For The Love Of Mother (Part I)

“All will go well,” Kwitonda kept saying more to himself than to my mum and me to mask his nervousness, as we drove to his mother’s place. Mahirwe, my mother, was quiet and anxious too. Uwituze, Kwitonda’s mother, welcomed us enthusiastically. She lived alone in Lavington, a luxurious suburb in Nairobi. It had been almost two years since Kwitonda moved out. Uwituze and mum hadn’t met for a long time and they had a lot to catch up on. After an exquisite dinner, as we were relaxing in the sitting room, Kwitonda dropped the bomb. Mama Kwito (that’s how I and Kwitonda’s friends called his mother out of respect) was so incredulous that he had to repeat the news twice: mum and him were getting married.

Mama Kwito’s face expressed utter disbelief. After the initial shock, she descended on my mum with kicks and blows. We restrained her. Mama Kwito was shouting at mum who had recoiled in her seat. As much as she was aware of her best friend’s bouts of uncontrolled anger, and she had anticipated a vehement reaction from her, mum was taken aback by the violence of Mama Kwito’s ire. She grabbed her handbag and ran out of the house under Mama Kwito’s loud insults. Kwitonda followed her, probably concerned that she could fall down the stairs.

Mama Kwito shook herself from my grasp and moved quickly to the dining table. She grabbed a plate of vegetables and smashed it on the ground. The food spilled on the floor and some splashed on her expensive dress and shoes. Startled, she took in the whole mess in disbelief, as if waking up from a daze. She collapsed in a sofa and sobbed uncontrollably. I tiptoed into the kitchen to prepare some chamomile tea with honey. Back in the sitting room, I sat next to her and put the mug of herbal tea on the coffee table. Her sobs reduced gradually as I put my arm around her shoulders. I passed her a few tissues and after she had calmed down, I handed her the mug of tea. As she sipped on the tea she started talking more to herself than to me. She couldn’t believe that her only son had chosen to marry a woman who could be his mother. “I can’t accept that! No I can’t!” she kept repeating. Once her cup of tea was finished, Mama Kwito thanked me and assured that she was feeling better. She retired to her room as I cleaned the floor and cleared the table before leaving. I used my key to the apartment to lock the door behind me.

I joined my mum and Kwitonda who were waiting for me in the parking lot of the apartment block. I could see that mum had been crying. We were all shaken and we remained silent throughout the journey back to my place where Kwitonda dropped me. We had witnessed Mama Kwito’s bouts of anger on a few occasions and that’s how I had learnt to manage her, but she’d never been angry at my mother, Kwitonda or myself.

When Uwituze’s parents realised that their 15 years old daughter was pregnant, they decided to have her aborted. The rich merchants of Rwamagana, an important market town in the East of Rwanda, couldn’t stand the shame of their daughter giving birth at such a young age and out of wedlock. Uwituze, however, vehemently opposed that decision and when she realised that her mother was trying to feed her some abortion pills, she ran away to her God-mother’s place and stayed there until she delivered a baby boy. She called him Kwitonda, a name that means ‘wisdom’. Six months later, Uwituze’s parents sent her to a new school as they took care of the baby. Soon after she returned to school, Uwituze’s boyfriend, a 17 years old student from her neighbourhood, passed away. Uwituze was so devastated that she had to suspend her schooling once more. Her father took her for holidays to Kenya where he eventually enrolled her in a boarding school. After secondary school, she remained in Kenya to study law at the university.

During the war in mid-May 1994, after Rwamagana fell to the rebels, Uwituze’s parents and siblings and their neighbours were summoned to the market place for a meeting. After they had congregated there, four rebels just opened fire on them. The shootout went on for several minutes. Kwitonda who was then eight, was shielded by his grandfather’s body when he fell on the ground. Terrified, he remained motionless among the bodies for long minutes after the shootout had ended. Finally he carefully extricated himself from underneath the bodies that were weighing on him. A deafening silence covered the market place where bodies of his family and neighbours and strangers laid sprawled on the tarmac. He was the only survivor. He ran as fast as he could. Ahead he met a group of people fleeing and joined them. They came across an empty homestead and entered. There was a water tap near the entrance. Kwitonda washed himself and cleaned his blood soaked shirt. After a short rest the group resumed its journey and late in the evening, they reached Kabuga, an important market town in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city, 37km East of Rwamagana. They joined a crowd at the market place where food was being distributed.

At the end of the war Kwitonda was taken by the ICRC to an orphanage, where Uwituze, who had gotten a job with the United Nations that year, traced him. She took him with her to Kenya and enrolled him in one of the best schools in Nairobi. All those events took a toll on Uwituze and she became over protective of her son. She wouldn’t accept that she had a problem though and refused any professional help. Kwitonda settled in well. He became very popular and his new Kenyan friends, who found his three syllables name too long, shortened it to “Kwito”. However memories of the horrors he went through remained fresh in his mind. Every May on the date his family was slain, he would wake up early and attend church service to pray for their departed souls.

Two weeks after the dinner went sour, I got a call from Mama Kwito. She had flown in my grand-parents and my uncle and was hosting them at her place. Grandmother had accepted Mama Kwito’s invitation on condition that grandfather would be part of the journey. However since neither could speak English, my uncle joined them to act as an interpreter. Mama Kwito wanted me to organise for them to visit my mum, “to talk sense into her mind” and convince her to drop her plans of marrying Kwitonda. “Cyimana, she’s your mother and Kwitonda is your friend. Please talk to them. Mahirwe is too old for him. And she will not bear him any children. That would be the end of my family tree,” she pleaded. Oh that’s THE concern, I thought. I agreed to try and organise the meet up. Mum was initially annoyed that Uwituze had invited and hosted her family without her knowledge. However, she agreed to meet the visitors. She received them at the home she’d been sharing with Kwitonda for a few months.

Three years after Uwituze became a teen mother, Mahirwe who was then 20, fell pregnant with me after being raped by her pastor. She lived in Nyamirambo, a highly populated neighbourhood of Kigali. Her father was a civil servant and her mother a housewife. Mahirwe was due to graduate from secondary school. Taking her through high school had been a struggle for her parents. To ease their burden Mahirwe had self-taught hair plaiting by observing hairdressers and helping them out at any opportunity. During the school holidays, she would plait hair and save the money for her shopping. When he heard about his daughter’s pregnancy, my grandfather sided with the pastor. He disowned Mahirwe claiming that she was out to tarnish the pastor’s name and wreck his marriage. The pastor often bailed him out of tight financial corners and he didn’t want to lose such a friend. Grandfather chased Mahirwe away and she vowed never to forgive him. She also stopped attending church services and withdrew from all her religious commitments.

Mahirwe moved in with her aunt Nyiraneza in Gikondo, another neighbourhood in Kigali. Nyiraneza employed her in her shop. When Mahirwe went into labour, she was taken to hospital by her mother and Nyiraneza. I was born after close to a five-hour labour but with no complications. When asked which name she would give to her baby boy, my mother answered “Icyimanimpaye” meaning “My gift from God”. Her mother and Nyiraneza exchanged a look and smiled. (Continue to Part 2)

---

This short story was initially published in a slightly shorter version (3491 words) on Typotic. Here I’m giving it you you in it’s entirety (3997 words) in three instalments. I hope you love it.

Comments

comments