African Mums are crazy but its out of love
I was strolling along a corridor on a sunny afternoon. It’s one of those afternoons that breed laziness, where it’s hot but not too hot, and there is a slight breeze. It’s like the sun is draining you and whilst the wind is comforting you, an amazing combo!
Needless to say, I did not feel like doing any work whatsoever. It was also a Saturday, so most people were outside playing sports. I was meant to be studying because I had fallen behind in class and promised that I would catch up over the weekend…but the weather had other plans. “Just one hour,” I thought to myself, “One hour, I’ll feel recharged and then get straight to it”.
Now, this was a lie, this was a blatant lie I was telling my 15-year-old self. In reality, I should have said “begone Satan”, and got back to work, but of course…no. So I went to my room, got changed, and was on my way out. But as I reached for the door, a chill went down my spine, as I heard a loud voice go “O-bin-nna”, I jumped around, teeth clenched waiting for impact. But no one was there…”I should just go back and study”
The African mum effect
That’s what I call it. I’m not sure if you have ever scoured the internet for African mum memes, I have:
Admittingly you’ll find when going from country to country around the continent you’ll experience vastly different cultures and ways of life…but the same mums. They are all slightly unhinged. When you injure yourself they slap you first, then ask are you okay? When you do well in school they point to the one kid that got slightly higher than you and, of course, the hypocrisy.
The in your face hypocrisy.
The “don’t do that, whilst I do it in front of you” blatant hypocrisy.
It’s infuriating. And you can never complain, why? Because you came into this world with 9 months of life debt that can honestly never be paid off.
Can I just ask, where does this all come from? At what point does mum mode kick in for people? It’s like this copy and paste of a person just springs forth the moment parenthood comes into the mix, it’s crazy.
And yet, I can not imagine a life without it. This is what I call the African mum effect and as a child of an African mum once you’ve experienced it it’s impossible to getaway. It’s like wherever you go you have this eerie feeling as if she will just pop out, out of nowhere. Every now and then you get that threat that if you mess up in one thing or another, they will jump in a car just to come and deal with you.
It’s a threat, a completely baseless statement…but you never know.
Hence the story above, and it’s a story I know a lot of people have experienced. However, in all fairness, it’s probably that craziness that pushes us to keep going. It starts off as, mum is going to go off if I don’t do this thing, and turns into I should just do this thing. It’s like they planned it, if I go crazy enough times on this child sooner or later they’ll just do the right thing and I won’t need to do anything anymore…huh.
The thing is though, I’ve spoken to 40+ year olds and it seems that it still hasn’t stopped.
