Humble woman breathes new life into Mother’s Day

As the world marked Mother’s Day on Sunday, Selina Wachui Chege was at home, taking care of three children despite her advanced age.

She didn’t attend church service because Baby Musa is too young to be exposed to the elements but says her prayers will be heard.

“I cannot open my business because I cannot expose Musa to the dust at the railway line. But soon, he will be of age and go to school,” she says, adding, she was not aware of the annual day that celebrates mothers.

She has offered to bring up Baby Musa and another girl, five-year-old Tabitha Wanjiru, whom she also picked at the railway line after she was also abandoned by her mother soon after birth.

Hers is a big warm house of chuckles and giggles as the children she hosts play.

YOUNG AGAIN

Mother’s Day 2014 was special for Selina, 65, because of the baby she “got” 10 days ago and chose to adopt.

“I lost my four sons in the Molo clashes,” she says of her own children. However, she is happy to bring up abandoned children.

Ms Selina reported Musa’s abandonment at the Githurai Police Station and later took the child for a medical checkup.

She intends to bring up the baby if the mother does not turn up to claim him.

She named him Musa, from the biblical story of Moses in Egypt.

Five years ago at the same railway line, she picked up the abandoned baby girl whom she lives with and has enrolled her at a nearby kindergarten.

“These children make me feel like a 20-year-old woman all over again. We play, pray and I answer a lot of their questions,” Selina says. “I am their mother even though I did not give birth to them.”

Baby Musa is due for this third-week wellness check up an appointment that Selina says she has not forgotten.

“What mother would forget to take her child to the clinic?” she asks.

In other parts of the country, families marked the day with celebrations.

In Nairobi, many families turned up at Uhuru Park for a day of fun with their children.