Mama Mia 2

Ah..hah! That question on the author’s identity again. The reason I chose not to disclose my identity is that I felt the need to separate the person from the issues being discussed in this forum. It is not for any perverse reason that I do so. Many of you will agree that as a society, we tend to read more into a situation than we should. In other words any discussion may be taken to be biased based on the family house I come from, who my friends are, etc. But I might change my mind soon and give you all a glimpse to the person behind the blog. Keep reading coz it may be soon.

On the regularity of this blog, I beg for your understanding. I will try as hard as I can and post more regularly. I also request that you all comment regularly so that I may also know what more can be discussed. ;-)

Back to our mothers

I am assuming that most of you were able to identify their mum in the photo, and were able to call them. I would like to delve further on the issue of support systems I mentioned in the previous blog. Is it possible for us as a community to carry this out? Of course we would first need to assess the situation and see how the mothers are doing at the moment. We would then need to see what worked in situations that were successful. This should not be a difficult research to carry out given the number of social workers in our midst, recently graduated youth and even youth who just completed high school. You understand that I am not talking commission of inquiry here, just a short study of the situation at hand to kick start the process.

It is important that the mothers get involved in this whole activity or else we will not see much progress. The next step will be meeting as youth, or even as a community to find out what can be done by the community to assist in this transition. As I see it, more emotional rather than financial assistance is needed. Financial assistance is another issue that needs to be addressed. I mentioned in my earlier blogs, “My Wish List” that did not have a good financial foundation in our childhood. This situation may also apply to our mothers given that most of the financial decisions are made at a different level in terms of distribution of income for use in the community. Generally, we all need to be educated about money, and how it can work for us. This is another call to all our brothers and sisters who are experts in this area to step in and educate us.

Today’s challenge
We have many professionals in our midst. I would like to ask each of you to contribute in any way you can to make our community better.

Mama Mia

In my last blog, I spoke about our fathers and the role they play in our lives. One reader made a comment that I overlooked the mothers' work. I did not. I just wanted to treat each of them as a different topic.

Our mothers spend the most time with us and I daresay they know us better than we do. There will be debates on why someone would leave behind their own life and become an SOS mother. In my opinion, what makes them stay is what we should wonder about. It is still a mystery to me given the challenges they face. I never quite understood how much they went through on a daily basis until I spent an afternoon minding my siblings after staying away from the village for sometime. It was a ruckus and I had a headache at the end of the day. Many mothers complain that two children are a handful, imagine having to look after ten children without a nanny, or any outside help. Now that is a major challenge.

Minding the children in their care is not the only challenge our mothers face. They also have to worry about their children when they go off to start their own lives; they also have relatives looking up to them and so many other issues they have to face in their lives. Today, an additional challenge to our mothers, just as we do when we come of age is; leaving the SOS village community and living in the community after retirement.

As of today, there is no set support strategy for the mothers when they retire. This may be because in the previous years only one mother retired at a time. This time, many mothers retired at the same time. We need to look for ways we can be of assistance to our mothers. A small task, considering what they have done for us, or the lives they had to give up to be our mums. My question for all my SOS brothers and sisters is, are we going to step in and help our mothers in their retirement? Will we join hands and seek the best solutions for our mothers to have a sustainable life after retirement, or will we leave it to one or two siblings in the family house to follow up.

Today’s challenge.

Our mothers have been our support from childhood, on their retirement we should be their support. Some experts call it reverse motherhood; I call it “kurudisha shukurani.”

Please look for your mum in this photo, call her today and tell her you love her.

Click on the photo to enlarge it