Don't make Mother Nature misdirect her anger

Red Cross on a rescue mission near a submerged house in Nyando. [File, Standard]

I was brought up in the 80s when mothers were mothers.

To date mine bears such a smiling face that it is unfathomable how it would, in the twinkling of an eye, send shivers down your spine.

Enough times I asked if this was really my mother, especially when she made my father punish me over a mistake she had caned me for.

Funny how she would start begging like "please stop there" even before he got to the fifth stroke.

Being a second-born, I paid for my followers' sins many times.

One day, at age 11, after being caned over a younger sibling's mistake, I slipped out of the house and disappeared into the darkness. I crossed a sisal fence that separated our home and a sorghum farm, and hid behind it. I was basically behind our house, though across the fence.

When my mother finally realised I was missing, she began to search, joined by my siblings. They did not find me behind the house, at my grandmother's or anywhere else in the compound.

My father worked in a different town. What would she tell him? The search was called off and all slept.

In the dead of night, scared by the thought of being bitten by a snake, I returned to the compound and slept beside the house. It was from there that I could hear her pray, aloud.

At dawn, freezing from the morning cold, I pushed the wooden door open the moment I heard someone unlock it from inside.

It was her. I had to be good. She did not ask a question. But where could I have gone?

I had only one home, one mother and one family.

Still, deep inside I thought that would be the last time she would cane me. But I was wrong.

It went on until they had a somewhat disciplined child later in life. What stopped was the tendency to punish me for others' mistakes. To date I am grateful.

We are best friends, though it is sometimes costly. But I ask: If you do not pamper your mother, who will?

There can only be one mother. Those who have lost theirs know how true this is.

As children of Mother Earth, many are the nations paying for the sins of their siblings responsible for global warming.

Flooding and drought suffered in parts of Africa now are a result of fossil fuel burning in the West.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report says the world may exceed a dangerous heating threshold by 2033.

The same report blames fossil fuels for up to 75 per cent of human caused global warming.

The resultant calamities are worsening poverty and causing conflict, while the rich smile all the way to the bank. Our people are dying.

The decade of action for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals is moving fast.

Poor African countries are still begging for justice from the rich North. Africa must now be set free from the bondage of preventable deaths and destructions.

This Mother Earth is shared and must not be enabled by some selfish siblings to misdirect her anger. While we push for just transition to renewable energy in place of new fossil fuel projects and deforestation, let reparation from developed nations come fast.

As a community of nations and individuals we have a collective responsibility to obey and nurture Mother Nature. That way we will continue enjoying her warmth.

We have nowhere to run to, only one Mother Earth. Happy Mother's Day.

-The writer is communications manager at GreenFaith@lynno16 | [email protected]