Make Your Life A Huge Beautiful Gift

 Our life is a gift from God. What we do with that life is our gift to God.

Samuel s. sumner

Today is a happy-sad day, because we are burying my mother.

A legendary woman of limited height and big heart. Bearing the courage of a lion and the energy of dynamite. She has raised my siblings and me in a great way. Despite the struggles of poverty and lack of an education. All through her life, she dedicated her energy to only one thing. Raising the bar for her family in many ways. And today’s ritual, is a valid confirmation of attaining that vision.

Lucia Wanjiru Mugo, a woman of toils from the beginning, was born in 1942 as the first child to a man by the name Herman Ngeka Munyara. He was a polite and kind man, and he loved  Lucia with all his heart till his death. Her mother, Elizabeth Wambui, was a quiet, reserved woman. When she got married, Elizabeth was a pretty young girl. In her naivety, she proposed that Herman marries another woman to help her take care of him. She went ahead to scout for a bride, and with the help of his friends, she brought the lovely Hannah Wangeci home.

This is what my grandfather narrated to me, when, one day in my youth, I challenged him against polygamy.

Our two grandmothers were good friends, and till now, you can never know which of my mother’s siblings belonged to who. Our grandmother Elizabeth later migrated to Mpeketoni and died later in 1986. Hannah was our grandmother till the year 2001. And Guka Herman died a few years later in the year 2005.

By the time her folks died, Lucia had already taken over the leadership of her family. She took the challenge to educate her sisters’ children by renting her father’s rice farms to pay school fees, and help in any way she could. And went ahead to see several children graduate with university degrees to change their lives and their own families. Her strong leadership skills, no-nonsense attitude, warm heart and commitment came in handy.

Mami’s chief regret was a lack of education.

She loved school, and always narrated the story of how she joined the school and started to enjoy the privilege of listening to a teacher for only a few days. Then suddenly, our grandfather stormed in and pulled her out to save her from going astray. He believed that education would lead his daughter to perpetual promiscuity. In those days, it was thought that an educated girl would not be married by anyone. It was unfortunate for her to continue admiring her former classmates pass by their homestead in uniform, heading to school. She painfully watched her dream of getting educated and becoming a lawyer crushed right in her face.

Despite this, she vowed to pursue her schooling goal. True to her words, she consented to betrothal from a man of ‘high’ education, facilitator of the youth basic literacy program where she had enrolled. His name was Eliud Mugo. That is how Lucia fell in love with a man who later became her husband and our father. That program made her learn how to read and write and achieve a small part of her dream. She capped it up later by convincing her mates in a women group to join an adult learning class in the 1980s, to support literacy development amongst women. Through these classes, Lucia was able to read the bible in Kikuyu, and sing from her favourite Catholic hymnal, Mitha Mugikuyu.

But basic literacy was not her goal.

Once married and with children, she committed to getting ‘her degrees’—this time through her children. After giving birth to our eldest brother David, they decided with dad to work very hard and be able to educate their children. They lived in a thatched mud hut and had no land of their own to till.  They, therefore, decided to go to the rice farms every day, and labour for wages to take their children to school. Working in rice fields of Mwea is akin to voluntary slavery. You break your body with half of it in a bog, and other in the baking sun, for a worthless pay.

Nevertheless, it was their only option. Mum and dad would head into the paddies with their little son, pitch an umbrella to give shade to the baby and work their backs off the whole day for just a few shillings. Over the years, their sweat was generously rewarded. They managed to take all of us to school through relentless toiling. As she would always put it,  ‘People say that my children are educated, that I was lucky. But I tell them, you have to believe in it and work selflessly to achieve it’.

Showing the slightest sign of truancy was the easiest way to earn a merciless beating.

Lucia was a strict disciplinarian, and ruled her nine children with an iron fist. She woke up at 5.00 am every day to make breakfast, and then wake us up on time to get ready for school. She mended our uniforms, making us always the smartest barefoot children in our school. Mami shaved our hair with blunt scissors, skillfully sharpened on bottle mouths, and frequently inspected us for any sign of lice eggs or jiggers. She beat the nonsense out of us at the slightest sign of any misdemeanour. She even did better when there was a case of truancy. David recalls the big joke of her favourite words while flogging us. ‘Mukurega kuthoma mutukie uu?’. Meaning, “when you fail to get an education, whose way will you be following?” The ironic question painfully posed to us, we the children of a non-educated couple.

Every evening, our dusty homestead courtyard was turned into a real courtroom. Our days always closed with screaming run and chase battles. Mami pursuing one of us round the shacks, and settling the mistakes of the day without postponement. That could be about a rumour of arriving late at school, illicit barter trading or gossiping about a teacher in her presence. When done with the daily flogging duties, she had a standard warning to all of us. “Make no mistake that the teacher comes to report your wrongdoing to me. I will frog-march you back to school, and together with your teacher, beat you to pulp. Mind you, I alone can kill a school dropout!”. And coming from a  fresh round of ruthless thrashing, the words really sank. Either way, her stringency worked and inspired David and all of us to get an education.

Mami was a born leader and singer.

By all definition, an opinion leader in our remote Ndindiruku village. Often, the home is visited by young and old ladies, coming to seek her advice or just check on their friend. She was in charge of the big family, literally. She planned everything from end to end and knew where everything was, until 2019, when her memory started failing her. In all her life, she remembered every child’s birthday, and maintained all family records, from birth certificates to baptism cards. She stood for justice, and would tell the truth, even where she knew it would hurt. She was a strong leader, and even though married, still managed to steer her maiden family.

Besides family and social networks, the church was her other leadership platform. She was an ardent Catholic. If there is a reserved corner for extraordinary Catholics in heaven, Mami must be enjoying her welcome drink there now. She joined the church in 1957, two years before she got married. When Eliud proposed to marry her, there was one necessary condition. That he had to ditch his Salvation Army faith, to become a Catholic. The poor young man did, and continues to obey her call 60 years on.

The only way I imagine he disappointed is failing to qualify to join her favourite place in church—the choir. Thanks to his lack of the gift of voice. Mami loved singing, and her alto was a free gift to God and humanity. In her heydays, she composed many songs, all undocumented. She insisted on singing at every occasion, and would sacrifice her two-minute offer to say something, for a song.

Mami was a bee! That didn’t only sting.

‘Mwana wi kio ndagaga muthambia’, Mami would always say. Meaning, a hardworking child will always find someone’s favour. Her energy was just something to sit and admire in awe. She walked fast, moving up and down from dawn to dusk. She also hated the sight of anyone sitting down without a chore. Even as children, playing was a dangerous and punishable crime. It had to be done out of her view and after finishing or cleverly evading allocated duties.

The thing is, she expected her children to emulate her, not her reclining husband. My brother Kariuki, he who loves lounging like our dad, and among the victims of her hatred for coasting narrates: “Mami wouldn’t let one rest. Seeing you sitting down just meant you were ready for the next task, and she always had one for you.” And that she did diligently to her visiting grown children and grandchildren till the end. The last one I received, a day before her death: “John, have you checked what your father is doing?” Just because, in her sight, I was just doing nothing.

The virtue of hard work is the one thing we all have learnt and inherited from Mami. She spoke against people who looked for shortcuts in life. She hated greed, laziness and undeserved riches. It was evident in her words and actions that everything had to come through hard work.

Today marks the end of an era of a remarkable woman.

My mother may not have attained high levels of education nor accumulated enormous wealth. But wealthy, she has died through the immense knowledge and manners that she instilled in us her children and the society in general. Her love for education has seen some of her children create significant impact not only in our country but across the world. And this is only the sprouting of the seed that she planted.

She may not have held an influential political or business position, but through her dedication in small leadership roles, transformed the hearts and minds of many women and children in our local community. She did not crusade for human rights in the glaring publicity of this country. Still, her steadfast commitment to ensuring truth and justice in the family and community will transcend generations. She once told me, “Had I gone to school, I would have been Wangari Maathai’s peer”.

The gift is only a gift if it has gifted in the end.

Our mother may not have fought in a war. Still, she overcame the troubles of growing up in a colonial concentration camp, to become a respectable family matriarch and community member. She was not educated, but lived through the toil and lives of her children to create a descendency of educated people. She lived with debilitating asthma that would have killed many people at a tender age, often sweeping our dusty courtyard and cooking sumptuous family meals in a smokey hearth. After examining her, one pneumologist pulled me to the side and asked me: “Was your mother ever a smoker?”

Our mother has been a big achiever by all means. This may not be apparent to dull eyes, but evident to prickly ones. Like what Henry Ward Beecher said, “We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have travelled from the point where they started.”

In the end, it is not what the world handed you, but what you did with it, and handed back to the world.

Choose to make what you have been handed count when you are gone. The choice is yours.

A huge beautiful gift, or a gigantic regrettable curse.