A tribute to my Mother: It was a morning given to rushing winds. Dark clouds roamed the infinite sky. The rains, it seemed, were ready to fall. As mom and I stepped through the wicket gate at the rear of Makerere University, we caught sight of a line of proud parents. Along with some students, we joined this line. It was graduation day. I was decked out in a flowing graduation gown and motor-board. Mom was swathed in a conservative Persian-blue dress. As we loped through the walk-through metal detector and were scanned by security wands, persons behind us shuffled excitedly. The atmosphere was heady with deep inward expectation on the part of the parents and graduands. Allied to that, the president of Uganda was going to preside over the graduation ceremony. It was to be his last time to do so. After we were given the security all-clear, a rumpus ensued. Several continuing students in the nearby University Hall rushed over to us. After respectfully bowing to my mom, they proceeded to officially ‘crown’ me a ‘Taiwanese’. The title, Taiwanese, is conferred upon persons who have contested political office at the university. And failed. It’s a dubious distinction; a crown of thorns in all but name. During my ‘coronation’, I looked over at my mom and found her radiantly smiling. Possibly, her memory flashed back to when my father was Hall chairman of Northcote at the same university. Back then, an honor guard was mounted by his fellow hall residents (complete with a pretend arch of sabers) whenever she arrived to see my dad. She would then sashay through it while they serenaded her in song. As she basked in their rowdy attention, my dad would proudly look on at the end of the honor guard. They baptized her Mama Ngina after Kenya’s elegant First Lady (and then President Jomo Kenyatta’s wife). But, sadly, I wasn’t being feted. Rather, I was being given a Hulk Hogan-like backhanded compliment. But it was all in good fun. Plus, my mom liked it. As we left behind the braying laughter of those rowdies, we walked up a climb that took us past Mitchell Hall. We soon were standing opposite a run-down house with a tiny manicured lawn. It was a lecturer’s pad. Mom informed me that that’s were I grew up, partly: before rushing into exile, my father worked as a university librarian and part-time lecturer. He was in-charge of the magazine and periodicals section of the library. And had a fondness for ordering from abroad literature deemed to have an agitatory effect on the students. Iddi Amin, then university Chancellor, believed my dad was committing a cosmic crime. He charged that my dad was spreading ‘political gonorrhea’. And before the great dictator’s rule could turn sterile, he ordered his arrest. Marked for death, my dad got us all the hell out of Dodge. Our hegira, if you will, led us to Zambia. Looking at the house that day, I thought that it had aged into something of a deathly doss house. The ghosts of past darkness seemed to inhabit it…shadowing its being with a gloomy complexion. Never letting it forget seasons past. Mom seemed a little nostalgic. Maybe this building captured her undying affection for the bad old days, when everything was good. Or maybe not. Moments later, we settled on the picturesque green at the center of the university. This is where the graduation proper was to be held. Mom was giddy with pride. To her, this was a great achievement. She was raised to cherish education as a person with a parched throat does a cold glass of water on a scorching hot afternoon. And her effervescence seemed to shoo away the clouds because the sun shone bright in the pathless sky. The air was scented with the fleeting fragrance of celebrity, too. At the close of the ceremony, hours later, mom and I were conjoined in bliss. And nothing brought home the singleness of our feeling as did when a fellow graduand hollered my name. “MATOGO!” Mom and I reflexively turned around to see who was calling our name. Then we realized. “I think she’s talking to me,” I said. As eventide set in I escorted mom home. We both felt fortified by the armament of a degree. An oasis of opportunity lay before and within us. But of course, the degree was merely a small part of that. Because we are forever bound together: from the cradle to beyond the grave. This is in God’s gift. While our dreams are jerry-built around accomplishment, a mom’s love is the capstone of life’s monumental journey. Life, at times, may leave us weary of spirit but a mom’s care bandages our wounds. And that care will never turn tail and bolt in the face of clear and present danger. No. It actually expands the fabric of our fortitude; and thereby, our lives. But though life can be clocked on an egg timer, a mom’s love is eternal. That day, I felt the love. And I knew thereupon and thereafter, that that love would sustain me in the darkness of my doubts. Sure enough, through the peaks and troughs of my life I recall that day. And memories of the pride on my mom’s face translate into a burning desire for me to re-experience it. Bitterly, I haven’t yet. And not because I have fallen short or that heaven is a faraway dream to my imperfect being. But because I have mistaken it for what it wasn’t. Her pride that day wasn’t about what I had done. Or who I had become…it was about Me. This Me-ness that she was proud of transmits a feeling. A triumphant feeling that flowers daily into a meadow of bliss as I recognize that it’s not greatness that makes me loved but love that makes me great. And the ancestor of such love is that person who loves me unconditionally: Mom.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 05:50:27 +0000
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