In My Dreams I Dance. Anne Wafula-Strike

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 peer out of the gate, anxiously hoping that he would appear. But his visits became less and less frequent.

      It was traditional for parents to bring gifts of bananas and bread and for children who received them to share them out with others in the dormitory. One visiting day my dad didn’t come but the girl in the bed next to me had received lots of bananas. How my mouth watered for one of them. In the end I couldn’t contain myself. I pretended to be sick so that I could stay in the dormitory and stole one of her bananas and some of her bread.

      She cried when she saw that one of her juicy bananas was missing and I was accused of stealing it. I squashed the banana peel in my hand, but didn’t manage to conceal it very well—I wasn’t a very good liar or thief.

      ‘Anne, you must apologise to your friend for stealing from her and you must also apologise to God,’ I was told. ‘Your punishment will be to sit alone in the dormitory for half an hour.’

      I knew I’d done something wrong. I felt so guilty and vowed never to do anything like that again.

      Even though my dad had explained to me that he might not always be able to come and see me, I became increasingly distressed when he didn’t turn up. I started to doubt him and wondered if he no longer loved me because I was disabled. I wrote him a letter accusing him of not loving me enough.

      ‘I wish Mum had never died,’ I wrote. ‘This would never have happened when she was alive.’ I concluded by saying, ‘I didn’t write an application to be born.’

      My dad wrote me a very long letter back, saying how much he loved me. He also sent a letter to the school, asking them to give me extra care. When he couldn’t come СКАЧАТЬ