A Heroic Tale

It's Mother's Day in most parts of the world (at least it was when I started scribbling this down on paper), and what better way to celebrate than with a special blog post dedicated to that most esteemed class of individual, the one whose sweat and tears oil the machine that drives this country, the one without whom all life on the African continent would grind to an inoperable stand-still. I am referring, of course, to the Kenyan Mama. Bearing the weight of Kenyan society on her head like a bucket of water 41 million people heavy, the life of this matriarch is a test of character and endurance so brutal it makes the Ironman look like a shuffle board match. With feet strong enough to walk over broken glass, and hands tough enough to hold flaming coals, these under-appreciated females of the pride are capable of enduring just about anything the world can throw their way. What better example than the story of Mekatilili.

Who is Mekatilili you ask? Only one of the baddest mamas ever to walk the sandy loams of Kenya. To follow her story we travel back to the early part of the 20th century. Black and white are dominating fashion, the electric slide is still powered by a hand-crankable device, and territories such as Mexico, India, and Kenya are increasingly resisting their colonial rulers.

As the local story goes, a group of freedom fighters from the Giryama tribe are engaged in a bitter struggle against their British occupiers, among them one traditional healer by the name of Mekatilili (meaning mother of Katilili). During this period of unrest, the son of our heroine, Katilili, is captured by a British officer who answers to the name of Champion and transported to the western Kenyan outpost Kisii where he is to be imprisoned. But Mekatilili won't have it. Powered by the inextinguishable fire of maternal instinct, the herbalist liberator journeys on foot nearly 900 kilometers, crossing hippo infested waters and outrunning cheetahs across lion covered savannahs for about two weeks, arriving finally at theshold of her son's prison.

"Champion, give me back my son", she demands, but the British officer, alarmed to see Mekatilili so far from the battle grounds of the coast, accuses her of witchcraft and refuses her request. Resisting the urge to double over the British gentleman by releasing one of her trademark reverse spin kicks into his midsection our naturalist instead takes her leave.

The following day Mekatilili again appears at the gate, begging a word with her son's jailor. Champion, through a mask of contempt and thinning patience, decides to oblige our journeying hero's request to parley. As the man-at-arms warily approaches the place where Mekatilili is standing, wisely keeping his distance as word of her infamous spin-kicking ability has preceeded her, she presents to him a mother hen with one of her chicks, imploring the foreign agent to seperate the aviary toddler from it's mother. Cautiously, Champion inches forward and begins to pull the young fledgling away from the hen but as he does, the matriach fowl launches forward into a desperate, feather drawn flurry of pecks, scratches, headbutts, and any other offensive maneuver you can imagine a chicken employing to selflessly defend her young.

As the commander of forces reels backward under the weight of the hen's "to the death" offensive Mekatilili says to him, "That is why I have come. You have taken me son from me", again demanding the return of her child.

Champion, through a thick emotional shell hardened by years of fighting for the empire, feels the heat of Mekatilili's words, his insides melting from the emotion that fuels them. At that moment he realizes the fire burning inside of her is unlike any that he has ever encountered on the field of battle, and, in a gesture of respect and understanding displayed all too rarely in our world, returns to Mekatilili her imprisoned son. Reunited, mother and son begin their long journey together back toward their coastal homeland, the chicken went on to invent some kind of synthetic down, while Champion probably quit the army and went to live on top of a mountain to study zen or mushrooms or something.

So children let's pay homage to the women who brought us into this world. Not because they crossed a country to protect us, but because we know they would.