She would call me Kabiesi. Everyday after school, I returned home to meet her waiting for me outside our face-me-I-face-you house, the one she built herself, and when she sighted me from afar, my ancestral cognomen would fill the air as she praised me. In those praise chants, she would remind me of the nobility of my progenitors and, of course, how the Lion would never stoop so low to eat grass
Segun Adefila and Mum, middle is first born of Maami, Mrs Titilayo Komolafe
MY Mother.
MAAMI, I used to call her from childhood and even throughout my university days. My friends in school (Creative Arts Department, UNILAG) also call me Omo Maami till date.
Strong woman my mother.
She spoilt me so much in my childhood years that people gave up on me as a child. She gave me everything I wanted and she could afford.
Because I was a gourmet who could demand for food at anytime of the day or night especially, I remember for instance, my mother keeping half a loaf of bread beside her bed at night in anticipation of my cry for food at any odd hour.
No one dared touch me in my mother’s presence. I was never wrong too!
My mother pampered me so much.
She would call me Kabiesi. Everyday after school, I returned home to meet her waiting for me outside our face-me-I-face-you house, the one she built herself, and when she sighted me from afar, my ancestral cognomen would fill the air as she praised me. In those praise chants, she would remind me of the nobility of my progenitors and, of course, how the Lion would never stoop so low to eat grass.
On entering our house, a little bit of whatever she had in my absence would be waiting for me and, this could be any meal ranging from a morsel of food to garri water!
Yes, I was born with a wooden spoon that turned silver in my mother’s tender palms. My mother made me feel like a rich child. I never knew we were not the richest in the neighborhood even though it took us time to finally get our own black and white TV.
My mother taught me contentment. All she had and could give was enough for me. Never would I step into a neighbour’s room to watch TV except she was there, of course.
My mother so pampered me that at the age of ten, if I cried for anything and would not heed all her pleadings, she would put me on her laps amidst protests from uncles, aunts, siblings and neighbours. She topped it by putting her breast in my mouth to placate me and people would go :
‘ayanma, e ti b’omode yi je’, – you’ve spoilt this child,
‘ha! Ayo k’ayo leleyi o’, – this is over pampering,
‘shio, o wa lara eyin mejeji’ – sorry for mother and child (whatever!) etc.
Well at ten, I was still her last child by the way and she would not deny me any of those ‘last born’ benefits.
My mother couldn’t conceive after me till I was eleven years old. People said I was so spoilt that I didn’t allow my mother conceive after me. They would mock me by saying ‘agbaya, o ti to gba’buro’ loosely meaning shameless old man, you’re old enough to have younger siblings.
My mother pampered me. She treated me like royalty.
But something happened one day.
I WAS on my way home from school with one friend of mine, Oriyomi, when I met an elderly acquittance of my mother. I greeted him as my mother had taught me and after returning my greetings with so much fondness and kindness in his eyes, the elderly man gave me 10 Kobo. I said ‘thank you’, and continued my journey home with my friend Oriyomi. This was not the first time older people would give me money. Somehow, I think they all liked me as a child.!
Now on the road that led to my house from my school was one particular house where fried fishes were sold. Every time you passed that road, the tempting aroma of fried or frying fishes pervaded the air. I passed this road everyday and never bowed to this temptation even when I could afford it.
My mother taught me ‘kingly characters’ one of which was never to covet what wasn’t mine, I wasn’t given or I couldn’t afford. She used to say to me repeatedly that I was a special child and hence I could not do some bad things other kids do. No lying, no fighting, no taking what wasn’t yours, no being rude, respect those older than you etc.
On this particular day, Oriyomi managed to persuade me to spend my ten kobo on fried fish. At first, this very idea sounded blasphemous to me. How could a child spend the money given to her or him by an outsider without showing it to her or his mother first?
How could you even wrap your mind around eating anything your mother had not seen?!
It sounded sacrilegious but Oriyomi’s reasoning appealed more to my adventurous mind. The assailing aroma of fried fish didn’t help matters too, so that by the time he shattered my common sense with something like ‘is your mother here’? I let the wind have my caution. I spent my ten kobo fortune on fried fish, which I shared with Oriyomi.
Wow! See what I’ve been missing, I thought to myself. What’s more, my mother won’t even learn of this little disobedience. The air of independence was overwhelming albeit a little chokingly so.
The mothers left and I was left alone with my mother. After a while, I started looking for ways to tell her how sorry I was and promise never to try such again. I was thinking this through when she called me, drew me closer to her bosom and begged me never to let this happen again. Never to let her raise her hands against me again. Never to make us cry again. Tears welled up in our eyes and I cried some more out of appreciation to my mother for accepting me back
I GOT home that day and met the same warm reception that I had by now factored into my daily existence. My mother was waiting for me as usual and I got all the hugs and praises too! Wow, the little guilt, I felt vanished into thin air. I had done nothing wrong, after all! What is not known won’t hurt! Oh wow! Life is sweet.
So na so e easy to eat one’s cake and have it!
So, I can still be disobedient and be respected?
Okay now. Here comes the latest convert to ‘independence’.
I couldn’t wait to get to school the following day to thank Oriyomi for ‘giving me the ‘fruit of knowledge’. And was he so proud of his achievement! We were both happy and I made up my mind to always pray in Oriyomi’s name. This guy made a man of me. I am now a fully grown man at the tender age of 10. Now, I do not need my mother’s consent to do certain things. I was filled to the brim with joy that day.
I sailed home after school as usual that following day but lo and behold, my mother was not at her post!
No welcoming praises or hugs! I became worried.
What has happened to my dear mother?
God, please don’t let her be hurt.
God, please, please, plea…
I stopped in my tracks as I saw my mother seated with a sad expression and blazing eyes. I greeted her and she responded by asking me with a voice that dripped ‘hot ice’, to go inside, drop my school bag, remove my school uniform and return to her immediately.
This was a strange welcome and command from my mother and my young mind was in a haze from whirling by the time I got back to her.
She brought out ‘tape rule’ (measuring tapes used by tailors) and strokes after strokes fell on me. The shock and the pain kept me mute for a brief seconds that lasted a lifetime before the bellow of anguished screams bursts out. I shouted at the top of my voice and cried out in pains borne out of shock and horror at the source of this pain. The pains were not from the lashes.
I got strokes of cane every now and then in school but none pained me like my mother’s tape rule. Why, this was my ever pampering mother beating me in a kind of anger that I had never seen from her.
Normally neighbours would come out to plead on behalf of a child being beaten by a parent but not this child. When people peeped in to see the cause of the commotion, all they did was exclaimed gleefully ‘Ope ooo, mummy n na Segun’ – loosely meaning ‘what a glorious thing, Segun is getting beaten by his mother’!
I was left at the mercy of my mother’s raging anger.
Mother and child, we were a spectacle. She beat me until she was exhausted and I could cry no more. Then with tears in her eyes, she told me how I had betrayed her trust in me; how I had let her down and made a mockery of her motherly love; how I had shamed her in public and; how I had disgraced myself in the open glare of the entire world!
Ha! Segun, son of kings dared to drag our royal name in the gutters! And there I was hurting with each word hurled at me from the same tongue that only yesterday was full of praises for me. I wished these scathing words would stop and the beating resumed, for the sting from the beating wasn’t as scathing as the words. I wished the ground would burst open and create a hiding place for me. But none of these wishes came to being. I was there at the receiving end of my mother’s scorn when people began to trickle in out of curiosity to find out what I could have done to turn my mother so red and then, she broke the shell.
I had spent a 10 kobo coin given to me by a stranger without showing it to her first! Apparently, the old man had seen my mum the next day and my name had cropped up in their discussion. He had asked my mother if I delivered his message of greetings to her and added that he even gave me 10 Kobo and was saying to the people around him, ‘see that child, he’s taking that token home to his mother’ and then asked if I did. My mother said she had to lie shamefully to cover up for me that I told her about the money and even showed the coin to her. And the man said, ‘Yes. I trust him. I knew he would. Good child that child of yours. You’re a lucky woman to be so blessed’. This was how my mother told us she got to know.
Whaaaat!
People screamed, some acted like they had just been hit by a hurricane while others just opened their mouth in total disbelief. Mothers, all of them. They took turns to express their disappointment that their ‘husband’ the king, their favourite child, though a bit over pampered, could stoop so low as to do what only unloved and bad children do!
Ha! Segun, you of all people!
How could you?
What went over him?
This one that I normally use as an example to my children whenever they misbehave by asking them to be like Segun the obedient child who was so well behaved that his mother could go to any length to please him.
Oh the world indeed has changed.
Then the stories started to flow of how disobedience caused this and that. One would go:
‘don’t you remember what happened to Bomboy’
‘Ha! Don’t remind us of that story,’ another would reply and the next would go,
‘is it not a similar case that caused Mama Ranti’s wahala till date?’ and the next would raise the topic of the armed robbers recently killed by firing squad at Bar Beach and on and on the mothers went about how covetousness had destroyed a whole civilization only a few days ago!
Oh, how ashamed of myself I felt for bowing to the fried fish temptation.
While all these were going on, I was there huddled in one corner making up my mind never to allow my mother go through this kind of ordeal again. Never would I bring her shame again. Never would I disobey her again. I will make her proud of me again and bring her nothing but glory, if only she would accept me again.
Then the neighbours left after sympathising with my mother for this ‘grand betrayal’ and leaving me with stern warnings of dire consequences of a repeat show of shame. Those were the days when children had parents everywhere they turned. Days when children were raised and nurtured by an entire community.
I suspect they must have gone somewhere to congratulate themselves for a nice performance. Looking back, i think it was one of those tricks mothers employed to correct their children.
REMEMBER those ‘Àródan’ tricks, where without phone calls, mothers sent troublesome kids on errands with a codified message, which when the other receives it, she knew exactly what had happened at home.
A troublesome child would be sent to go to and get Arodan from another mother, who in turn, sends the child to another mother, who she explains might have it and by the time the child has done the rounds and fatigue begins to show, any knowing mother among them would ask the child to sit and wait for the mysterious item to arrive. This item never showed up till the child slept off and the biological mother would come for the child.
None of us in my age grade found this out until later in our adult lives.
That’s what I suspect those mothers did to me.
Anyway, back to my story.
THE mothers left and I was left alone with my mother. After a while, I started looking for ways to tell her how sorry I was and promise never to try such again. I was thinking this through when she called me, drew me closer to her bosom and begged me never to let this happen again. Never to let her raise her hands against me again. Never to make us cry again. Tears welled up in our eyes and I cried some more out of appreciation to my mother for accepting me back, remorse for my misconduct and most especially, the love and pain I felt in my heart for a doting mother whose devotion I almost pawned for fish.
We made up afterwards.
I went to have my bath, changed my clothes and by the time I was done, there was some delicacy I can’t exactly remember waiting for me.
I never left her side throughout the rest of that day and, of course, the neighbours were back to making fun of the pampered child of a doting mother.
LOTS of story to tell about my mother who taught me everything and made this man of me.
If I had turned out badly, the blame definitely would be mine and neither my mother’s nor my father’s. My father, the soldier made me strong, my mother ‘gave me heart’.
My soldier-father taught me to be tough, self dependent and focused; my trader mother taught me love, self respect and tenderness.
TODAY AND EVERY OTHER DAY, I CELEBRATE MY MOTHER AND EVERY OTHER MOTHER WHO GAVE US THEIR ALL.
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.
oriade2018.
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