Beloved grandma’s tragic end

LIVESTYLE

BY PAUL MINGA
YEKURUL’S mother Ambwari passed away during the Christmas period in 1980 some weeks after the news of son’s going to high school.
Ambwari’s passing left a huge gap in Ngalye’s family especially with all the tasks of a mother. After her burial and customary practices were observed and settled, Ambwari’s mother decided to step in looking into responsibilities of a mother at times in providing garden food for Ngalye and the kids.
She also made time available cooking up meals for Ngalye and the kids whenever she wished to do so. Though she was old and aging, she knew that her grandchildren needed a stand-in mother to provide them comfort, care and to prepare meals for them and do other things for her grandchildren.
Yekurul as a grown up child who was already in high school didn’t need much attention of his father or grandma. But his younger siblings needed parental attention and were being taken care of by Ngalye and grandma from time to time. Grandma routinely visited Ngalye and the children with a supply of garden foodstuff.
Whenever she called in for a visit to Ngalye’s family home she would say, ‘Ambwari has gone but l’m around for us to get along for as long as we want to.” Grandma’s regular visits and kind assistance in one way or another to Ngalye and the kids was immeasurable and was appreciated by Yekurul and the kids every time their grandmother stepped in playing the role of a mother.
When Yekurul returned from school holidays he would visit to grandma’s home which wasn’t far from their own. Yekurul’s home coming and visits would be expected by grandma and she prepared something ready for him. She would put aside a small fraction of her income from the sale of garden produce to give Yekurul whenever he came home for holidays. Since Yekurul and his siblings had lost their mum they looked up to grandma as their source of support, care, food and other good things.
On a particular day, grandma in her usual runs made her way to one of her gardens. The dawn of the day looked fine and promising. Grandma took her tools and happily made her way to the garden. As she usually did she thought of getting some work done in the morning part of the day. After that she would gather the harvest for the evening meal.
When she arrived in the garden spent the morning on cleaning and weeding. At around 3pm or 4pm she went on with the harvesting job. She planned to harvest more than enough so she could cook up some for the evening meal and preserve some for sale the next day.
As grandma was busy with the harvest job, the afternoon gradually turned dull with signs of bad weather approaching. Not long and there were flashes of lightning striking with rolls of thunders which sounded as scary and frightening. The thick cloud cover made the sky and landscape covered with doom and darkness. Not long the storm and wind came in full force, accompanied with rain droplets. Grandma was not so worried about the approaching bad weather as she moved uphill from the bottom of her huge wide garden.
She cares little about the bad weather as she was busy with her harvest job. She thought that nothing would happen in the midst of bad weather that was reaching its climax. However, the gust of strong winds showed no mercy as it uprooted trees. The wind gust blew so strong that it blew off tree leaves, branches, and in bent tall trees. Poor grandma who was in the midst of a storm was still busy with the harvest below the hill in her garden.
Unfortunately, she didn’t realise that a huge boulder that was trapped by roots of a dried up tree in the upper part of the hill in her garden slipped off its position and rolled downhill after the strong wind blew down the dried up tree uprooting its roots. As soon as the dried up tree was blown down by the storm, it’s roots and soil holding the rock boulder in place being uprooted and disturbed letting the rock boulder free and loose. The boulder sped downhill in full flight, hitting grandma with such a mighty force that it shattered grandma’s body. Poor grandma who didn’t expect anything of fatal to happen was hit by the rock into fragments.
When poor grandma didn’t arrive home that evening as she always did some family members who suspected something terrible happened to her during the storm, rushed to her garden found the gruesome evidence which was as unusual and shocking. They then quickly brought home the news of grandma’s terrible death to the village.
News of what happened to grandma reached. Ngalye with the help of other men from the village took bags along to where grandma had met her fate. They conducted a search for grandma’s torn apart bodies until they gathered all her fragments and put them into bags and took them home to be buried. Grandma had lost her life in a most terrible and unusual manner and Yekurul could not forget her nasty death over a long time.
Yekurul was told of the terrible and unpleasant news that was as heartbreaking for him. To Yekurul who had lost his own mother a few years back and upon hearing the bad news his heart sank.
A little hope that hung in the balance was no more. Yekurul knew he had no other woman to lean on for love and support as mum and grandma were both gone.
With a crushed heart Yekurul shed tears in silence on the day news of grandma’s death reach him. However, Yekurul still remembers he skipped class for a whole day in respect of his grandma.
He recalls the most gruesome manner grandma lost her life and can hardly forget it over a long time.