The African mother

One very hot morning, the bananas were freshly ripe and the yam was ready to be harvested along with the rice.

I was in my bed when I realized the sun was almost up, quickly I pulled my children from bed with a great might trying not to hurt them.

“Ama, Savanna, you will be late for school and your teacher will punish you, go now or I will punish you”

My two girls run with the speed of light. I went back to the bed room to go and wake my husband up, for he and I would always go to the farm to get ingredients to prepare dinner for the kids.

“Edward, my love, let us to the farm” I said as I kissed him gently on the forehead.

But he just turned away and continued to sleep. This was very odd. In my time husbands would always either beat up their wives or be kind to them, and my husband was the kind type, this behavior I had never seen my husband do.

Since he did not want to see me, I decided to go to the farm myself.

On my way, my very good friend, uche, came walking by, but he was and beat up and his leg was swollen.

“Uche, what happened to you? Did someone beat you?”

He chuckled at me and walked away angrily.

Had I said something that upset him? I just decided to continue my journey, finally I had reached the farm. I started to collect some tomatoes and rice to make jollof for the family. On the way I saw uche again, but this time I chuckled and walked past him, but he looked quite confused.

I continued to walk back home and when I got there Ama and Savanna were already there waiting for me.

I could tell they were very hungry, so I did not waste time to prepare the jollof for them.

Finally the day had ended and my husband was up and active, in the middle of the afternoon.

That was when I realized I had not collected the yam from the farm! This meant I had to rush back and forth to the farm one more time.

But I couldn’t leave without preparing the jollof for the family, and I myself was starving.

‘Could this day get any worse’ I questioned myself, and unfortunately for me it did.

As I started to complain two men in black suits showed up, but one was in white.

IT WAS THE LANDLORD…