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.
This is Miss Lakeisha Zadi Bongo. She is a now 8 and and 5th born in a family of 7. when she was 4 she loved playing Elsa and her favorite food wasn’t even a food! It was ice cream.
When you happen to be born child number 3+ in most families, you may get overwhelmed in the numbers. And its possible that your talents and gifting’s may not be picked up by your parents and the society like they would a first born or an only first child.
But not in this Family. Each child is unique as they were packaged from heaven. And I hope this goes to you too…even to the mother of two.
There are never two children who are alike, even identical twins. I see parents making a mistake of doing corporate parenting. Raising kids as if they are a heard of goats. No kids are human and very intelligent at that
One of the biggest mistakes we as parents make is using the rules that we raised number one for number two with. It simply never works. With one discipline and firmness works with another rewards and incentives is what works. You just have to learn your child as if its a unique project, of which it is
I am always amused at kindergarten teachers. How they are able to deal with a class room of 15 children raised in different families and yet birth the best out of them. This is what every parent must be able to do.
I wrote this blog four years ago and I thought it would add value to you seeing how far we have come.
Speaking Life!
So today I had an early morning Gahunda (Kinyarwanda for meeting) with Baby Lakeisha. I told her we needed to talk quite some deep stuff but she had to remove her trousers first. She had wet herself again. Immediately she started walking out of the room.
I repeated
“No, I want you to come back back, sit hear and we talk”
“Oh okay” she said.
She started coming back and when she was going to start getting up the bed I repeated
” But you have to remove your wet trousers”
She looked down dejectedly. I knew she had not understood. And she started walking away again.
I wanted to know why she thought that removing her trousers meant she needed to leave my presence. I explained much more slower that she can just remove the trouser in my room and come up the bed.. This cutie has a beautiful gap and it melts my fears whenever she smiles. Her smile got me pulling her to myself and cuddling her. By the way I don’t do that a lot. As in the way I was raised us ‘Amerucans’ are not touchy touchy especially for me that grew up in the village.
I dont know if you understand the gravity of my non touchiness. As in for me to hug, I have to tell myself. It has to be intentional. You should see my hands crashing onto people’s belly’s as they try to hug me and I try to greet them as I extend my hand cluelessly! I know you will think its funny but its embarrassing😠
So at that huggy moment I re introduce my topic
“Baby I want us to talk”
“Okay” She says looking at me. And repeating that killer smile. It melts every single ice ranging inside my chest cavity. Okay. I am being a bit dramatic there from the effects of over watching Elsa! But the point is; I realized how much she has grown and I have not spent enough time with her. She was still a baby but sometimes concentrating on her baby sister had costed us some valuable ‘Mummy daughter fellowship’
So I started
“Tell me baby. Whats your name?”
“My name is Lakeisha” She answered confidently with that smile. Again.
“Oh Great. And what are your other names Lakeisha” I prodded on.
For a moment she didn’t say anything. It looked like she was wondering since when she got another name!
Nevertheless I pushed for my question and she answered.
“I am Lakeisha Lulu”
I was amused but taken aback. My baby girl did not know her second name. How is that even possible?
By the way Lulu is a name of one my daughters, but not Lakeisha’s. She had decided to adopt her older sisters name. Waaah. This is bad, This is Bad
I took time to make some corrections. “Your name baby is Zadi. Zadi, you hear me?”
Now, by the way. Let me humor you. I think George and I had either run out of creativity or were just to rhythmic such that our last two daughters have names that sound very similar. They all start with L and Z. You have no idea how many times I have written one Childs name as the other in School, In hospital, again: Its embarrassing!.
The latest being booking a ticket with Lyra as Zadi instead of Zuri. I didn’t even have the guts to tell the ticket agent I had made the mistake. I pretended someone else had done the bookings🙈🙈 Don’t Judge me!
After a minute or so we had mastered our new name. And we went on to other topics of the day. Like why she had a third name that was the same as her sisters. I explained that we all use our Daddies names.
Then I decided to take a few minutes to teach her some kingdom matters.
“And do you know we all have two Daddies” she looked at me like i was an alien. “Two daddies?”
“Yes, I answered knowing I had captured her attentions. Do you know who is your second Dad?
“Yes” she answered a bit unsure of her self “its mummie”
Okay. I did not see that coming! We have to correct this rather quickly😬
So I remind her that there is someone else that lives in heaven. And I introduce this new Daddy to her. We make a Daddy prayer to him. Something like.
“Hey Daddy, how are you doing up there. What are you doing right now by the way?…..”
We finish the prayer and we start discussing the critical issue at hand. Her constant wetting of herself.
Suddenly her countenance drops. She tries to keep on smiling. Because am still holding her tightly. She tries to get out of my arms. She is just too embarrassed clearly.
It confirms what I have been fearing.
Last week we were to visit a friend on Saturday afternoon. We had a delay. She called me back and asked “did you shave Lakeisha’s hair?” I answered No. And wondered why she had asked that.. I got to learn that she (my friend) had a dream that the kids had gone over to her house and Lakeisha’s hair was shaved. I believe in prophecy and I believe in dreams. They capture what’s happening in the spiritual before the actual deed manifests here on earth. If you don’t you better start looking into what you see while you sleep
I didn’t tell my friend but I took that dream message seriously. God speaks to us in codes in dreams. Sometimes he shows us the actual things. But like Jesus shared insights of the Kingdom with parables, he shares with us insights of the unseen with dreams and visions. As I prayed that day, I un coded the dream. Hair stands for Glory. The Bible says that a woman’s hair is her crown of Glory. If my babies hair was shaved in the dream, it meant that her glory was being cut off.
So I started praying to God to show me how this was happening here in earth as at now. And it suddenly occurred to me that her wetting herself was what was being used to bring her shame and consequentially low self esteem.
Before she would would only wet herself when pressed, now she wet herself all the time. These were no longer accidents it seems my baby wasn’t even aware the water was running out.
I asked her questions. I wanted to know why she didn’t go to the toilet when she needed to. “Every time I have an headache, susu comes itself” she said.
To be honest I think she may just have coined that up in her cheekiness. But what if it was true? What if there was a connection with her constant headache complains and the constant wetting?
We prayed again and booked an appointment with the doctor for the next day. I would take her through with all medical tests. And see if there was anything medically wrong with her.
I keep telling mothers, the devil is not after our kids lives. He is after their destiny. He kills steals and destroys for one purpose. To stop our young ones from getting to great destinies.
I call upon us mothers to pray. To see beyond our every days kids misbehavior as just bad character or that they have inherited bad traits from I dunno who. Look at the eyes of your loved ones and recognize that you can be a supportive driver to their destiny, or the Herod that will terminate a great little persons destiny.
I was okay with my daughters wetting, I know kids that have had the problem even when older. What I had missed was how much it was killing her self esteem. confidence was one of the biggest traits she is going to need in the future for her assigned destiny. of which God had already been gracious to show us when she was still in the womb.
If she loses confidence when she is young when her sisters and other children mock her for wetting herself one more time, when we scold her severely for being caress’s again…She may never have confidence to express herself.
She will stop believing in herself. And the works of evil will be completed. One more great destiny down.
So listen to me mothers. Learn to read into every habitual change in your kids. And go above basic social, psychology or scientific explanation there could be about it. May be just maybe by understanding that its a symptom. You will be able to understand the case and change your Childs life for good.
Meanwhile pray for us that this wetting thing will be a thing of the past…and our little girl can enjoy being held in a lap one more time.
Epilogue
4 years later we have seen the Lord build up so much confidence in this girl especially in the art of performance, She no longer has daily accidents, But at times if she drinks a lot at night she does have night time accidents. We have made it our purpose to make sure she doesn’t focus on the accident. She still looks so embarrassed and will look down with shame. But we are not allowing the enemy to build trauma around this one aspect. None of us parents is perfect, what we have is a perfect God that created our young ones that helps us
