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| Photo: triviapacks.com |
A teenage girl would say Beyonce is her hero. A middle age woman will confess that Michelle Obama is her hero. A nerd in the university would say that Einstein and Marie Curie are their heroes.
As for me, as much as i admire superman, Beyonce, Michelle, Einstein and co., my heroes have always been a little different. A little different because they are personal heroes.
My heroes are my grandmother, my mother and my daughter.
Since birth till my sixth year, i lived with my grandmother. As long as i can remember there was always that sense of admiration towards her.
That undeniable force, where one can not help but go "wooooow!".
This is why today i want to talk about my grandmother.
This is the woman who carved and shaped my life right from the start. A woman that i have lived to look up to.
My grandmother was born in the colonial days. When the best pieces of Kenyan-land were owed by the British, and school and Christianity were being introduced to the poor primitive Kenyans. She could not go to school. Only her brothers could. The girls had to stay home and help with farm and house work. "You will hopefully get married to one of the educated and wealthy men one day." They would be told.
My grandmother fell in love with my grandfather (a man from another part of Meru~Tigania~); not educated, not wealthy and decided to marry him against all cards and all odds. It was not a norm to intermarry among communities back in the days. But damn! That lady was strong, especially in a community where women didn't have a say. She stood and fought for her love and at the end she was a happy mother of ten kids. You heard me: ten kids!!! Five boys and five girls.
She and her husband didn't have much, just a piece of land, a house, a few cows and sheep.
But she swore to herself that all her children, both the girls and the boys would go to school. School was not cheap. They needed school fees, school uniform and school requirements.
While the kids were at school, she would toil all day long in the farm. She planted corn, beans, sweet-potatoes, pumpkins, potatoes, millet..anything that could grow in the rocky red-soiled areas of North-Imenti.
After school, all her ten children would go to fetch water (20km distance on foot, to and fro), while she piled her day´s harvest on her back and headed to the Meru open-air market.
She would do this three to four times a week. With the little money she earned she would buy pens and pencils, salt, sugar or on the good days even bread.
How she could manage all that? I truthfully have no idea.
Her home was and is still a happy place. Filled so much laughter. Its a place that everyone want and loves to be. I personally loved being at my grandmother´s place.
I admire her energy, her courage, her determination, her diligence, her loving and caring character. This is the kind of woman i strive to be.
Five of her kids are university graduates and all ten are employed and well up. Her first born, my mother even managed to send her kids abroad. How she did that? That a story for another day!
My grandmother possesses none of superman´s superpowers, she is not a millionaire or famous and she is not a Nobel-preis winner; but she is my hero.
Thanx for stopping by. Hope your week is going great so far.
For this week, let us try to show appreciation to those around us that we admire. Those who make us want to be better people.
Lots of luv
ItsRose_Beth
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