I grieve with all the mothers that lost their children

It's 3am, on the last Monday of September. I wake up to feed Baraka his first “night shift” milk formula.

His twin brother, Gabriel, is still asleep.

I have been tossing and turning in bed all night. I am thinking, please God, perform a miracle that will get those hostages out of Westgate Mall.

I am disturbed about what will happen next. It is a sinking feeling I cannot ignore. I fix the milk, get into bed, and hold Baraka close to me as I feed him.

As I run my fingers through his hair, he looks up at me with confidence and playfulness. I am told babies get stressed when mothers are stressed.

If all Kenyan mothers and, by extension their babies, are feeling like me tonight, then our nation is truly one in this dark moment.

With the twins, I have sleep debt in triple digits…and still counting. I wake up to change soiled nappies.

I also change clothes numerous times because they belch and throw up uji on me before I leave for work. And let us not even get started on illness and endless trips to hospitals. A mother does all this, yet the job is far from over — she has to hand over her child to another woman, who will start all over again.

How can someone just end all this with the squeezing of a trigger or the hurling of a grenade and in a split second terminate a decades-long “work in progress”? To me, it does not matter who kills who and for what.

NO ONE IS BORN A TERRORIST

Life is life.

No one is born a terrorist. I believe that just like futures, terrorists are created. That is why I want to look at everyone who died as someone’s child.
I am looking at Baraka as I feed him. I am imagining that despite all my maternal investments, someone can take a weapon and kill him in the time it takes to cry, “Mama”. That is unfathomable. The big question is, “Why?”

Concerning Westgate, I felt completely helpless and useless. I mean, I was looking at tens of lives being lost and I could do nothing to save the situation.

Even some of our trained soldiers could do little.

I cannot fathom the mental torture of being a hostage, or of having one’s loved one held hostage. Of hoping against hope. Of hoping for the best, yet fearing the worst.
I am not blaming anyone. But could there not have been a better way of approaching the matter? If I were in charge, I would have bowed low, if only to have those lives spared.

It does not matter what would have followed afterwards. It does not matter what opinion people would have of me, if I would have been called the coward of the county.

At that time I would have agreed to anything, if only to let those people walk out alive. I am only a mother: The commander-in-chief knows better.

Every day I work to uphold and preserve life. When I see scores killed with such madness — and it is not HIV-related — I have every reason to feel betrayed and robbed of what I stand for.

It was hard as a person living with HIV that I could not join the long queues to give blood, that I could only send money by M-Pesa. I could not present myself either as a good neighbour as I understand some people did.

'ALL I COULD DO WAS WATCH

All I could do was watch. Watch as the building was reduced to rubble. And it is not only Westgate that crumbled. So much more was reduced to rubble: Our hopes, spirit, confidence, and what we stand for as a nation.

The healing path is long and hard. It is harder for those who lost loved ones or were injured and maimed. The scars will remain for a long time. Please know that you are always in our prayers.

We shall overcome this. I am sure of that. As Ben Okri says, “The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.”

I suppose the government did its best. Still, we expect much more. Policemen are firm with petty offenders.

We expect them to come down like a ton of bricks on terrorists before they cause any havoc. Our prayer is that another Westgate will never happen again.

The foreign investigators can do their forensics. But they will never put an estimate on the incalculable maternal pains that were mowed down by bullets. I wish we could get a forensic report on buried dreams and hopes, and gallons of tears that were shed there and elsewhere.

We have not lost just lives: We have also lost irreplaceable incubators.

This is the diary of Asunta Wagura, a mother-of-five who tested HIV-positive 26 years ago. She is the executive director of the Kenya Network of Women with Aids (KENWA). Email: [email protected]