My mom’s at that age where she repeats stories over and over. She tells me stories of my childhood and what a sickly child I was.
She was once isolated in a packed bus bringing me back from hospital. They had discharged me but I looked like I was about to die, many assumed that I was dead already. They wouldn’t sit next to a woman carrying a dead baby, so she sat like a VIP(minus the curious onlookers’ stares and harsh, hurtful words).
Things got so desperate that my grandmother uFrancisca herself had to move in with us.
My mother and MaMkhulu uWillo even went to the sangoma to consult with the ancestors and I’m not sure if they paid for their consultation coz she says they came out running and didn’t stop until they reached home. The sangoma had told them that I would be dead by the time they reach the house.
Sometimes I wonder if I am really alive
#matrix.All these stories tell me that I am alive for a purpose and that I am not going anywhere until I have fulfilled it.
Part of the story is that because I spent so much time in hospital, I wouldn’t take the breast anymore and I refused the bottle, so I grew up using sippy cups. My mom say one day when she visited me in hospital she saw that one of the moms had been feeding me cheese curls, so that became a staple food for me since I wasn’t interested in her breast milk anymore.
Formula and cheese curls sounds like a cool combo.
Isn’t it ironic that the cheese curls contributed to the excessive weight gain when I had unlimited access to the stuff.
Listen, I could eat any junk food and drink any amount of fizzy cold drink I wanted when my dad opened his shop in 1989. Often I was left in charge whilst my parents attended to other things.
I digress.
Unfortunately a cousin who was the same age, (and suffered the same symptoms as me) didn’t make it. May her innocent soul rest in peace.
My mother pushed against popular beliefs and prevailing practices to seek medical care for her children, much to the annoyance of certain individuals who sarcastically commented on ‘how precious’ we were. “Igugu bo lezngane”- Shane Msomi
Our neighbors rallied around my mom and helped to care for us, & for that we are forever grateful
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