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| Photo taken from Google |
Nothing prepared me whatsoever that one day l would leave my family and start a new life far from my motherland. I miss a lot about the area that l grew up. The popular greetings...juice mango fruits....walking past the fields to Ruya river...going to the dam to catch small fish ; the list goes on. Growing up attending social events brought so much joy to my little self. The memories of seeing my sisters and their husbands coming from town and visiting our rural homestead are still vivid in my mind. As a little girl my mum used to tell me ‘’when you grow up don’t date a guy from this village…because l want you to be married to a guy who will be far from here so that you will catch a bus to visit us”. This means that getting married far from the village was the ideal thing to do. To her riding a bus to the village came with some certain degree of prestige. It would differentiate her daughter from all the other daughters who after primary school would quickly get married to guys who were resident in our village. Now that l have grown up and recall the life that we used to lead those days l understand what my mother wanted. She wanted upward mobility for me. Moreso, getting married seem to have been the inevitable.
Ironically time have moved and l have become a grown up woman. I have a little daughter also but am expecting something different from her. I want her to grow up knowing that she is the captain of her ship. I want her to know that marriage is not going to catapult her into upward mobility. I want her to know that she can still ride the bus on her own terms and through her own efforts. May she know that the world has become a global village and she has to develop and spread her wings to become what she aspires to be and go wherever she feels like. Nevertheless, l am thankful mommy, because, you taught me something very important and that was to aspire. It is important to aspire to be better and once you develop some aspirations then you take the necessary critical steps in realizing them....
