Margaret Wawuda Mliwa can tell you all about the shape of loss. Four years into her marriage, her husband died. As a child, she had to contend with an ailing mother who’d disappear from home for long stretches due to mental illness. Piece by piece, she’d disappear; mother and daughter passing each other as if along a corridor, one into death, the other into life. She buried it somewhere in her heart, but realised, “I had to start talking about it, for my children.” It’s what they say: what the mother owes, the daughter pays back.
The Regional Director (Eastern Africa) for the Ford Foundation, and a mother of two sons, appreciates the irony woven in. How she grew up with a doting father. “A feminist,” she says. Meanwhile, her sons are growing up without one. “But I’m lucky,” she says, “I have brothers and brothers-in-law to stand in.” Besides, she’s never been the type to be defined by what she’s lost. She keeps moving. Does her best. Many times, that is enough.
