I Mapfumo Nigel Tawananyasha have written this entire work and have given credit where the work of others was used. I also give permission to Marist Nyanga LEO Club to publish this work.
This number nine is not just ordinary to a lady called a mother. Pain to deliver, sleepless nights trying to cool my tamper and changing my napkins. She had me when she was sixteen years old and the man that got her pregnant, I won’t even call him my father, wanted to abort me. She refused and was dumped.Moreover she never got to see him again. I vividly remember when she narrated it to me. It was the same day l was suspended from attending school. Perpetuating towards negative devastating acts due to peer influence was the root cause.“I worked my whole life to support an ungrateful child who had been a bane since the day of her birth,” she said.I felt like I must starve and die.
For a moment she cleared her fists as if she thought of striking me as a panacea which would relieve her own distress. Then she buried her face in her hands and started to sob.“Leroy my son, why did you do this?” she said in tears.“Maybe if dad was there, nothing would have happened,” I said with a trembling voice.“You mean the same dad who wanted you dead? His instrument was like a gun which shot a bullet straight into my womb and gave me something which made me walk in disgrace. I lost my shadow and forgot my place. I thought I loved him.
He promised me heaven on earth but l never got to see her again. I was uneducated so I had to start from scratch. For you my prayer is that you make a difference in our lives.” Tears trickling down her chicks, she narrated her past to me.“I’m sorry mama. I promise to leave behind barbaric acts,” I said. The fact that she’s a mother, she embraced me with a tight hug as a sign that she had forgave me.She had ‘accidentally’ pressed the wrong link. She was in form four but she had to quit school and take care of me. Things were not easy but grandmother who was also a single parent, working as a cleaner at United Bulawayo Hospital tried to provide for all of us. My mother managed to go back to school by attending night school. She finished her Ordinary level studies and started doing odd jobs so as to assist grandmother to put food on my table and clothe me. Life collapsed around her. She had worked herself into exhaustion, grandmother died suddenly, and her relationship with her colleagues and loved ones were in turmoil. Little did she know at the time, out of her greatest despair was to come the greatest gift. She had dreams but she had to provide for me.
She put them on hold for a while. She only managed to do a course when I was fourteen doing distance learning at Africa University because she couldn’t quit her job as a waiter in a restaurant in town. She really tried her best to provide for me. I passed my ordinary level with flying colors. I applied for a bursary and attained one. Things were much better for mother as one of her responsibilities got someone to assist. In a few months, she got a job as an assistant manager at Alice Bedwin Hotel. Her life was settled. She extended grandmother’s three roomed house in Makokoba township, where we lived. After earning much she bought a house at Hillside suburbs. Her pain and depression were healed. All her efforts yielded the best results. Here comes back Vincent, my father. Will she accept him?
