Running a day-care in the slum has awakened me to the reality of motherhood”

Mothers' day- Rose Weche with some of the children in Korogocho Daycare/School. 09/05/2019(Jenipher Wachie, Standard)

'Running a day-care in a slum awakens me to reality of motherhood'

The gleeful babies chuckling as Rose Weche, 41, dances animatedly in a heated room made of old iron sheets contradicts the conventional meaning of happiness.

The babies are seated on tattered rags in the room they spend most of their days in Korogocho slums. Their gazes are fixed on Ms Weche, oblivious of their congested surrounding. 

“When their mothers drop them every morning, they become mine. I care for them, wipe them, check if they are sick, feed them, and they fall asleep on my laps,” she says while holding an eight-month-old baby.

The woman has provided daycare services to families in the slum for close to a decade. She says right from when she offered to care for babies of a few women who were casual workers, it became an explosion.

“Mothers would beg, some even shed tears because they had nothing to pay. I was charging Sh5 then, and some could not afford it. I wrote off debts,” she says.

Running a day care in the slum has redefined motherhood for her. She says it has taught her the universality of motherhood and her heart gets tugged when mothers start making their way to the room before dawn to drop their children.  

“When you watch how mothers struggle just to put something on the table for their children here in the slums, you appreciate motherhood more,” she says.

She currently charges Sh20 per day for each child. Everyday, she handles 20 or more children. As their caretaker, she says running an informal daycare has taught her several lessons about motherhood.

In the bloodshot eyes of a first time teenage mother crying because she has nowhere to take her baby, she has seen vulnerability. From the stagger of an alcoholic mother returning home with nothing but the reek of alcohol and arms stretched to receive her baby, she has seen what hopelessness can do to a mother. And in those who return home after labouring for hours as cleaners, house maids and casual labourers, she has seen resilience.

“Motherhood is different for every woman. There cannot be a single definition of what motherhood is. Having this day care has taught me that what matters most about motherhood is consistence,” she says.

Rose Weche with some of the children in Korogocho Daycare/School. 09/05/2019 (Jenipher Wachie, Standard)

It is the little things such as watching a child taking their first steps in her small space, or how they cling on her when she feeds them that gives her joy.

“Some of the children are now older and no longer come to day-care, but when they see me, they run to me ,” she says.

Her greatest happiness, she says, is when she meets a women whose children she cares for and they genuinely thank her for helping them in the journey of motherhood.

“They respect me,

because they know that for someone to dedicate their time and help you with your children, sometimes at no pay at all, is the greatest gift they can get,” she says.