Maphakela

I have a very vivid memory of the countless, colourful, and eventful maphakela (mornings). I was still a naughty pupil at the Mafhikana Primary School. Particularly when I was about 10 years old.

About the time our father was listening to the 7 o’clock Radio Botswana News, getting ready to perfect one of his favourite chores: cutting the long wall of hedges surrounding his yard. Just after our sister used the front gate to walk to her senior secondary school. Just about when the humming Mma Lentle started sweeping the leafy-yard. Just before my brother and I walked up the hill, to the nearby primary school.

Alerted by the hooting sound, she would hastily rush out of their glass-door bedroom – past the sitting room – where her footsteps and the clear carpet protector complemented the waking up the neighbours’ sounds. She proceeded through the kitchen door, towards the backyard fence gate. The approaching vrooming yellow Station Wagon parked outside, by the square-built rusting gate. A light greenish dress and maroon jersey woman cheerfully shouting: “A re ye Mmaagwe Molly (let’s go Molly’s Mother). The big beard, dark skinned smiling man fisted the steering wheel once more to make the melodious sounds. By that time, standing by the brownish kitchen door, my brother and I were eyeing the yellow machine with love.

Exactly when she hopped into the yellow Station Wagon she always loudly shouted: Nkgooosii nneela motogo wame hooooo!” (Nkgosi pass my porridge). As soon as I had passed the boiling blue-Tupperware porridge, my brother, Nkgotla, would scream: “look out, look out! He is going to change the gears! As predicted, the bearded smiling man would change the gear from neutral. By then, my brother’s small eyes were completely shut, only his sparkling teeth showing; as our dear mother and her smiling colleagues drove off – in the yellow machine – to the Kanye Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, for a long day’s work.

Today, it’s her very last maphakela getting ready to go to work, in her 62 years (about 40-41 at the hospital). My father is not there. My sister is not there. Mma Lentle is not there. Her smiling colleagues are not there. My brother is not there. And I am not there. However, her mother, my dear grandmother, is there to see her off.

I guess this is my forever-grateful way of seeing Mama off to her work, for the very last time, in her life.

Here is the porridge Mama!