03/02/2023
I sat next to her on a flight to Kisumu yesterday.
She turned and told me that this was her very first flight. She might not have said it in the voice of a little girl but I heard it in the voice of a little girl. “I have always dreamt of being on a plane.” I closed my Kindle and answered her questions about flying: How to adjust the seat. This here turns on the overhead lights. Etc.
Life has been tough for Mary Atieno Okoth. At 31 she had five children. At 36 she was a widow. She was a teacher of meager means, raising five children and barely coming up for air. She sold mitumba, ran a retail shop and borrowed from numerous Saccos. She developed high blood pressure. “There is nothing you won’t do as a single mother, nobody you won’t borrow from. It humbles you. But you remain truthful to your God and you remain sincere to yourself.”
Three are now educated and working. The last born in law school. They told her to stop working, because of her pressure, now they support her.
Her second son, Andrew, paid for her plane ticket. “He just dropped me off, he has a car.” She said it with the purest of innocence and pride. He has a car. Like she can’t believe her baby now has a car! “I thank God that they’ve remembered me.”
She talked proudly about her children like all mom’s like her do. She talked about Hellen and about Nick and about Phitor and about Wesley. She told me that Andrew is getting married in a few week’s time. That I should attend the wedding. I laughed. “No, really, he won’t mind. Come!” She said. If she could invite the whole world she would because she wants the whole world to see what labour and love looks like. She talked about her kids I felt I knew them. I do. They are like you and me, offsprings of mothers who never once had nail polish on, because they were constantly in the trenches digging us out of a hole.
She wants to see America one day. “They will take you.” I told her like I know them. I don’t. But I know the kind of hearts mothers like her nurture.
So, Hellen, Andrew, Nick, Phitor, and Wesley. If you don’t know this, yesterday you made your mother extremely happy. You turned her into a girl again.
