Back when mothers were mothers

Women of the previous generation understood that they had to birth the babies and then get back to business.

Nairobi’s worst kept secret is that the ‘tough’ men who shot down the Gender Bill submit unquestionably to only one force: Their mothers! To the chagrin of most wives, men swear undying love at weddings only to treat them like dirt a week later.

They ignore their counsel, forget birthdays and have to be nagged to find a plumber. Yet when some old lady in the village ‘flashes’ to complain about a creaking door on the chicken coop, it is treated like a national disaster. The reasons aren’t hard to fathom. Take this senior lawyer, a retired top civil servant to boot, whom I met at an entertainment spot. After a couple of stiff whisky shots had loosened his tongue, he began talking about his mother:

“When my father died, I was in Form Two. We were very poor. Yet my mother, an illiterate woman, educated me all the way to a post-graduate law degree in Great Britain by working on people’s farms…”

I remember all the men at the table – hardnosed journalists, tough corporate executives and a pensioner or two - getting teary eyed, each perhaps reflecting on the indomitable women who raised them from nothing to greatness. Those women of old married early, some as young as 16, already raised, nay trained, to be mothers, wives and home makers.

 They had children by the dozen when the nearest clinic was a 15km walk away and the process of childbirth was so torturous that it nearly sent most of them to the grave. Many are those who took a quick break from the shamba to give birth. Four days after, they would be engaging in what former Devolution CS Anne Waiguru would describe as light duties.

 That was before antenatal care become commonplace and motherhood became a joy to be celebrated with baby showers, loads of shopping and sexy dresses. Not surprisingly, many of their children died from easily preventable diseases. But they buried them and raised those who survived with stoicism.

Those who had house helps kept them for years, together with a series of nieces, sistersin- law and younger sisters whom they raised as their own. From the word go, like the animals of the wild train children to take off minutes after birth, those mothers raised children to fend for themselves quite early.

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African was a jungle, still is. Those mothers understood that eventually, they would have to let go and leave the child to navigate through the labyrinths of life on their own. Thus, the kids were weaned soonest, taught to walk as soon as it was humanely convenient and trained to bathe and feed themselves.

By the time children were seven years old, they could perform chores that many 16-year-olds in Nairobi have never heard of. They were strict disciplinarians, who handed out slaps and whips without warning. They did not hug or kiss their kids because those two vices had yet to be discovered. Their love was expressed through food and that one shirt or dress they bought you for Christmas.

They never begged children to eat. They forced porridge down babies’ throats or ordered children to eat at ‘slap point’. Incredibly, they were great wives. Incredible because their men were mosly absent; either earning a living in far off cities or present physically but emotionally distant. They were married to men who considered polygamy and cheating as African as the sun rising from the east. Yet they rarely cheated on them. They served them dutifully, raised children that ‘belonged’ to their husbands, took care of nasty mothers-in-law and welcomed an army of relatives into their homes. When their husbands were conferring discipline on an errant child, they would shout, “Kill that useless frog and dump it in the river!” Teamwork.

 They did not enjoy the wealth or facilities of the modern woman, but they had firewood, and kept a warm fire going all the time. If their husbands brought home six guests at midnight, those guests would be fed. There was always something to eat in their homes. They were simple, barely educated or illiterate women. But they kept house, turning even the most rudimentary structure into places filled with warmth.

 And how they loved visitors, keeping special dishes and vitambaa for them! If there is one thing those girls knew, it was how to put their best feet forward. While their men toiled in Nairobi, they set up homes in the village and raised respectable and dutiful children. In the unfortunate event that they died young, the family shattered into pieces.

Today, while the modern, highly educated woman complains about gender parity, those illiterate old women summon their grandsons who are senior executives and corporate CEOs in Nairobi for a tongue lashing. They earned the right because they were mothers in every sense of the word.