I was brought up by a mother who held a cane in one hand and love on the other. Talk of the right hand not knowing what the left does. Automatically it follows that i should share the same plight of a child who is being whipped. In most cases, i got whipped for my mistakes and some were not but were meant as a lesson all the same.
The other day i'm walking to my house. to get to my house you have to follow this path that has trees growing on either side of it. Some of the roots show above the ground and if u are not careful you will definitely stumble. This lady was walking ahead of me and she had a little boy barely three years walking slightly behind her to the side. She was also chatting to another woman and so busy that she was not minding the child. what made me take interest in the child was the fact that the child was walking half naked. He was only wearing a T-shirt. that took me back to when i was a kid.
Then the kid caught his foot in one of the roots and went sprawling on the ground. He started crying. The mother turned around arms akimbo clearly not overjoyed to be interrupted so rudely from her story with the other lady. I supposes she told the kid to get up. I did not understand her language as she spoke in vernacular the baby continued crying. by then i had of course stopped to watch. As any normal mother could do(i suppose) was to help the child up and reassure him, she dint do that. what she did next hit me with so much surprise i almost cried.
She picked a stick that was lying next to the kid and started beating the poor kid. Still the kid was on the ground. Now the cries of the child which had been soft cries of help turned into screams. You can imagine a little kid screaming at the top of his lungs.
I was shocked stiff!
Who does that? I asked myself. When the mother saw that the kid was not quietening down she picked him roughly and slung him on her back like a sack of potatoes. Then she and the other woman continued walking as if nothing had happened and within a beat they were laughing.
WHAT HAD THE KID DONE?
