BEING CHIMAMANDA’S DAD (PART 1)
The day Chimamanda was born I had a terrible stomachache and two meetings. Her mum and I had seen her on the hospital monitor multiple times before during the prenatal period. The doctor would tell Mama Chima to raise her dress and lower her undies. He would then apply a thin gel across the belly and run a transducer across her abdomen. There she was, Chimamanda, on a black and white screen coiled like a frozen caterpillar.
What was obvious from those prenatal ultrasounds was that she was healthy and she had a big forehead. We endlessly fought about that forehead. No one wanted to claim ownership of that genetic predisposition. Her mum pushed the blame to my lineage. She said somewhere among my ancestry there should be a forehead that tragic. She said, “look at Nacha.” Nacha — Nachambo — is my sister.
“My Nacha’s forehead is not that big, nawe” I said.
“Umuonesese.”
That disturbed me a little. Now, you see, my sister and I have a difference of three years. We have lived our lives like we are attached to the hip. When I was learning to hold my toothbrush at six years old she was struggling with hers too. When I fought a teacher in Standard 7 she is the one who told my mother — Snitch! That lady, Kettie, who had a crush on me in form one, send me letters through her. So, to say as I was watching Nacha learn how to do her teeth; as she was passing me letter from Kettie and telling my mother how I slapped Mr. Simsokwe, I did not for a moment look up for once and wonder “damn! this lady has a monumental forehead” is rather strange.
Actually, I’d have loved she had one big forehead so that I poke fun at her for leaving those letters from Kettie under the sitting room chair for mum to find. I would have been scornful at the forehead as mum was giving me a beating after that incident with Mr. Simsokwe. I was an angry, disaffected, teenager. I would have laughed her out of town. Did I do all that? No, why? because there was no such catastrophic forehead.
But, guess what? That forehead I was seeing on the monitor during our antenatal visits grew familiar with each visit. It looked like an ‘item’ on Mama Chimamanda’s face.
Mama Chimamanda and I met broken in many ways. But when we knew she was coming, we prepared for Chima’s birth like an operation. Everything was done with military precision. Immediately, we learnt we had a baby on the way, I called my friend Scilla. Scilla has a sister who runs a baby shop. Baby products shop, I think. Baby shop sounds like a shop one buys babies from.
“With whom?” Scilla asked when I told her I was having baby. I would imagine her face scrunched up at the other end of that phone call.
“I will tell you the details but for now what should I buy?” I asked her.
She drew up a list. She separated the essentials from the luxuries. I got hold of that list and fed it into Microsoft excel. Ma Chimamanda and I coded that sheet — Red for products not purchased; Green for what was purchased; Amber for products being paid for in installments. I took every job, no matter how small. If it paid, I took it. I slept less. I cut on alcohol. My hypertension shot and refused to fall. My doctor pleaded, threatened and lambasted me into resting. She pulled up statistics and stories. When she begged it almost felt like she was about to descend into a homily. I did not budge an inch.
I have always wanted a baby. I have always wanted a daughter. My entire life, I have found myself daydreaming loving someone who was not there. Now she was in the oven. I replaced all the junk in the house so that when Mama Chima comes at my place she eats nothing but healthy food. Once in a while we had to go for walks.
Things started pouring in. Baby stuff. We bought from online and brick-and-mortal stores. That small two-bedroom house I had in Kawale swelled up with baby gear that should I had farted at any point, just a trivial non-aggressive fart, that house was going to explode.
They were things I expected and was keen to buy and there were some that never made sense to me. The idea of buying a pacifier, for instance, did not sit right by me. For those at the back, a pacifier is that tit-shaped plastic a baby latches on to give a child the illusion that she is suckling from her mother’s tits. I did not like that. I did not want my daughters’ first encounter with the human race be based on deceit no matter what form.
Much as we could plan for all the many things, we could not plan for the cravings. They came in hard. We only acclimated. Once in a while we could find ourselves driving around town looking for chicken feet or intestines. We did not change the air filter in the small Toyota Vitz for a good nine months because the smell of dust fascinated Mama Chimamanda when the aircon rolled into life.
We waited as the belly grew large and rounded. We prepared for labour in two bags. One for her mother and another for the baby. Those bags were always waiting to be whisked away and save the day.
However, all these preparations went tits up on the day Chimamanda was born. On that day, I had two meetings and a bad stomach. On that day, I nearly fought a police officer, a nurse, and a doctor.
(The remaining half of this article will be published on Chimamanda’s first birthday)
