Motherhood is A Full Time Job
My name is Caroline Bongo, I am a mother, and that’s my full time occupation.
Besides being a wife, I am a consultant agronomist cum food scientist and an entrepreneur too. I am a founding partner of Farm to Fork ltd and others, Basically that’s what one could call my day job, but that’s what I call ‘my other babies’
Some of these other babies are all still quite young. But I am thrilled to watch them grow day by day. The lessons I have learnt raising biological children, have made me a better business person than any course that could be offered in Harvard!
I happen to have half of me inclined to science and the other half to arts. To be honest, I don’t know which I love most. Because I enjoy doing both.
You see both science and arts involve creativity, and that’s the core of who I am. So then again meet the writer, The author of the book “In the arms of a stranger. The musician, the recording artist and performing artist and the inspirational speaker. (Okay I don’t know if I should say speaker, maybe I should just say, the girl who loves talking😀)
But above all the things I do in life, I just love the art of being used by God to conceive, carry, bring a little human to the world and more importantly see them grow into their full potential. I have done this 7 times! And were it not that the biological clock like they say is ticking, I would definitely want to bring more home.
Many times a mother of one will ask me “How do you do it? I can’t even manage one; how do you manage seven?”
My answer always is “I don’t manage, I just parent”
It’s the beauty of economies of scale better by dozens. On a more serious note, when they are that many, they no longer need you, they rarely need your attention anyways; they have each other.
But why do I say motherhood is a full time job…. while I am normally doing what seems like a million other things in a 24-hour day?
It’s because it’s the only one thing that sticks in my mind 100% of the time. Whether I am at home, or with a client, drawing pictures with words, taking a daily walk, practicing with my church choir, travelling literally all the time, I am thinking about my kids.
It’s crazy
Like most mothers, will walk into a shop looking for a much needed dress for myself and will find myself back home with some pretty dresses for my girls. I will give up anything for my children.
It’s just what mothers do.
A little while ago, my oldest came to my bedroom and said. “Mom your wardrobe is horrible” I answered with a nod “I know I have gotta buy me some new clothes”. I had just given birth three months before and there was literally almost nothing I could fit in.
I thought she was going to leave it at that but she went on. “Mami I need some cash, I need to buy some stuff” I asked how much. She was going back to school the next day so I thought she needed it as part of her shopping.
I told her how much I had.
She told me to dress up, we were going to buy me clothes in some affordable wholesale cloth shop she had seen with the money I was offering her. She wasn’t going to take a no. That really moved me. My baby me has surely grown up too quickly.
Basically whether a mother is with her kids or not, she is on a full time call. When my first was young, I thought to myself ‘let me work hard and take good care of her, when she turns 16 she won’t need me no more’
Now she is past 16 and I realize she needs me even more. She needs me for more things than food in her mouth or a dress that she needs. She needs me for dating advise, she needs me to help deal with life hurts, she needs me when she is faced with difficult decisions and I know very soon she’s will need me to be just there for her.
I know that because I have a mother who has just been that. Even long after having my own family, she has been the backbone of my stability as a mother.
This is to every woman out there that has spent sleepless nights worried what their child was going to eat tomorrow. The scared mother in tears who sleeps outside the emergency room as the doctors run a medical procedure on her child. To the mother with a special child who cannot do stuff like other human children,
To the special mothers who have taken another woman’s child and treated them like their own, this is too to the mothers who have their little ones in heaven and finally to the hopeful mothers who pray day and night to hold a little one in their arms.
You are all amazing human beings and you deserve a medal. We all have purposes on earth, but a mother fulfills a divine purpose just carrying, adopting and raising a little human.
Author . Musician . Blogger
Caroline nkirote-Bongo