Prix Littéraire Rumuri

“The Importance of a Mother in the Family”

by Pierre Ndayisenga

It was Monday morning. Ndayi and Ira were on their way to school like all other children in the village. The two children were together yet alone on their way because they were different from others and afraid to approach them. With no shoes or book bags, they carried their materials in their hands unlike all other children who had nice bags to carry their materials. This pushed the others to segregate the two children.

Ndayi and Ira on their way to school began to talk:

Ndayi: My sister, do you have a pen?

Ira: Yes my, brother! But it won’t finish this week because I began to use it two weeks ago and now it is about to run out.

Ndayi: I know that, my sister! Even mine is about to run out but one thing that is needed is that we must only write what is needed to see that this week can touch to an end since our mother doesn’t have money to buy other pens for us.

Ira: That is true my brother. But Ndayi, I have a question about what happens in our family.

Why is it only our mother who always cares about us and gives all that we need but our Father treats us as if we were not his children?

Ndayi: Hmmm…! My sister, this is a serious issue that we are facing and now I consider my father as if he were not my parent. I have just taken him out of my thoughts and now I consider myself as an orphan, but thanks be to God for our mother because she tries to satisfy us even though it is difficult for her to satisfy all our needs.

Ira: Too bad! Ndayi, don’t be like our father once you become a father because you will be killing your family and you see that we are not happy to be in this situation.

Ndayi: I cannot do this since I am not happy with my father. I will correct all his mistakes and become a good father who will satisfy his family in all that will be needed.

My sister, you see that we have arrived at school. Enter your class and I will enter mine. The one who gets out first must wait for the other to go back home together.

Ira: Sure, my brother. See you.

Ndayi: See you.

After class they went back home and when they arrived they found their mother absent. There was food left by their mother and they ate. While eating the food, they did not realize that it was for them and their father who had been drinking beer since the morning because it was not enough. They ate it up and when the father arrived, he asked for food and he did not get it. He waited for the mother who was in the forest looking for fire wood. When the mother arrived, he began to mistreat her, asking why she did not keep food for him. The mother tried to explain that she had left it but that it was not enough to satisfy three people (the two children and the father) but the father did not accept what his wife was explaining and he kept on mistreating her, without forgetting the children. To repay them, he ordered that in the night he would eat alone. He remained around the house, watching his wife cook to prevent her and the children from eating. In the night, when food was available, he ate alone. The mother and her children slept without eating. Their night was not good because even though they had eaten in the afternoon, they had not been satisfied because the food was not enough.

The following morning, the father ordered Ndayi to go to the river to bring him water to wash his clothes. Ndayi was so hungry, since he had not eaten the previous night, and he refused to go to the river to bring water. His father began to beat him and sent him to the river by force. Ndayi went to the river out of fear that his father would kill him since he used to punish them seriously using hot metal. (The father would put the metal in the fire and after a certain time he would take it out and use it to beat them).

At the river, Ndayi failed to carry the water and fell asleep in the forest because he was so hungry and tired. After a few minutes, children of their neighbor passed near where he was and saw him. They feared to approach him because they thought it was a dead person and they ran quickly to call their parents and tell them what they had seen. When the first neighbor arrived, he found that it was Ndayi, the child of his neighbor, the drunkard. He tried to ask him what was wrong with him. Unfortunately, Ndayi did not respond to any question because he was in coma. The neighbor took him from that forest. He carried him on his back because Ndayi was not able to walk. On the way home, they met the mother of Ndayi who was looking for her son because he was late for school. When they met, the neighbor asked the mother what was the problem that the child had. The mother told him what had happened the previous night —that the father had forbidden them to eat, which made her son to be in such a situation. Ndayi was taken to the neighbor where they gave him food and let him sleep to take a rest and get well.

The following day, the mother got up early in the morning and helped her children to get prepared for school. Ndayi and Ira went to school and their mother went to the bank where she had a part-time job as a cleaner. This job helped the family a lot because every weekend she was paid and the money was used to pay everything for the children at school and to buy what they ate when they came from school. When she arrived at the bank, she found her boss angry because the mother had been absent for two days from work. She tried to explain to the boss the problems she had in her family that had made her to be absent for all that time and apologized, promising that she would not do the same again. The boss forgave her on the condition that if she were absent again, she would be fired and the job given to others who had enough time to work regularly. The mother thanked him and began to work. She worked hard because it was two days without working and she had no-one as a co-worker to help her when she was not available at work.

In the afternoon, she arrived home late and tired since she had been working hard since the morning and she felt sick. When the children came back from school, they were very hungry but they did not get anything to eat since their mother was sick and had not cooked for them. When their father arrived, he asked for food and didn't get it. He could not accept that they had not cooked in the afternoon. He accused them of wanting to kill him with hunger and he began to beat them seriously. He said that the mother was not sick but it was because she had not cooked that she said she was sick out of fear that her husband would punish her. He sent her away and ordered the children to go to sleep quickly.

The mother was not able to go far since she was ill and tired. Her hometown where her family stayed was not near and she had no money to pay for a ticket. She went to her neighbor to ask for a place to sleep before she got well and could leave the village to go back to her hometown. The neighbor gave her somewhere to sleep and went to the drunkard to ask him what the problem was that pushed him to send away a wife who was sick. When he arrived at the drunkard's, he asked what was wrong with the mother. Instead of listening to him, the father accused him of stealing his wife. The drunkard entered the house to take a machete and run after the neighbor to cut him. The neighbor ran quickly home. Arriving there, he found the mother terribly sick and took her to the hospital where she spent around three weeks before she was cured and went back to her hometown.

Ndayi and Ira remained with their father at home and began to face different problems. They could go two days without eating and on the third day eat food given by their neighbors because their father did not care about them. He spent all his time drinking beer in different bars. After a few days, Ndayi dropped out of school and let his sister to continue. He spent all his time looking for food. He went to cultivate for people and in the evening they gave him something to cook. Some days later, Ira was sent away from school because she had not paid school fees. Ndayi was not able to feed the family and pay school fees for his sister working alone. They all remained at home in bad conditions without anyone to help them.

When the mother heard about her children, she was very sad and planned to come back to see them. When she arrived, she found Ira, her daughter, sick and Ndayi looking for food to give her. They were so hungry because it was the second day without eating. Their father was not at home. The mother was very angry and took them to her family to take care of them. They went and left the house closed.

In the night, the father came home late. He had been drinking since morning. When he was on the way to his house, he fell down and broke his leg. It was not possible for him to walk again. He cried with a loud voice to see if there should be other people in that place to save his life; however, he did not find anyone and then he slept in that bush . He spent all night there and in the morning, one of his friends who had been drinking together with him, passed by that way and found him where he slept. He helped him to get home using a bicycle because he was not able to walk with the broken leg. He arrived home in the morning and slept. He found his house closed and thought that his children were around looking for food as they used to do. He was very hungry since he had spent all night in the bush without eating anything. He waited for them with hope but no one came in the house.

In the evening, the father was about to die from hunger and he was not able to leave his bed. By the time he began to think how he could get a help, he heard someone knocking on the door. He was happy because he thought that it was his children who came to give him food. When he called them, he found that it was not the children but the boss of his wife where she had been working her part-time job of cleaning in the bank. The boss was looking for the mother because she had gone with the key of a room where they put different materials used for cleaning at the bank. The boss asked the man where the mother was and he answered that he did not know and told him that he was ill and hungry and that he had spent all day without any help of food or medicine. He asked the boss to help him. When the boss remembered what the mother had told him about that man the day that she had been absent for two days from work, he was angry and went away without helping him. The man remained in his bed.

In the night, the man was not even able to speak. It was the last hour of his life. He took some metal that he used while beating his wife and children and beat it on the door of his room near where he slept to call people around to come and help. When the neighbors heard the noise, they came to see what was happening, thinking that the man was beating his children.

Once they arrived, they tried to call the children, but no one answered. When they entered the house, they found the man in bed suffering from sickness and hunger. They asked him what was wrong with him but he did not tell them anything because he was not able to speak. It was very bad. They took him to the hospital the same night, where they gave him food and treated his leg.

When the wife heard about the sad news that her husband had gotten his leg broken and that he was hospitalized, she did not take into consideration what he had done to her. She prepared herself and cooked some food and visited him where he was in the hospital. Arrived there, she found that her husband was terribly sick. She gave him what she had prepared and the husband ate. The wife asked him about his sicknesses but the man did not tell her anything because he was afraid to tell her about the accident that he had had and what followed after. He thought that she could laugh at him. The wife left her husband in the hospital and went back to her hometown where she lived at that time with a promise of bringing him food every day to help him because there was no one else who could feed the man in the hospital.

After a long time, the man was cured and he went back to his home and stayed alone because his wife and children were always absent. He lived a miserable life. Finding something to eat was not easy for him since his leg was not very good to go far to look for food or to work. Sometimes, he was helped by neighbors, but not always. His life was really very bad.

After some days, he began to think about how he could get his wife and children back in the family, but when he remembered what he had done to them before they went, he was afraid to go and ask them to come back in the family because he thought that they could not agree to come back. He remained there thinking of strategies that he could use.

One day, he went to his neighbor, the one that used to help his wife and children when they were sent away by the man. He first apologized and asked him if he could help him to bring his wife and children back to the family. When he was with the neighbor, he tried to explain to him different problems that he had and the neighbor helped him to remember what his faults were when he was with his wife and children and asked him not to do the same once the family came back home. The man agreed and they decided on a day to go where the family was to apologize and ask them to return.

When the day came, they went to the hometown of the wife where she stayed with her children. Arrived there, they found the mother and her children at home in good conditions because they were well treated in that family. When Ira, the daughter of the drunkard, saw her father, she remembered what he had been doing to them and ran away thinking that he came to kill them. Ndayi, his son, began to cry because he saw their father as a dangerous wild animal. The mother was there. The man and his neighbor began to say sorry to the mother, telling her that the man would not mistreat her as he used to do. The mother said that if the man agreed to take care of her and forget about mistreating her, to come back in the family was an important thing because she wanted to work for the development of the family. But the question remained about the children, who did not want to see their father.

When the grandparents came home, they found the man and his neighbor there. They were angry to see him again because of what he had done to their daughter and her children, Ndayi and Ira. They asked him what he was doing there. The father apologized and promised that he would no longer do the same to the family. The grandparents asked him to swear in front of them that if ever he should do again what he had done; their daughter would leave him forever. The man promised. On the question of the children, the grandparents promised that they were going to tell them to go back to their father and convince them that there was no danger for them. They obliged the father to buy clothes and shoes for them and then take them back to school to continue their studies. The father accepted and went back home with his neighbor.

Later, when the children came back after the departure of their father, the grandparents tried to convince them and promised them that once they went back to their father, they would go back to school and buy clothes and shoes. It was really difficult for them to accept that because once they remembered what their father had done to them, they lost control. Little by little, the mother together with the grandparents convinced them and they agreed to join their father again at home. They began to prepare themselves to go back to their family.

In a few days, the wife and children went back home, where they found the man living under bad conditions, and they helped him. They lived together again with the man and the latter really changed his behavior. He spent all his time working together with his wife for the wellbeing of the family. The children went back to school with all they needed for their studies. In a short while, the family developed. The man was the first to explain to others the importance of a woman in the family, and advised them to take care of their wives.

Back cover:

Since its creation to the present day, the University of Burundi has trained thousands of intellectuals with many different skills: doctors, architects, physicists, educators, women and men of arts, etc.

Apart from the students’ research work, the Rumuri Literary Prize is the only framework for encouraging creative writing, and it is a platform for the detection of talent in this field, not only within this University, which has a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences with three Departments of Literature, but also for other public and private universities based in Burundi.

The Rumuri Literary Prize is committed to continuing to promote the culture of excellence in youth through Creative Writing. For the time being, the Prize is hosted within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and involves writing in French and in English. It plans, in the editions to come, to launch another version in Kirundi.