In My Dreams I Dance. Anne Wafula-Strike
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couldn’t believe it. ‘She only left Nairobi a few days ago and there was nothing wrong with her then,’ he said over and over again.
My mum had been in her village attending a memorial service for her brother, who had recently died, and had collapsed at his graveside and died herself. In those days people were rarely rushed to hospital, nor did they have post-mortems, so the exact cause remained a mystery. As usual when people didn’t have a rational explanation they attributed it to witchcraft and said it was the result of a curse, although why my mum had been cursed nobody knew.
People said that her last words as she set off to pay her respects to her brother were that she hoped my youngest brother Geoffrey would be weaned by the time she returned. He was two and a half and she was struggling to get him off the breast. She hadn’t expected to be gone for long and hadn’t envisaged just how absolute the weaning process would be.
I couldn’t think straight. I had never thought that my mum might die. She had always been there for me and I had assumed that she always would be. I felt very lost and empty at the thought of continuing life without her and sobbed uncontrollably.
Alice tried her best to comfort me. ‘I promise I will look after you, Anne,’ she said, ‘just like our mum did.’
I was amazed at how strong she sounded.
A carpenter was enlisted to make a coffin to carry the body from my mum’s village to my dad’s village, half a day’s walk away. It was traditional for a wife to be buried in her husband’s village.
I was taken on a bicycle and spent the whole of the bumpy journey crying.
Finally we arrived in my dad’s village. I looked around at the place I had been born in but barely remembered. It was the first time I’d been back since we’d been forced out. I remembered the wild roses growing outside our front door. They were still there.
The village was full of people sitting and weeping. My mum had been a very popular figure and everybody was sharing their memories of her. There’s much to recommend the African system of mourning. People let their grief spill out freely and don’t hold back their emotions. This helps them to heal more quickly.
Nobody paid too much attention to me or asked whether I’d eaten or wanted to wash myself. I thought of how Mum had devoted herself to making sure I had everything I needed. The realisation washed over me in sickly waves that nothing would ever be the same again for me.
My dad was in such deep shock that he could barely comfort us. He looked as if he was in a trance. Although his head had absorbed the news, his heart had not. And he was left with eight children ranging from 16 to two and a half.
I clung onto Alice and during the whole of the mourning period I barely left her side. I took her at her word when she said she would be a replacement mum for me. Whenever she left the room I cried out, ‘Where are you going, Alice? Please don’t leave me.’ I was scared that if I let her out of my sight she would suddenly drop down dead too.
I didn’t fully understand the traditional death rituals of our village, but Alice tried to explain them as best she could. My mum’s body was placed under a tree facing in a particular direction to symbolise the fact that she had been a married woman. Then everyone gathered around to hear the telling of her life story.
The digging of the grave traditionally begins at midnight. I was exhausted by this time and drifted off to sleep in Alice’s arms. Mum’s grave was in the homestead, because that was where married women were buried. We didn’t have a system of cemeteries and people were generally buried close to where they lived.
At least one cow is slaughtered to mark someone’s passing. But first it has to spend the night dancing by the grave. It is hypnotised by people in the village who know how to do such things and then the singing and dancing starts. People sing to send the spirit of the dead person away so that they’re not annoyed with the living and come back and haunt them. When the dancing of humans and cow is complete, the cow is slaughtered and then cooked in a stew to be shared by all the mourners. Different parts of it are given to different families.
Funerals sometimes attract hangers-on because it is the duty of the mourners to provide food for those who come to mourn with them. A death means that poor people can not only come and pay their respects but also feed their children for a few days.
On the third day after the funeral we were taken to the river and had our heads shaved.
‘They say that your hair dies with your mother and you have to start anew with fresh hair,’ Alice explained to me. ‘Don’t look round,’ she urged as we made our way back home. ‘They say the spirit of the dead person is there.’
To me, the mourning period seemed to go on forever. Every day new people appeared and they were still coming a month later. They all wailed and threw themselves on my mum’s grave.
When the mourning period did finally end, I refused to go back to school. I continued to cling to Alice, who tried her best to hide her own grief and be a surrogate mum to me. I was scared that if I became separated from my family again it would only be a matter of time before another person I loved died. And I didn’t want to risk that.
We stayed with my mum’s sister in the village. Nobody said anything to my face, but some people muttered that it should have been me who died, not my mum. Others cried for me and worried who would look after a vulnerable girl like me and the younger children. It was a struggle for a family of eight to be without a mother.
I found it very hard being back in the village after the comfort and support of Joyland. I spent most of my time in the bedroom, seeing only close family members. My world had completely crumbled. Here I was back in the environment where people had been scornful of me, and the one person who had always protected me had gone and wasn’t going to come back. I felt as if I had died with her.
Pure physical survival was difficult because the village wasn’t geared up for people with disabilities. My sisters Jane and Alice brought me water from the river. They tried their best to make me feel better, but they were still young, they too were grieving and it wasn’t the same as having my mum around.
I started looking at the world through different eyes. I realised that it was very difficult to survive without maternal support.
There was some discussion amongst our relatives about who should take in the motherless girls and boys. Only my grandmother wanted me; all the others said I would be a heavy burden. My grandmother really loved me and had often helped my mum to look after me during school holidays. But my dad refused to share his children out. ‘The older ones will help the younger ones and I will do the rest,’ he said firmly.
I missed more than one school term, but eventually my family managed to persuade me to return. My dad told me repeatedly how important it was for me to continue with my studies.
‘You will do your mum proud if you go back,’ he coaxed. ‘Now your mum has died, I’ll try to be both a mum and a dad to you. You must return to school to please both of us.’
Not wanting to do anything that might upset my mum in case she was watching over me, I agreed. My dad took me back on the bus, a journey I had always made with my mum. I was tearful, but my dad urged me to be strong.
The school had regular visiting days when parents could come to see their children.
‘Mum always used to come for visiting days. Will you come instead, Dad?’
‘I promise you that I’ll come and visit you as often as I can, Anne, but sometimes when I’m doing training exercises it will be hard for me to visit,’ he said.
I had to be satisfied with that.
I settled back into the school routine, although I often longed to have my mum back near me.
At first my dad came to visit me often, bringing gifts of army food like corned beef, dried biscuits and sweets, which were big treats for me and the other children in my dormitory. When visiting days came around I would