Saturday, November 5, 2011
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Under That Mango Tree...
In Tanzania where I grew up, all year round people grew and harvested different types of fruit. The country stands right at the center of the equator, no wonder most people in Tanzania are as black as charcoal. It is a big deal to be a little lighter skin tone. Boys loved girls who were not so dark if not too light. They called them “maji ya kunde”. Maji means water and Kunde is a type of vegetable. They are very small. I did not like eating them because they did not taste delicious no matter how well you cooked them. You wash them before cooking and from the washing the leaves lost some of their color making the water turn to a lighter color green. The water looks very pretty. Therefore the “maji ya kunde” means the lighter green watercolor as a result of washing kunde. My father’s skin tone was charcoal black while my mother’s skin tone was very light. Them together has me maji ya kunde. You have no idea how many times I was jealous o my mother’s skin tone but at the same time, thanking God that my father did not contribute much to mine.
One of my favorite types of fruit is the embe also know as the mango in English. This fruit tastes tropical but they would make you hate your stomach if you are far from the restroom after having a couple of them. My grandmother had a mango tree in her back yard. When I was five, I could not wait to knock some mangoes down, but I had to wait another four to five more years before I could do so. In the meantime, waiting for grandmother’s tree to grow, I was keeping busy knocking mangoes from other people’s mango trees. Constantly neighbors would bring me home to grandmother’s house complaining that I am shaking their mangoes off their trees. Accusations like those caused a big controversy between grandmother and the neighbors. My mother was too sick to keep me under control. I kept thinking that she was going to get better very son and so I should enjoy the little chance I had, doing as much trouble as possible. In the middle of the afternoon, when Mom was at the back yard, sleeping under the mango tree and Grandmother was cooking something for lunch, a neighbor brought me home with her hand pulling my ear coming to complain.
“Who ever told you to pull my grand child’s ear”? Grandmother would shout. I thought that maybe Mom had told them to do so, since she always does it to me when I get out of line, which is always.
“Well, maybe if you taught her some manners I wouldn’t have to do it” the neighbor said. “Tell her to stay away from my farm” she added.
“You are older, you should understand that she is just a baby who loves to eat” Grandmother said.
They would argue like that for a long time. Grandmother did not only have to face one neighbor but so many others, who happened to own a farm. One time I broke my hand and grandmother was secretly glad it happened. She thought I would learn my lesson and stay at home I soon as I got out of the hospital, where they put a cast on my hand. I went back to climbing trees soon after I got home.
Mango trees did not only give me problems but also gave me plenty of memories that when I look back I can only laugh. One of my beautiful moments was spent under the mango tree. In fact the last day Mom and I spent together was under the mango tree at our back yard, This is a story of Mom and I under Grandma’s back yard mango tree. My plans were to go to play “Chase Me If You Can” with my neighbor’s kids. Mom called me when I was about to leave the house. At first I continued walking away pretending as if I did not hear her.
“Queen” Mom yelled. “Bring those feet over here” she insisted. I walked to her with my head down. She asked where I was leading my feet. I said to the bathroom, what a lie that was.
“Sit here with me” Mom said. I would tell she knew that I did not want to be there with her, but she insisted. Therefore there we were. A chubby girl with her sick mother. Mom laid her head on my lap. Her exhausted face was facing my chubby, stumpy dirty toes. She did not weigh much at all. To be frank, I was a little scared of Mom during those days. I was not scared because she was strict but because her appearance was not what it used to be. Mom had lost so much weight. I mean even Miss Tanzania looked fat compared to her. Her skin looked like that of a leopard. She had dots all over her body. They looked like t hose from chicken pox. Her skin was dry as a raisin under the sun. Her lips were dry and split all over. On top of that, Mom lost a lot of hair on her head. The few hairs she had felt and looked very light and dead. Mom was no longer beautiful. There was nothing beautiful about her to look at.
“Would you braid my hair? she whispered.
“What”?
She coughed “Braid my hair”
I glared at her while wondering, what hair did she want me to braid? Her hair was almost gone. I thought she was going to go bald like grandfather. Grandfather’s hair was a U shape. He had some hair on the left and some on the right but nothing on the middle. In the middle of his head grandpa was bald as if someone waxed it all off when he was asleep.
“Do this side” Mom insisted.
I tried to weave her hair as how I saw the girls in the salon do. I did my best figuring out the braid. It was very quiet under that tree. Mom was swallowing breaths as if she did not know how to use her nose. She just kept growing weak as the wind that swings under the mango tree.
“How are they coming”? she asked.
“Safi” I totally lied. If only she knew that I was just tying knots on her hair and doing nothing about braiding, she would have twisted my ears right off my head.
“I think I am done”, I said.
Mom lifted her hand and ran her fingers on her head. She walked her fingers through the entire head.
“Vizuri” she then smiled. “You want to go, right?” she asked while lifting her head off from my lap.
“NDio”
“ok” she whispered again.
Before I got up completely, mom grabbed my hand and said
“Be careful this time” “Understand me”? she insisted once again.
I nodded my head up and down. I was stiff and had to walk off the sleep in my butt. I marched away from where Mom was.
“Kwaheri” I waved to Mom
A few days later Mom’s condition worsened. My younger brother Walter and I were taken to our Aunt’s house. She did not live that far away from Grandma. We were told not to come visit her because she was not well. I guess Grandma did not want us to see how sick Mom had become. I ended bruising my toe very badly from sneaking to my Grandma’s house at night to see Mom, when using the short cut through Grandma’s small farm. That is where a piece of glass split my baby toe open. Two days later, after begging and crying my eyes out, Aunty took me to see Mom. We did not go to Grandma’s house but to the funeral home to say goodbye to Mom while she was lying inside her coffin.
Just like there is a beginning, there is an end. When this memory comes to my head it makes me laugh as much as it makes me cry. Just like any other parent, they always tell their children to be careful. Mom wished me to do so. I will never forget because those were probably her last words to me apart from not to eat in stranger’s homes. Under that mango tree, I connected with Mom more than any other time we spent together. Mom died, but the mangoes are still my favorite fruit.