12 May 2014. Die Toekamannie

In the name of Allah most gracious most merciful

 

I don’t subscribe to Mother’s Day. I feel that someone should not be telling me to honour my mother on a particular day. Personally a special day for my mother is my birthday, when she birthed me and was an instrument in my creation.

But hey whose going to complain about the the hugs and kisses at home and abroad and those special duahs that we will gather in Jannah one day inshaAllah. And who’s to complain when your daughter says I made you a special chocolate cake and used our oven for the first time. And a long distance call and the sound of a grandson stringing together an entire sentence. And friends and students who send me messages and beautiful pics.

I walk through the gardens and think how unbearable it must be for the mothers of the abducted young girls. And I make duah for their mothers who hearts are wrenched waking up in a nightmare, walking to their daughters places of sleep and beseeching Allah for their safety. And then I sommer cry and miss my children and I make duah for them. And I cry for all of the children that I have had the pleasure of teaching whose lives were so short, such as the San youth who passed of HIV/Aids and the ones in Langlaagte in Gauteng. Because a mother’s duahs are so special. And then I stumble upon a poem that I wrote as an assessment on an Experiential Learning module, I think, at campus:

To all of the women in my life, my maternal ancestors, my grandmothers, my mothers-in-law, my daughters, my sisters, my sisters-in law, my nieces, my dear students and friends. And most importantly for my mother who gave courage true meaning.

 

Last rites of the washer woman
Washing, ironing, scrubbing, starching, bleaching for the master.
Strong women, slave women
These were my maternal ancestors
Me,
I prefer my whirlpool and no man is my master.

My mother, a Toekamannie
The washer of the dead
They, who died
From natural causes and not so natural causes
Their bodies, her site learning

Her life was a cycle
Factory worker of District Six,
Sewing collars for Rex Trueform
Doing the triple shift
Volunteer worker on the Cape Flats

In my culture when someone dies
Last rites of the dead is a ‘community practice’
Incumbent on every muslim

You see,
my mother left school in standard five

But mastered the art of learning and teaching:
Informally, non-formally, experientially, incidently
In a community of practice, learning in action, learning by doing
Yet, always the mistress

Learning from the dying and not from their living,
The counselor, the comforter in bereavement
Re-membering, using her experience, using her mind and her body
And her senses

Now, my mother has stopped living with cancer
She is dying of death.

When she dies, she will be lovingly washed
Hair braided, her body embalmed
Re-presented

i wash her now.

March 2004
plant food and honour thy mothers

Yasmine