Of Grace and Violence: The Paradox Part 1

***Bit of a back story, this was among the first things I wrote when I thought about my blog but it has taken me almost nine months to publish it. I feel so many ways about putting it out but here goes****

I am told I have her warm smile and carry her gentle eyes. She, is my mother, Grace and her name epitomized who she was. A woman of great faith, industrious and hardworking, kind and generous. She was also strict and did not spoil the rod for sure. I got my ass whooped more times that I care to count but I deserved it at least 98% of the time LOL! She was, after all, the disciplinarian of the home. My mum was also elegant and had an uncanny fashion sense uncommon for her time. How she raised us, sacrificed for us, lived for us and prayed for us her whole life is probably one of the biggest reasons we are here today.

She was hardworking and faithfully worked for the same organization; from the time she was 21 until her death in her mid-forties. At her work, she is remembered fondly, often I heard how her smile made everyone who came to her office feel like everything would be okay. She was dedicated and committed to her work, rarely even taking days off and if it were today, she would be called a workaholic in a sense. Growing up I watched her start many a business to bring extra coins home to make sure we had it good. We ran the local kiosk in the estate where we grew up, she installed a phone kiosk when mobile phones were becoming the craze and most people could not afford them. So, you would go to a place with the service and make the call for a fee. We ran a local bar in both places that I spent most of my young life, though that was more my dad’s influence than hers. We were not rich by any measure financially, but she made sure we never lacked. We never slept hungry or lacked school fees, we never wore torn clothes or lacked books for school. Every week on Friday we always looked forward to a chocolate treat, either Cadbury’s chocolate or cupcakes from Fayaz bakery in Mombasa. Only time of the week we would be allowed a sweet treat if we had been good and ate all our vegetables. I learnt, much later in my life, that she did all this by delicately balancing money and taking loans to make up for the difference. You see, my mom was also the breadwinner of the home. My dad a hotelier by trade when I was very young, was also a drunkard and quite irresponsible with money and thus burden of providing for the family fell squarely on my mum’s shoulders. My dad would later lose his hotel job and depend on my mom’s various businesses to meet his needs.

But I digress, my mum was a firm church goer and I spent my formative years in the catholic church, participating and volunteering in various church aspects. I believe that her prayers for us kids is one of the biggest reasons we are still here and we are where we are today. I was one of those young girls who danced during mass and read the scripture on Sunday in front of the congregation. My mum was one of the women who hosted church gatherings and volunteered to help in church. She was the lady you saw in the matatu (public means of transport in Kenya) holding her rosary beads as she prayed on her way to work or back, she ensured that we said all our prayers and knew the importance of faith and importance of having God in our lives. She taught me to hold my head up always and that confidence is key. She also taught me the value of hard work in life; and an example would be when I was tending to the kiosk 7 or 8 years of age. She valued education mightily and she dedicated her life to making sure her kids got not only a good education but better than she did. She never had the chance to go to university and she wanted to change that for her kids. It is one of my biggest points of sadness that I still haven’t been able to make that dream come true until now for myself but super proud that my brother did, graduating with a degree in actuarial science.

Whenever I got in trouble, which was often, LOL! She would whoop my ass but she always made it clear that she was punishing me for the mistake I made and that it was an act of love, not hate or anger at me, her child. Of course, as a child that didn’t really matter when your hide was in pain but as an adult, I now appreciate the difference. When I became a teenager and she stopped whopping me and instead would talk to me, it was her silences when she was truly mad at me that were scarier than the whooping. I remember when I got suspended from school, in my last year of high school (exam year of all times) for running away from school to go to a night club and watch my favorite group of DJs, my mother diligently came picked me up from school, and consequently did not speak to me for almost a week straight. She was so mad, not knowing what had turned her rather well-behaved daughter into a truant! If you grew up in Kenya, you know that Ogopa Djs were definitely not worth getting into trouble for. I still do not remember what my motivation was at the time but I was a teenager, who even knows how a teenager’s mind works?