After a tubal ligation (Sterilization) last year I was depressed for days and couldn't quite figure out why. One sleepless night I woke up at 2am in the morning and wrote this poem. I managed to get to the bottom of my dilemma and grief and I was able to understand why I was affected by my decision to be sterilized. Growing up in the Shona culture and I'm positive most African cultures, I was socialized to understand the importance of having children and how as a family, as a clan and as a race it was necessary to procreate. It is the sole reason for our existence. I have never considered myself as being a religious person, I am however a very spiritual person.
I had a very religious upbringing however. My parents are Roman Catholics and my Grandfather helped to build the first Catholic Church in our village, Mount Saint Mary's Mission is a beautiful Church and hospital in Wedza, the village were I was born.
Despite all this my confusion arose from my cultural upbringing and the western beliefs I learnt from church and school. As a Shona girl and now a woman we were told that if you die without a child you are buried with a rat tied to your back, that way your soul would be appeased and you would not come back to haunt your family.
At the time I couldn't quite relate to this concept until last year at the age of thirty-one I made a decision to be sterilized. I grieved for days, I was depressed although on a rational level I know I did the right thing, it did however, make me realize that I had given up a very precious part of myself. The whole concept of eternal life came flooding back, my children are my eternity, and we don't die and go to heaven. We live on through our children and when I look at my children, I was blessed with two boys and one girl I can see the reflection of myself in them. Both my boys aged 10 and 2 have my big eyes, thick long eyelashes and oval shaped faces, my baby girl aged 8 looks nothing like me, however she has my personality, she is talkative, witty and socializes very easily. I see myself at the age of 8 and its shocking how I see now that I will never die and with each generation to come a part of me will live on forever.
RETURN TO GETRUDE MATSHE'S SOUTHERN AFRICA INDEX PAGE
Forward questions and comments to Getrude Matshe. E-mail: simzisani@hotmail.com
NEXT: ME
Bennie J. McRae, Jr.
LWF COMMUNICATIONS
Trotwood, Ohio
E-mail: lwf@coax.net
Back to
Lest We Forget Home Page
