Don’t turn a blind eye to injustice as police tear-gas little ones

The first words I learned in my mother tongue were the ones that meant, ‘I’m going to beat you’. They were never translated because to do so would have watered down the threat of severe punishment considerably. Some things just don’t sound the same in English as they do in ‘Kenyan’, no matter which ethnic community you come from. Much as she said she would, my mother never quite got round to giving me a good smacking. But she threatened so many times that the words themselves became terms of endearment. I laughed them off often. With the benefit of hindsight, I can imagine how frustrated she must have been at this little person who thought she was the master of her mother’s universe.

Turns out that the universe is not in the habit of turning a blind eye to injustice. Courtesy of the little person who now rules the roost in my household, I’m experiencing the exact taste of my own medicine. My frustration levels are clinical because she was born with a laughing gene and it is especially active when I threaten to thwack her behind. Anyone who’s interacted with a three-year-old knows how they do. They stretch your boundaries as far as they will go and just when you’re about to snap, they turn on the charm talking about, "I love you mummy, you’re the best Mama in the whole wide word."