Hope is Yellow

Born to die

This little girl had been special, the whole community loved her, she was a rose trapped in thorns, unable to blossom as the weeds stifled her. Success could have been hers given different circumstances, instead she had had no choice but to occupy the day fetching water when the well was not dry. She was a pretty girl; one could not help noticing the large inquisitive almond eyes full of unanswered questions. Her eyes told a story no child should be familiar with but there was no anger, just a deep, dark ocean of content and acceptance making her so appealing.

When she had had rare time to herself, her eyes would light up, growing to almost fill her impish face as she skipped with her young friends. She had taken great pride in her dark, woolly locks which cascaded down her back, a black waterfall going nowhere; it was worn loose around her slight shoulders with a single flower tucked behind one ear. Her voice sang as she spoke softly, only ever kind words, complaints were never made. She had known of a better place, faraway, but the life she led was familiar to her and she had faced it almost fearlessly until now when her spirit was released to join the dancing angels.

Unknown to her mother or anyone else, she had spent time with her baby sister when all were asleep. Holding her gently in her small arms, she had sung soft songs of hope, giving her sister a glimpse of love. She knew in an absurd way, that the tiny, deformed bundle clutched where her breasts had never had the chance to grow, was her own families sacrifice. Playing God her parents had chosen to let her die, one less mouth to feed. Faithfully, every night the little girl had waited until she heard the familiar sound of her fathers long, loud snoring, a sign that indicated her family were deep in sleep dreaming of another life, one where being alive meant living not just existing. Then she would wrap her thin blanket around her frail shoulders and tiptoe out of the house with the agility of a deer.

Once outside the bitter night air showed no mercy as it struggled to snatch the blanket, tearing like lightening between her rough skin and the smooth cloth that failed to serve its purpose of offering warmth. Crouching by her tiny sister’s side she would coo affectionately, stroke her dry cracked skin and sing beautiful songs of far-off places where the people lived like princesses. She knew that her baby sibling was being deliberately left to die and this came as no surprise to her. It was common for the poorer women to leave their babies to pass away and she had witnessed several of her friend’s younger brothers or sister’s left to the same fate. For some reason, now it was her sister, things seemed different, wrong, unfair, and cruel.

At her young age, she could not fathom why her mother was willing to let her baby die just days after living. She did not understand the concept of being cruel to be kind; if this baby lived, she would require valuable resources that the family could not spare. Feeding her would mean starving one of her other sisters, it was a no-win situation. Occasionally when there was food left over, she had stolen some and hidden it in her pocket then, later that night she would secretly feed her sister, mashing the food into a paste, her finger the spoon. In their ignorance nobody realised that the baby could not possibly have lived for two weeks without something to nourish her, however small. They just assumed she was strong, a fighter, but despite her apparent determination to live there was no questioning that she would have to die. 

It troubled the girl greatly when she contemplated the decision her parents had made, why this sister? had she been a boy would they have let her live? Sometimes in the dead of the dark night she even considered whether she was entitled to be alive, had she been wanted dead after appearing like a pink, wrinkled sack between her mother’s strong, sturdy legs? Did death choose it victims or were they chosen for it, maybe some people were born to die. A bond had grown between the two sisters, one of understanding and love; after all they shared so much in common, parents, sisters, and now the same day of death.  It almost seemed natural; right maybe that they should die together, the young infant had become so dependent on her older sister that she would need her in eternity. As the clouds began to gather in the warm red sky, two men carried the girl to the riverbank and lay her down. Gently a yellow flower was tucked behind one ear as she was lowered into the water, her tiny sister followed, and the people watched as they floated peacefully downstream.

Survival was, in part, determined by the strength of will and their Mama, knowing all too well the agony of losing a child still struggled, without complaint, to provide for her five remaining children. She looked lovingly at her daughters as they slept that night, despite their sunken cheeks and bulging eyes she thanked God that he had spared them.

Baba Toto“I am a man through to my core; you will know this by noting how many daughters I have. A man provides for his wife and family in whatever way he can but before you judge me show me a man who can provide eternal life for his children. My wife tempts every part of me, the way her hips dance on her frame as she walks, this is how she shows she wants me, and I must tend to her. She cries because she can’t express her feelings towards me as openly as I can for her, I accept her tears as gratitude. Sometimes I find myself ‘being with’ her just to feel the damp of her tears on my shoulder, I have to hold her in place and cramps get in my muscles but I’ll do it so she can cry her love for me. To me. That is how much I love my wife.

The God I honour has chosen to take my Percivia, I must now give my wife a new life to nurture.  A wife must nurture, and I will provide her with many children so she can do this. Percivia brought much joy to our house, and I can’t help but feel sad she has gone, I will not show this for fear that you will doubt my masculinity. The toto, she was beautiful there is no denying it but life is transient and dispensable and hers was not necessary to our cause. What good is a gift to your wife that she will never be able to take care of? It angers me that my wife must always bring a life into our relationship, when will she learn that her tears are enough for me?"

Life in Mbala was built around animals; dependence on the livestock a family owned created a deep respect for them. As soon as a child could walk, they were part of a team responsible for tending to the goats or whatever animals their family owned. Percivia’s family raised cattle and goats, which grazed on the scrubby grasses that sprouted from the dry ground. She had grown up with the animals, been well fed when they were well fed, sick when they were sick but now, she was dead and through no fault of the animals who were in fact prospering thanks to the monsoon. That evening, as Percivia’s mother lay down to sleep she felt sick to the pit of her worn out stomach as she looked at the space where her daughter had slept just the night before. Why did she not know that death would choose her beloved daughter next? How could she? Why was the merciless monster not satisfied with the baby left freely for its meal? Why should it be? 

Jeridah

“I remember the day as if it were yesterday that my sweet beautiful little sister died, when she left this place for somewhere better, a part of me was taken too. I loved Percivia with all the love my twelve-year-old little self could muster up, she was my ally and my best friend, she was my confidant and my encourager, and she was my own flesh and blood. Looking back, I wonder how Mama coped losing what may as well have been her right arm, it was hard for me to see life after Percivia but for Mama it was unbearable. Mama had carried Percivia in her own stomach for nine exciting weeks, watching her own flesh swell and move as baby Percivia swam around unaware of her fate. She had always been Percivia, Mama knew the bump was a girl and therefore Percivia had to be her name, after the much adored and revered Percivia Agatha Mwanyati or Grandmother Pam as she was known.

The first night after her death remains much like a coma induced dream, blurred picture memories like a distorted television set, voices from deep under water moaning and calling out to the God who had taken Percivia. I remember most clearly though the space where Percivia used to sleep, empty now of the little brown body tossing and turning as she dreamt. A gaping void now between me and the wall, a vast menacing open clearing, the centre of a ravine where the other side is unreachable. Still, I tried to reach her, my arms moved of their own accord to the spot where she should be, they wrapped themselves around the devastatingly thin air and remained there for the night holding Percivia’s space.”  

They lived in a hut woven from grass, which offered little shelter from the cold night air and even less from the angry, boiling sun. There were never enough blankets to cover everyone, so they would sleep closely knitted together with just the warmth from their bodies as protection from the cruel draught. Mama mourned the death of her beautiful daughter and cursed the reasons behind her best friend’s death. Percivia was no doubt her favourite daughter; she was different from her older sisters, working twice as hard in half the time and always with a huge grin spreading across her tiny face. Yellow teeth standing proudly on display between lush, pink lips under a pert little button nose that sparkled on a face wise enough to be a grandmothers. Two deep ocean pools looked out from above the nose with a quaint stare that defied description neither sad nor happy, content perhaps but never satisfied. There was always more. Wasn’t there? It was as if she had known she would die young so had tried to cram in as much happiness into her short life as possible. And for this reason, she was special.

Her tiny sister’s death was shadowed by thoughts of how cruel the world was, a hardness formed when you had watched so many babies die but a child was different. A child had been around long enough to get to know and there was nothing worse than losing that child just as you began to truly love them. Love took time, energy and emotions that could not be spared, if a woman loved every child, she had lost she would not be able to continue with the rituals of everyday life, indeed she may become mad. Therefore, it was common practice that a child was loved only once they had reached adulthood and in Mbala this was at the grand age of eleven. Before then a child was still easy prey for whatever disease was looming about but if a child lived to eleven it was almost certain they would survive at least another ten years. Percivia was thought to be ten and half. 

Physically, Mama looked tough due to a lifetime of manual work but on the inside, she was scarred from what seemed like an eternity of suffering and crushed dreams. The sprawling shantytown on the outskirts of Mbala had been the prison wall for almost all of Mama’s life. The festering jumble of mud huts awash with stinking refuse offered nothing but misery and escaping was never anymore than a whimsical dream. Before Mama’s father had died, she had lived a comparatively better life. Her father was a successful businessman, buying and selling timber and for the first five years of her life, she had lived in a large, but sparse house with her nine brothers. Being the only girl and the youngest meant she was well cared for; she never knew that such an malevolent world existed.

One night evil people came and took her father away after beating and killing her mother, she never knew why, nor did she know now. In the panic several of her brothers, seven in all, were also killed, the men had weapons, which they did not hesitate to use. Mama had hidden, curled up in the corner of the room too terrified to even breathe as the bodies of her brothers lay just inches away. She too was injured with shrapnel wounds to her legs, and she could remember vividly wishing she were dead, able to join her mother and brothers dancing in paradise. Her two remaining brothers had done their best to care for their little sister but due to a lack of irrigation during the dry season they were forced to leave their squalid surroundings and their sister to work in the city as labourers.

The shock of being left on her own and the daunting prospect of a lifetime of begging were still very real to Mama today. As she sat on a wooden stool outside her home, watching the children work so hard her dark eyes sparkled as she realised that although her life was harsh, she was sill very much able to care for her own daughters. The knowledge that she had lived to see five of her eight daughters grow into beautiful, hard working young women comforted her. It was indeed a reason to be proud when you were the mother of so many, most parents started with a large family but ended up with just two children after death had taken its toll. Mama was much respected in her village, she was known, endearingly by friends as the ‘wise old witch’. Wise, because at forty-five years of age she had a lifetimes experience in her hands, witch because to have produced so many healthy children meant that the people thought she must have some magic powers.

Although everyday carried the same troubles, Mama had learnt not to complain, she knew no other way of life, and it was true that the outside world terrified her. Waking each morning at five to the sound of crickets, it was often tiring just thinking about the day ahead. Breakfast consisted of corn, just a bowl full between them all, hardly enough to satisfy even the cravings of an infant but it was better than nothing and they were thankful for that. Papa would set off for the field, evidently a very strong man he was used to walking for hours on an empty stomach. His was getting the better of him though and soon he would be unable to work at all. He always knew when the fields were nearby because he could hear the river and there, like every day before he began picking tea until the sun went down and he returned home, weak, tired, and desperately hungry but often there was no food. He slept while his stomach cried out in need of filling until the crickets woke him to begin the harsh routine again.

Mama Toto

“As a young girl I decided that I would not bring my own children into this world, how could I choose to inflict life onto a helpless baby? Children are safer as tadpoles I thought and reasoned that I would live with many of them in a jar from the local stream.”  

All Mamas’ energy and imagination went into feeding and clothing her children. Selling fruit was an art she had perfected. She walked miles to buy and sell a variety of battered fruits, the hot dust rising at every step and turning to mud when it rained. Profits were often tiny, and Mama found it hard juggling all her businesses to ensure at least some income every week. There was so much to do and never enough time, but Mama always found time to tell Sylvia and Jeridah their favourite story. They were her two youngest children now and she dedicated her life to them, her other three daughters were mothers themselves and had husbands to take care of them. They did not need their Mama now though she was always around and ready to help.

The story gave the children hope, it was about an ugly man who was engaged to a beautiful woman, but the woman’s friends thought him so ugly they planned to stop the wedding.  Against all odds the ugly man and the beautiful woman escaped, married, and became very rich, they could afford soap and clean water. Soap was something the two little girls only ever dreamed about, it was a luxury that cost four weeks wages and an eighty-kilometre walk to the nearest shop.

Mama was proud of her daughters and the way they all looked out for each other. Now Percivia had been cruelly snatched from them and three of her daughters were fending for themselves she devoted all her time to Sylvia and Jeridah; they alone were her reason for living. Every day they had to go to work to help pay their way and whatever they earned, they brought home with giving hearts. Mama could not have asked for two better daughters. It was always wonderful to see them return home as the journey to and from work held many dangers. They had to go through the bush, which was dark and lonely and the home of many wild beasts.

Holding hands Jeridah and Sylvia would run through the trees, barely touching the ground with their bare feet for fear of deadly snakes and spiders. Both girls knew of children who had been bitten by snakes or even mauled to death by lions and died, frightened and alone hidden by the suffocating, dense trees. They had heard stories about bandits and rapists hiding in the bush that jumped out and caught unsuspecting children on their way to work or school. Not wanting to be the next victims they ran through the bush like startled rabbits being chased by a fox, only stopping to fight for breath when they thought that their knees would give way for lack of oxygen. Mama knew the dangers only too well; she also knew she could not wrap her babies up in cotton wool if they were to survive in their wicked world.

Jeridah was seven and very wise with it, her cheeky, innocent smile contrasted greatly to her large, haunted eyes. She always had bags of energy though an onlooker would be certain that she was on the last rung of deaths ladder. No stranger to work, Jeridah had laboured for much of her young life, ten hours a day, five days a week rolling tobacco to make cigarettes. It was back breaking work, squatting knee to knee with the other children too poor to receive the education they deserved. The strong scent of the tobacco and the hot, stuffy asbestos roof shed often made the children physically sick, several died from the poisonous tobacco dust they were forced to inhale. 

Jeridah was a fighter; she was not going to let the pungent smelling tobacco get the better of her. For her slave labour, she earned around twenty shillings a week and if she failed to complete her work, she was beaten viciously with a stick. Thankfully, Jeridah was only to endure this archaic punishment once, as she was one of the factories best workers. Mama had taken out a loan in exchange for Jeridah’s services and she was bonded to the factory until her parents could pay it back, plus the unjustifiable amount of interest that was accumulating each day. There was little chance that the day would ever come when they were able to pay back everything they owed but Mama was always quick to remind them that there was always hope.

Sylvia joined a community of rock breakers every day, the quarry was the workers livelihood, the men broke the rocks with rusted axes and the women and children smashed them into gravel to be sold to contractors. Sylvia used just a small pickaxe to pound the rocks that were often bigger than her, working for nine hours a day with no food inside her to help give her strength. Unlike Jeridah, Sylvia was often weak, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  It was as if every strike of her mallet took with it a piece of, blood, sweat and tears literally went into each day’s work.    

It was heart-breaking for Mama to know that her young daughters worked so hard, watching them struggle into bed at the end of the day with aching bones. The whole family worked so hard yet despite their best efforts they would usually go hungry, providing shelter for her daughters was at the very real risk of starving them. Often their work would go un-rewarded but occasionally when there was an abundance of corn, their efforts seemed a small price to pay for the feast they enjoyed. At times like this, Mama, Papa, Jeridah, Sylvia and the rest of the village would sit around a fire sharing their crops with each other, eating, laughing, and chatting like kings. At these special times each minute was treasured, and the people were able to forget that they were prisoners of poverty and spend a few hours feeling secure, happy and fulfilled until the sun went down and the new day dawned bringing with it, as always, a lifetime of hardship.

Mama faced a long trek to the nearest well to fetch precious water each day, often she would find them dry with only a few trickles left at the bottom evaporating in the heat of the day. Drought meant watching animals die, poor harvest, and utter misery. It meant searching the dried-up rivers and wells for the few pools of dirty water which were left, perfect for the spread of life-threatening diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Living through drought was only part of the experience of being poor. Like Percivia, children suffered from tuberculosis, their stomachs swelling as they coughed up blood and phlegm. Hospital treatment was never an option so the children became weaker and weaker until they could no longer find the energy to even breathe. One in five children died before reaching the age of five and if they did, they rarely survived beyond their forties.

Held in Mama’s arms, fourteen-year-old Sylvia had only a thin towel to shield her burning body from the cool monsoonal breeze. With each breath her young face contorted in pain. Mama was frantic with worry, she had not realised that the cold had developed into pneumonia and she could not understand why Sylvia was growing weaker with every agonising breath. They sat praying for her to pull through but the next day little Sylvia lost her battle and was lowered into the river to join her sisters.   A mere four months had passed since the deaths of Percivia and the toto, all around them families were losing their loved ones to the savage natured death.  Grief split loved ones, but it brought people together too, united in their sorrow they learned that a problem shared is not always a problem halved.

Traumatised and sick with grief, Jeridah lay silently and unresponsive in the burning sun. Refusing to work she remained in the foetus position for a week with nothing to shelter her form the killer sunrays and nothing to settle her writhing stomach. Mama was concerned of course, but she knew that there was nothing she could do for a broken heart. It was up to her daughter to rekindle the flame that used to burn so brightly within her, and it was up to her to recapture hope once more. Mama had witnessed so many children suffering from shock and they either died or eventually snapped out of it, there was no known cure, but Jeridah was a fighter.

It was just gone midnight when the gunmen came and woke them up suddenly, screaming in a demonic frenzy as they rudely trampled through the houses. Terrified, Jeridah clung to her father and closed her eyes. It was just a dream. It was no dream. It was a living nightmare, the worst of its kind. The soldiers had smashed the door down and broken in; one pointed a g*n at Mama’s head forcing her outside into a ditch. Papa and Jeridah followed behind helplessly choked with terror. Their home was stripped of its few humble possessions and then the bulldozers demolished the house, which vanished before their eyes becoming nothing but rubble. One soldier covered Jeridah’s eyes as the other shot her parent’s just moments away from where the fear-stricken child stood. Jeridah was among four hundred other children who lost their parents and their home that night. This inhumane act was justified simply because they had no building permit.

For the second time that month, Jeridah went into shock, humming softly to break the eerie silence that deafened her. She sat between the bodies of Mama and her father and rocked back and forth. She was alone on the planet now, totally alone, a small child left to battle against her cruel world. Suddenly everything seemed out to make her life as difficult as possible, betrayed by those she thought she could trust she shut her eyes and imagined herself a new life, one where she woke up and everything that had happened was merely a dream. This was not the stuff dreams are made of.

Jeridah sat in this trance like state for five agonising days, never moving to swat the flies that always seemed to target her eyes; she barely slept yet she was not really awake. It was as if she were in a coma, the only time she moved was to stick out her parched tongue and catch drops of the monsoon rain to soothe her rough throat. Until now, she had been totally unaware of all the other bodies around her, bodies of kind, innocent parents who should be looking after their children. Their only crime was not being able to afford a permit to build their house. The slum had become a mass grave full of people Jeridah knew. These people’s children sat or lay near their parents just as she did, waiting patiently, unknowingly, terrified for something to happen.