Mother Mother
My mother’s brother Lovemore was an albino. When my uncle Lovemore was born, attitudes about albinism were beginning to change. Still, my grandmother, Masibanda, was evicted from her in-laws’ home and was sent back to her family.
Since becoming a father I have talked with my mother about the subject of albinism because I want to know how it felt for her to be the parent of albino children. None of my children are albino but I have often wondered what it would be like to walk in my parents’ shoes.
My mother told me that having a brother with albinism did not cause her to think that maybe someday she too might have children with albinism. Until one day when she had a dream that got her thinking that perhaps she just might. After marrying my father, my mother moved to my father’s village and made her place amongst her new husband’s people. One day while taking a nap she had a dream. It was a very strange dream that gave her some ideas about all the possibilities that the future might have for her.
In the dream she saw that it was daytime during a time of war. As she watched the sky in the dream, several fighter jets descend upon the village. The jets flew over the village and sprayed bullets and grenades upon the villages. Much chaos ensued and people ran everywhere for safety. In and out of houses the people ran, out into the fields and into the bush the people scattered. Seeking to save herself from the mayhem, my mother ran towards a nearby river and took shelter underwater. She found a hiding place pressed into a tiny cavern within the river. The fighter-jets pursued her to the river and continued to rain bullets into the water all around her. This lasted for a while and then the jets left. For a while afterwards the world stood still and in the water around her there was only the sound of silence. When she finally came out from under the water, she looked round and out towards the nearby Samuriwo village, and right there in front of her she saw three albino children walking along the bank of the river. Two girls and one boy. As she looked at the children walking peacefully along the riverbank, a voice asked her if she had seen the three albino children. She replied that she had indeed seen them and just then she woke up from the dream. She did not know at the time what this dream meant or if it meant anything at all.
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Skip forward several years to the day that I was born. After delivering her baby my mother was ready to see and hold her newborn child but the attending nurses started behaving very strangely. When she tried to raise up to see her child, they repeatedly told her to lay still and try not to move. “You have lost a lot of blood,” they told her. It was obvious that they were lying and stalling, but why? They told her not to panic, but the more they delayed and fussed about the room, the more she became anxious and fear began to take hold in her heart and mind.
Finally, they got the baby all dressed up and then asked her if she would like to see the child. What a dumb question to ask. Of course she wanted to hold her child! Yes. Gingerly, they placed a blue-eyed white baby in her arms, took a few steps back, collectively held their breath, and waited for her reaction. My mother took one look at me and then she smiled. Some of the onlookers were obviously relieved while certain others could not hide their bewilderment. She looked at the nurses standing all around the room and told them that she was very happy with the child in her arms. After all, she had given birth to a child who looked just like her older brother, Lovemore.
The reception from the other mothers in the maternity recovery ward was not a warm one either. When my mother tried to breastfeed her new baby boy, some of the other mothers looked at her as if she was was performing a kind of unnatural act. Her stay in the hospital made her feel like she was on display. One of the nurses in the recovery room asked her “what she thought about this thing that she had done", as if she had done something unnatural or obscene. My mother replied and told her that she was very happy with her child. The nurse looked her hard in the face and then asked her again, "what do you have to be happy about with this?" To which my mother replied by asking her, “why do you ask me these terrible and hostile questions?" The negative attention was taking its toll and she had had enough. After this exchange the nurse walked away from her and refused to attend to my mother throughout the remainder of her stay in the hospital.
When word of my birth finally got to my father, he wasted no time finding his way to the hospital. When he got to the hospital ward, my mother wasted no time telling him that she had given birth to a baby boy who looked exactly like her brother Lovemore. The thought made my father laugh and then he told her that was not even close to being the case. The only way to explain the white child in his arms was that this was his blood and looked exactly like his uncle Gore or Chirimugore as Makara had named him those many years ago,
After the hospital, the reception at home was a joyous one. The older brothers and sisters were excited about the new baby. The same cannot be said for some of the neighbors though. A distant relative who lived on the same street even came up and asked my mother why she had done such a shameful thing. Implying that she probably had done something wicked and had was being punished for her evil deeds. In the eyes of some of the neighbors my mother was hiding something, she could not possibly be really happy with such a child. They imagined it was all an act and someday her evil works would find her. Forty three years later I am still here and my mother is still smiling.
By the time my mother became pregnant and then gave birth to my my little sister Tapiwa Gwenlisa, the secret musings about her character had become public square talk and my siblings reported all these ugly sayings to her. She forgave it all because in her heart she remembered the dream from that afternoon in the village. She thought that if it was the perfect will of God to bless her with what people though was imperfect, then she was blessed to have these children. Some neighbors would go on to say that she was cursed, while others guessed that she was just too proud to accept that something had gone wrong with her womb. This was not a private family issue. Everyone with an opinion felt free to share it. Unfortunately, a lot of these unsolicited opinions were mean and negative.
In the end my mother only had two albino children. This is because soon after Tapiwa was born my mother got very sick for close to elven years and she was not able to have anymore children. Still she held onto the dream.
I remember the very end of that sickness, how we all thought that she could die at any moment. A frail woman sleeping on the floor in her bedroom because she did not have the strength to crawl in and out of bed on her own. She looked nothing like my old fearless and capable mother. I am ashamed to admit today that at that time I was more concerned with my own teenage issues and I did not consider just how perilous her situation was. Children do take their parents for granted sometimes. We assume that they will always be there, until they are not. I was a foolish and self-centered teenager. I was so selfish at that time, I even picked a fight with my father when he asked me to turn off the television so that my mother could try and get some sleep. While everyone else in the house was worried about her, I was only thinking only thinking about myself. I was wrong. I know now that if my mother had died then, there would never be enough tears, sorrow or regret in this world to make up for my selfishness and foolishness.
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I know that my birth brought joy to my parents. It brought joy to many of our relatives as well as many close family friends. The way my mother describes the moment around my birth, she says that it felt like the birth of the first child in the family. Everywhere she met family and relatives, she came back with a good story to tell.
However, there were also plenty of hard times ahead for the mother of an albino child and no one could have prepared her for those. In her work as a travelling saleswoman, as she moved across the country selling clothes and other houseware items that she made by hand, some of her customers were often not so welcoming to a woman with an albino child in their quarters. After she had me, customers who had previously welcomed her into their homes stopped buying from her. Many would not give her a shelter in the shade of a tree to breastfeed or even a place to warm water or milk to make porridge for her albino baby. They feared that close contact with her and her child would infect them with whatever curse that caused a woman to give birth to an albino child. Some of her old clients stopped paying her what they owed and others even gave her back all the things they had bought from her from before I was born. In their eyes she was an unclean person and they wanted no part of her.
Still, there were a few bright spots during these miserable road trips. For example, one time she met a woman who was also a mother to an albino child. The woman and her husband understood my mother’s struggle and offered her a place to stay every time she was in their town.
Another time, my mother got onto a bus and no one would share a seat with her. She sat on a three person seat all by herself. When the bus stopped to pick more passengers a young man on break from university got on the bus and immediately saw what was happening. He did not appreciate the way the other passengers were behaving. When the bus stopped again to let passengers on and off, the young man went to a nearby store and came back to the bus with all kinds of food and goodies for my mother and the child. He told my mother that he would be honored to call himself my brother and this made the rest of the trip enjoyable for my mother.
Being a parent to a child with albinism comes with its own set of challenges. My mother has always been in my corner from day one. My own earliest memories of my mother standing up for me are from my first days in primary school. Most teachers did not know how to plan for a pupil such as myself. On one hand they wanted to treat me like the other pupils, while at the same time they had to do a little bit more to accommodate my poor vision and sensitivity to sunlight. My mother made it a point to befriend all my teachers. She would bring them gifts of vegetables, fruit, cake, pop, or just stop by to share a kind word. The fact that I was a stubborn child probably did not help things much on my end. Sometimes I just got what I had coming. I am glad her approach to use friendliness and food worked with the teachers. However, in the space between our front door and the school gate it was an open field where I fought in gladiatorial combat and encountered countless verbal and fist fights. I fought many battles and prevailed sometimes. I became famous for my high kicks and flying shoe combat style. In my defense I threw a punch only after taking one and it was always in self-defense. My mother did not endorse the principle of eye-for-an-eye so when I went to boarding school for high school, I learned to put down my fists of vengeance, put on a thicker skin, and move on with the more immediate challenge of finding a girlfriend to take to the school disco. I am glad my mother has been there for me throughout all the stages of my life. I hope I have become a son worthy of her fight for a dream that only she could have handled with such grace and faithfulness.