Meeting Nancy
Extract from the Diary
by Karin Demuth
The interview starts. Sometimes I find it hard to keep up: Mama Faith's answers do not always seem to have anything to do with my questions. I think that she too finds some of my questions a bit peculiar, and so replies with what she thinks in regard to each topic. Some things are immediately clear: for example, that girls are generally clever, and women hard-working and organised, because they have to do almost everything. We find that we understand each other on that point.
It was not easy for Mama Faith to find time for our conversation at all. The reason being that on Sunday she has to go to Ethiopia. One of her children, Mescarem, comes from there. She was ill and so brought to Kenya where she has grown up in Mama Faith's house. Now Mescarem will, at last, be able to see her mother again. Mama Faith has a lot of preparations to make, including those for the other children. Whilst she is away, the children will be staying with their relatives, and Mama Faith delivers each child personally, to make sure they are in good hands. This can take time, because it is normal to have a cup of tea and a chat with the relatives. There is no way around that.
A trip to Mama Faith's parental home near Eldoret: I would never have thought that it would be possible to drive a car along roads like these. At one point I can actually feel the rocks through the soles of my shoes, because the metal has bent through! I am ready to get out when we reach the first riverbed, but Lilian, our driver, manages to drive us heroically over sticks and stones. The car also survives and presently we arrive. There are fields, huts, little houses, a simple school, children running next to the car, excitedly shouting, "msungu, msungu" (Note: white people). Mama Faith’s little nephew comes towards us, his brother behind him, and finally her mother. She is about eighty years old and has a face marked with experience, and a back bent by much work. There is a small wooden house with a corrugated iron roof. The maize is lying out to dry and somebody is cooking on the open fire. I think we cause a bit of excitement during the meal, because Fred helps himself from the pot. Mama Faith explains that normally the women serve the men, the mother and the guests, but, why not? Today, as an exception, we can help ourselves! So, everybody helps themselves amongst much giggling. However, the daughter-in-law still serves the mother, because that would be too much of a breach of taboos, if the old lady had to help herself.
Nancy's Story will be published here soon
All these mother's stories come from SOS Children's Village Hermann Gmeiner Academy. Copyright is reserved and no unauthorized use permitted. Use for non-commercial purposes may be requested. The interviews telling about the lives of some SOS Mothers form part of an interesting study on being a replacement Mother to children in need in SOS Children's communities worldwide.