age. She’s my lighthouse as well as my anchor. She’s my hero because she held the breath of her own life to gas me up in my own.
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This story was shared by Marion, one of the writers at Paukwa. Marion likes to sit silently in noisy sports halls while her eyes roam, noting, and her mind transforming moments into words.
#MyKenyanHero