The Village Has Lost Its Daughters! When Motherhood Became an Inconvenience

African woman carryinbg the baby on the back . [Getty Images ]

There was a time when a woman could disappear from the village for ten years, return with three children, and the village would simply adjust its seating arrangement.

Grandmother would open the door.

An auntie would boil milk.

Someone would ask, “Umefika na watoto wangapi?”

And without a committee meeting, one child would be placed on the grandmother’s back, another would be handed a basin, and the mother would be told to rest.

Village wisdom remembers that generation with a mixture of admiration and disbelief. Those women had little money, little medicine and almost no maternity leave, but somehow they produced children with the stubborn efficiency of a government printer.

Today, however, something strange is happening.

The village is receiving children whose mothers seem to have forgotten to come with them.

Economic hardship is certainly part of the story. Nairobi rent does not understand motherhood. Food prices do not respect maternal instincts. Employment is scarce, childcare is expensive, and the urban hustle has turned many young families into people permanently calculating the next meal.

But village wisdom suspects there is another ingredient.

A growing impatience with responsibility.

The modern urban woman is sometimes told she must have everything immediately: career, freedom, beauty, travel, relationships, entertainment and financial independence. Motherhood, unfortunately, refuses to follow the timetable.

A child wakes at 2 a.m.

A child vomits on your clothes.

A child wants food when you have just finished cooking.

A child becomes sick precisely when you have planned to attend a party.

And there lies the problem.

The child did not read the WhatsApp invitation.

So some young women have quietly discovered an ingenious solution: leave the child in the village.

“Ni temporary tu, Mum.”

Temporary, village wisdom has learned, is one of the most elastic words in the modern dictionary.

Three months becomes six.

Six becomes two years.

Then grandmother suddenly discovers that the “temporary visitor” has acquired school fees, vaccinations, uniforms, shoes and an appetite capable of defeating a maize harvest.

Meanwhile, Nairobi is alive.

There are birthdays.

Weekend parties.

Besties.

Soft life.

New relationships.

And the village grandmother is negotiating with a three-year-old who thinks a goat is a taxi.

Then comes the romantic arithmetic.

One girl may have Jonte, who has “game.”

Brio has the looks.

Kevo has the personality but, unfortunately, his wallet behaves like an opposition party.

Then there is Mubaba, who may not have youth but has discovered the ancient African philosophy of “small appreciation.”

Marriage therefore becomes complicated.

“Mum, aki nita-do?”

The mother asks, “Of all these boys, who exactly is your boyfriend?”

The daughter begins calculating.

“Jonte ako na game. Brio ako na looks. Kevo hana any. Mubaba anajua kunispoil. Aki nimechanganyikiwa. Ata wewe unge-do?”

At this point the mother needs counselling.

The auntie needs tea.

And the pastor needs the Holy Spirit.

The mother eventually takes the daughter to church.

The pastor prays vigorously.

“Every spirit of confusion, come out!”

Village wisdom quietly wonders whether the pastor understands the problem.

If only he knew how many times Jonte has already taken that girl to heaven and back, he might stop casting demons and start discussing decision-making.

But life eventually presents its own examination.

Pregnancy.

Suddenly everyone becomes a detective.

Who is the father?

Jonte?

Brio?

Kevo?

Mubaba?

Nobody knows.

The child has Jonte's ears, Brio's appetite, Kevo's smile and Mubaba's walking style.

The village elders gather like a constitutional commission.

The mother says she cannot remember exactly.

It happened at a party.

There was music.

There were people.

There was confusion.

Village wisdom sighs.

Even the paternity test has been given a full-time job.

Sometimes the pregnancy is treated as an economic negotiation. One man is informed privately. Another is persuaded that he might be responsible. Contributions begin arriving from different directions.

And occasionally, the woman retreats to the village, usually after remembering an auntie who has always been generous, approachable and childless.

The phone call arrives after three years of silence.

“Auntie, how are you?”

Village wisdom immediately reaches for its walking stick.

Something has happened.

Nobody calls a relative they have ignored for years merely to discuss the weather.

Then the baby arrives.

The grandmother is excited.

She prepares everything.

The child is placed before the mother.

“Unaweza kumnyonyesha?”

The young mother looks at the baby as though someone has delivered the wrong parcel.

“Unanipea nifanyie?”

The grandmother freezes.

“Umuonyeshe.”

“Si mumchukue tu? Ataniharibia shape.”

There are moments when village wisdom simply has no proverb.

The grandmother takes the baby.

And there begins another chapter of the old African miracle: grandparents raising children they thought they had already finished raising.

At village functions, you see them.

Children clinging to grandmothers.

Grandmothers carrying schoolbags.

Grandmothers breastfeeding grandchildren through sheer determination.

Some children even compete for the grandmother’s lap as politicians distribute CDF promises nearby.

And somewhere in the background, the young mother is posting another photograph from Nairobi.

“Soft life.”

Village wisdom looks at the photograph.

Then looks at the grandmother.

Then looks at the child.

And asks the question nobody wants to answer:

Who exactly is raising whom?

This is not an indictment of an entire generation of women. Many young mothers are extraordinary, hardworking and deeply devoted to their children. They are raising families under economic conditions their grandmothers never encountered.

But where responsibility becomes negotiable, society eventually pays the bill.

Motherhood cannot be outsourced entirely to grandmothers.

Freedom without responsibility becomes another form of abandonment.

And perhaps the saddest irony is that the grandmother who once raised her own children is now being summoned to raise the next generation while the mother goes back to searching for the “soft life.”

Village wisdom, where truth walks barefoot, is not against the soft life.

It merely asks one stubborn question:

Who is carrying the hard life?

And perhaps tomorrow, when these children are grown and ask where their mothers were during their first years, the village will have to answer for them. Grandmother may remember every fever, every school uniform and every midnight cry. The mother may remember the parties, the hustle and the selfies. History, however, has a cruel way of recording who stayed when staying was hardest.