There is a way in which things that are not supposed to happen, happen when they are not supposed happen. To be honest, I do not think I ever can recommend when they are supposed to happen. Mum’s illness is one of those. There was no and will never be a right time for it.

This PhD life of mine has been draining, as I have said many times, and during mum’s illness, more fluid escaped me than ever has before. The illness notwithstanding, the life of a scholar is a queer one. I mean, previously, a doctor was just a doctor- doing what they are supposed to do. The nurses were working away, almost unnoticed. But now I find myself wondering, as they treat my mother, as they speak to her, how my theory, and honestly many other communication theories, applies or does not apply to them. I hope it doesn’t sound cold. I know it’s a boring life to lead, but this has been my life for the past few years. How can I be wondering if Doctors and nurses have a chama, and how that Chama might possibly be? Who thinks about whether these doctors receive any form of organisational communication training, because after all, they are organisation- and they make the hospital institution?

Mum was in hospital for slightly over two weeks- Between end of June and mid July. I saw her at her lowest – feeble, vulnerable and unguarded- almost willing to do anything to get better. I spent many nights with her and each time, I thought I know no stronger woman. She has the will and force of many gangsters combined. She is confident. She is decisive. She fiercely private. She is annoyingly independent. She laughs. Sometimes she laughs at one until they get upset. She is many things, my mother.

But these two weeks she relied on my to get her feet onto the bed for her. She relied on girls younger than me to clean her up. At one point, a male nurse came to clean her completely oblivious of any reservations she may have, and she declined in no uncertain terms, and asked him “to go and ask the nurse to come.” That is my mother. I felt sorry for the wee lad, but had he been to a communications class, he would know.

Mum’s illness has been my illness. It has been my families illness. The Church’s illness. But I guess most of all, it has been her Chama’s illness. They took turns to come and see her in hospital. They came and sang songs with her while she lay helpless in bed. They sang again  when she was feeling better. They prayed. Even when she had dosed off and slipped away into her sleep while the ladies kept talking,  they turned to me or my sister, and encouraged us. When she woke up and they were still there, and  she could not remember if they had just arrived, they cheered  up and taunted her about the Chama work that she needed to do.

She missed them. When she could use her phone, it was not her sisters she called. It was the Chama members. When she was in pain, she asked me to tell call some of her friends and ask them to pray.

This women, her Chama, were her sisters. She was theirs. They had such ownership and such belonging.

Now she is home and the Chama talks to her every day. They want to see her. They encourage her husband and those of her children who they see. The sisterhood is real.

The gave their money. But it is their hearts – the wealth in it and around it, that endlessly communicates. It speaks love.