Motherhood in Africa: 6 Life Lessons I Learnt from My Mother Without Her Saying A Word
The story of me and my mother is one of the most important pieces of my life. It is a story filled with invaluable lessons about the concept of having perspective and living well, and the majority of them, she taught silently, by example.
Just before I was conceived, my mother and father were filing for divorce on promiscuity grounds. She left the wedlock with my three siblings to work as a nurse in one of the missionary hospitals in the country. As a lawyer, my father had a better chance to win the case though. He followed suit and managed to convince her to reconcile.
It is this reconciliation that unprecedentedly led to a pregnancy that would be me. That was two years after my mother had tested positive for HIV. My father was anxious about the mother-to-child transmission risk, so he suggested abortion. She did not go for it. My mother was prepared to embrace me whatever my condition. Luckily, I was born without the virus. Back in 1995, there were no better ways in Malawi of preventing perinatal HIV transmission. I was indeed fortunate to be born a healthy boy.
Five years forward, my dad died. I barely knew him. I wish he could have been around, lacking a paternal figure while growing up was not easy. I don’t know who I would have been if he were still alive, but I know his death shaped my life’s journey. I am who I am today mostly because of my growing up without him.
Lesson 1: In the face of adversity, do whatever you have to do to survive.
After my father’s death, his kinsmen came to collect his wealth. They took the money and everything valuable, and left us with nothing. I have no idea how we survived then, but I remember saying no to food because it was not the delicious cooking I was accustomed to.
Eating cassava leaves (which are prepared together with baking soda), and taking meals of maize bran flour with orissa (some species of bitter eggplants) and many other unpleasant plant-based meals, became the norm. I was only five, and this experience felt so bad that I can remember it clearly.
Today, I realize that she didn’t do it because she didn’t care. She had just run out of options and we were in survival mode. My mother had to do whatever she could to help her family make it to the next day. Thankfully, when life got better, the menu improved.
I had to endure some dire situations in life before things got better. In those moments, this lesson reminded me to do whatever it took to make it to the next day. If you are going through hardships, remember that better days will come but you won’t be able to see them if you do not “make it there”, a minute, an hour, a day, week, month, at a time.
Lesson 2: If you want to grow with peace, be prepared to stand on your own.
Two months after my father’s death, his kinsmen were pressing us to leave the house he and mother had built together. This prompted her to move us to the Chimembe hinterlands in the countryside of Blantyre, 18 km (11.1 miles) away from the nearest minibus terminal.
I attended elementary school there and finished top of all schools in the Blantyre rural region. Yet, I must confess this place has not been conducive to personal development, a fact I realized when I read Malcom Gladwell’s Outlier. Gladwell argues that achievement and expertise result from a combination of various crucial and sometimes seemingly superficial contextual factors, some of which Chimembe lack. For example, in today’s interconnected world, Chimembe lacks an up to date mobile network.
My mother was unprepared and did not have the financial stamina to survive on her own up there, but with the help of my elder brother, she began learning how to farm with her own hands using hoes . She also did piece-work in other people’s farms in exchange for maize or cash. Her salary as a nurse was around U$D150 a month. But not even a single time did she go out to beg anyone.
Two years later, we were food secure and we have never bought maize (aka corn; staple food in the country) on the market ever since. We produced our own. We would farm until we had blisters in our hands. We would farm until our blisters burst and healed and our hands grew a thick skin of dead cells. But, one thing was clear to us, we could not afford to buy maize; we produced it.
I am not quick to ask for help thanks to my mother. When I look at all the struggle she has gone through, I wonder what kept her going. She has rich friends that could afford to assist her financially without a pinch, but she just didn’t ask for the assistance. Sometimes they would send her their used clothes (the only moments I have ever seen my mother putting on a new suit), but never was there a day she would knock on their door asking for assistance.
She made it pretty clear that we were poor and should we need to achieve anything, we had to work for it (No, she didn’t say that). When victory started to show up in our lives, it became clear why. There’s such peace of mind when you have no one to answer to, no one who would dictate how you may enjoy your hardly earned treasure, that’s priceless.
Lesson 3: Do not look cooler than you actually are. Prioritize, first things first.
This lesson really stood out for me back in 2014. We went out to the farm when the weather was hinting at rain. We applied fertilizer on the farm and we finished with the rains. It wasn’t a pretty sight. For four consecutive weeks the rain kept on coming and all the people that failed to apply fertilizer before that day did not have a decent harvest. We did.
My mother has always prioritized food over dressing. By all means, I did not model my dressing style from my mother, but thanks to the internet. In fact, I have not had a chance to properly dress from the shops since my secondary school years. Mostly, I have been putting on second hand clothes. But, one thing I knew for sure, we don’t ever starve. You can live without luxuries and not beg, but when you lack the basics to survive, you might not think twice. No. She didn’t tell me that. I just understood it from how she handled the little she had. She put the basics first and the rest later.
Lesson 4: Family trumps everything.
After my father, my mother decided that she would not remarry. A decision she has never grown to regret. Life was hard indeed. How she handled adversity and prevailed is still a mystery to me. My mother is not fond of sitting down with me and giving advice. Most of the lessons I have learnt from her are based on observing the consequences of her choices.
The responsibility of whether we would amount to anything in life or not lied solely on her shoulders. She had no brothers to look up to.
As a child, I used to struggle with Malaria a lot. I would suffer some degree of Malarial attack almost every month and my mother would not let me out of her sight. She trusted that no one would take a better care of me in her absence than herself. So, she would ensure that she was around when I was sick whenever possible. As such, she would turn down luxurious job offers that would keep her away from her family. She endured poverty just to be there for her us. What a sacrifice.
Lesson 5: You don’t have to understand people. You just have to believe in them.
If there is one person that is the perfect catalyst for my personal development, it is my mother. She doesn’t understand me at all. But no one under this sun believes in me more than she does.
I am extremely introverted and have many passions like science of learning, or speed reading that my mother doesn’t care about. She doesn’t even have time to listen to what I have learnt. When I ask her for anything, she tells me not to think too much about it. But, never has there been a day that she has stopped me from pursuing what I wanted. She would have preferred that I studied medicine, but when I enrolled for architecture, she was there fully supporting me.
When I needed a laptop, she spent all her 6 months’ worth of savings on it and that was the break in my architectural career. I landed an internship with one of the leading firms in the country because of it. I have learnt my design software so well because of it, a step that has promised to change my financial hardships.
My advice to all mothers and parents, whatever your children are passionate about, support them. Any career fueled with passion is a winning career.
Lesson 6: Motherhood doesn’t just end with your children.
My mother is the breadwinner of our clan; all uncles, cousins and aunties, both older and younger look up to her financially. She is the only one in her generation who managed to land a stable job with proper qualifications.
Despite her relatives’ disdain for her hard work at school (they had the misconception that ladies become mothers not breadwinners), she went on and became a nurse.
Back in 2001 and 2008 when a famine in Malawi affected my kinsmen, our harvest blessed us with around 100 bags of maize weighing 50kg (110 pounds) each. My mother shared with everyone, even those who disdained her back in the day. A true spirit of a mother.
My mother may not be the most perfect woman in the world, but her love, sacrifice, generosity, courage and wisdom will always inspire me to be a better man.
