How to nature your love life

My Mothers Prayers and instincs

The Newspaper Man

My mother is a woman of prayer and faith.  And she always has patience and a strong belief  that her prayers will be answered sooner or later. In this story, it happened sooner than she expected.


The year is 1988, I had just moved back home to my my parents and four other siblings after being away for 8 years. I used to live with my grandma Asha who had offered to take care of me while mum took care of  my new born little brother, whom she gave birth to only 1 year and three months after was i was born. I was only 1 year and three months and having two small babies in the house would have been too much for my mum.
Now i was just an 8 year old who just came in from a very different environment and rules. The routine of being back home and getting used to my siblings and the life my family had, took a while to sink in. My grandma used to live in an indian sponsored home, so food for all the residents was a guarantee. This meant that I was used to bread, meat, maize meal. rice, beans, tea with milk and sugar and sometimes candy during the holidays. But back home that wasn't the case, food was a scarcity, so you can imagine the shock I got when i realised that it was normal to go to bed hungry some times or go to the neighbours maize field and steal some maize or cassava. This new way of living was hard to swallow in the beginning but at the same time i was happy to be with my family again after years of absence.

One morning we ran to school, barefoot as usual and using the normal route: Across the river that had a small thick bush with small harmless green snakes that had taken it as their home, up a small green field filled with thorns, we then passed the tall bee tree and ran through a small shortcut – then we were in school compound. This was also our route back when we got our half hour break for lunch. We would sprint home as fast as we could, sometimes not even caring about being poked by the thorns or whether the "harmless"snakes were awake,  (I must admit that snakes have always creeped me out, harmless or not) So my heart was always almost jumping out of my body whenever we passed by that snake infested bush.. That day surprisingly, we were having french toast, wow, "the sprinting home was so worth it" i secretly thought. We thanked for the food and were out the door 15 minutes later, and ran back to school.

Later that day while having the usual beans and maize for dinner, mum told us that a little while before the school bell rang, she had no idea what to give us for lunch as  she hadn't  managed to get any money from the small jobs that she normally found from day to day and thus made  it possible for her to sometimes buy food. So with no other option left, she basically just  decided to pray for a miracle and miraculously, before she was done praying, one of my dads friends came knocking as he had lent my dad his newspaper and he wanted it back. But as it always has been  a tradition in my village,  that one couldn't visit a home with children without milk, tea or sugar,  he decided to give mum 100 shillings instead, which she used to buy toast and eggs and made french toast for lunch.

She firmly believed – and is still convinced to this day – that what happened that day was a direct result of her prayers. I will always respect her for that.

bless Sawa