WHAT NOW?
I am inclined to believe that my mother was never prepared for what was to come out of her initial conjugations with my father. Compared to the overly protective manner of many mothers over their sons, I understood very early in my life that I have a very special relationship with my mother. I’ve seen her watch me fall into the deep end more than once before, without her doing anything about it. Just watching, waiting to see how I’ll deal with it.
I have never at any one point felt any sense of neglect, though. There’s something about the look in my mother’s eyes, which has always given me Samson-like strength when it seems the darkness of the deep end is about to swallow me down completely. She is my first best friend, my number one confidant.
My mother has always openly declared her love and admiration for me. She adores me. I’ve heard her many times tell other fellow mothers how proud she is of me, “… this man who felled my breasts”, because of my generousity and kindness as a son, and big brother to my two younger siblings.
Thoughts of my mother make me very strong always in this regard. She listens to me, even if she may not agree with what I have to say. I owe much of my strong sense of independence and self-reliance to her. She taught me very early to be proud of myself. Much of my need and love to excel in the things I do, and thrive in, I got from her. “O motle, ngoana’ka! O a utlwa!/ You are beautiful, my child! You hear?” She tells me she used to sing these words to me when I was a baby. Not that she’s much of a singer, though … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo
Oslo
Norway
April 05, 2013
Simon Chilembo 
[…] to do big things without cash. I could not have done the work above without the support of my mother, and especially my younger sister, the latter who has, for all intents and purposes, looked after […]
[…] little I know about my mother’s life inspires my forthcoming fourth novel, which will be my sixth book. As I progress with the work, I […]
[…] was, inwardly, a devastated man during that time. One day, after briefing my mother about my difficulties with my Seidokan Zambia colleagues, she says, “Why don’t you leave these […]
[…] thoroughly humiliated for five years and three months in South Africa. She died a disillusioned mother of a once indomitable son that had come on the verge of falling into the dreaded pit of poverty that is the fate of the vast […]