I met Mama Happy on a completely ordinary Thursday, except of course, it wasn’t. Out in this part of East Africa, nothing’s ever bloody ordinary and nothing ever goes to plan. The dirt road from my farm to the school was a battlefield. It always did during rainy season.
So, it’s 6:30 AM. We’re late. Again. Olivia has decided she’s a ballerina-mermaid hybrid and turns up in a bright turquoise swimming costume with a faded glittery Ariel stuck to her chest, a pink tutu over it, fluffy striped socks pulled to her knees, a cracked plastic crown, bright orange swimming floaties like armbands of authority, and to top it off, a magic wand with a half star, chewed off by one of the dogs. She looked like a riot. Finley is crying because the banana is “wrong” and apparently it’s raining inside the car. Which, frankly, it is. The roof is leaking again. Fuck’s sake.
Out here, in good East African tradition, your name is not really your own anymore. Once you have had a child, you are renamed. I became Mama Olivia. That is what everyone called me. It does not matter who you were before. It also does not matter if you know them. They know you and they know the name of your firstborn. It is not some friendly nickname. It is a form of respect. It is rooted in community and identity. It is status.
It had poured all night. Not your polite drizzle. This was African rain. The sky was finally empty by the morning, the road had turned into a river of black cotton soil. Not Africa’s finest. But I had the big white beast, my white Nissan Patrol. I knew how to drive it. I had quickly grabbed a kikoi when i came out of the shower , which in hindsight was not a brilliant idea. With a mandazi in one hand, steering wheel in the other, i was hoofing the kids to school. The school run felt like an off-road rally. Glamorous it was not. But i drove that white beast like a goddess, thank you very much. Through the fogged-up windscreen and struggling wipers, I saw her. Strutting uphill. No coat, no umbrella, just layers of kitenge and a black plastic bag tied around her hair. I pulled over. Rolled down the window.
“Get in,” I said. She did. Sat in the front seat like she belonged there. Carried herself like a general. And then she saw the kids in the back. Her whole face changed. A smile exploded across it. A real one. Teeth out. Glowing.
Her name was Mama Happy. She was tall. And not just “oh, she’s tall” tall. I mean tall. Strong. Calm. Spoke English like she went to Eton, but with none of the attitude. She told me she’d been sent to Uganda as a teenager on some half-baked government exchange and became what she proudly called a “soldieress.” Didn’t go into detail. Didn't need to. You could tell she’d seen things and decided she’d survive them all.
“Morning, Mama Olivia,” she said, like we’d been doing this for years.
She had a basket of five live chickens. Just casually. The kids were over the moon. They got to stroke the chickens all the way to Bugachumvi.
We drove in silence. Road was a swamp. I was busy not dying in a ditch. She sat next to me like she was being chauffeured to High Tea.
“Bugachumvi today?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “It’s Wednesday.”
Bugachumvi was the next village over. On Wednesdays and Saturdays it turned into full-blown chaos disguised as a market. Imagine a rave, a livestock auction, and a boot sale all at once. Women in purple, red, blue traditional shukas, all layered in beads like walking chandeliers. They clinked with every step. Stunning.
Between the goat pens, fires roared under battered aluminium pots full of bones, cabbage, soup, and mystery meat. Men crouched under a shade cloth slurping broth. Smoke mixed with the scent of boiled meat, unwashed children, and grilled maize. Motorbikes flew past like missiles. Kids chased tyres. Chickens fled. Someone always shouting. Someone always pretending to be in charge.
And the booze. Jesus. Locally brewed rocket fuel served in tin cups. By noon it was a full-on-piss-up.
And Mama Happy? She worked. All the time. Not clock-in-clock-out nonsense. Real work. She had her own patch of land and worked it like a queen. Tomatoes that actually tasted like something. Pomegranates. Cacao. Bananas. Herbs. Chickens running free and one beast of a cow.
We did the Wednesday drive together every week. Sometimes she’d be waiting at the turn-off. Sometimes I’d see her legging it down the hill, skirts flying and arms flapping. One day, she invited me to her place.
“For sundowners,” she said, with a grin on her face.
Her house was half in ruins. Bricks cracked, the walls invaded by plants, and a piece of kitenge fabric served as the front door, flapping in the breeze.The living room had turned into a storage unit, sacks, buckets, tools. But then you stepped out onto the verandah. And bloody hell. There it was. It was like standing between two old gods, Kilimanjaro standing like a goddess to the south and Mount Meru to the north.
The kids were in absolute heaven. Olivia, now fully committed to her fairy phase, insisted on bringing her bicycle and took off after the chickens, wings flapping, tutu bouncing, squealing with joy.
Mama Happy made me tea. Bitter neem. Smelled like punishment. I winced.
“Milk?” she asked.
“Yes, please,” I said, praying for a jug.
She walked out, came back with the cow, and milked that beast straight in to my cup.
We sat and we sipped away. We watched the sun vanish behind the giants.
She had everything she needed. Her land. Her animals. Her view. Except her husband.
I had seen him once, a skimpy little rat of a man, half her size and none of her strength. She did not hide how she felt about him. She spoke plainly. She hated him. Her smile disappeared when his name came up. Her face changed. Her voice went flat. Her words sharpened. He was a small man. Thin and tightly wound. He wore a bright yellow shirt that made him look louder than he actually was. You could feel it. She had built her life with her own hands, and still had to share it with someone she neither trusted nor respected. Yet she carried on. She worked. She smiled. She brewed bitter tea and shared it without complaint. And every Wednesday, she waited at the turn-off, ready for market. Chickens and all. She didn’t whisper it. She said it. Her whole face dropped when his name came up. Her voice went dark. She turned from angel to thundercloud in three seconds flat.
At the time, I was living in a bloody mansion. Horse stables. Staff quarters. Two nannies, oh no, three actually. A driver. Gardeners. Containers full of stuff shipped in from my old life. It looked perfect. Until it burned. Literally. I started thinking about her. Mama Happy. Chickens and all. She didn’t live small. She lived right.
After dropping off the ballerina-mermaid hybrid and the emotionally unstable banana critic at school, I turned the beast around and headed back to the farm. I was still wearing my kikoi and a shirt. No bra. Flip-flops. Hair like a mop. I looked not at my finest. But who cares, i thought in the morning, i am just in my car driving up and down to school.
About halfway home, just as the road narrowed into that ridiculous goat-width track, the Nissan stopped. Dead. No warning, just silence. Of course, this being Africa, and this being me, I had somehow managed to create a full-blown traffic jam on a dirt track in the middle of nowhere. It was chaos.
Thank God, for once, there was cell reception. I rang Mzee Ali, the old man in charge of our tractors back at the farm. Legend. Took him ten minutes to find a rope and twenty to arrive, grinning like it was Christmas. He came with one of the fundi’s who were going to pump life back into the beast, and Mzee Ali drove me home on the John Deere.
And just as we were sliding our way down hill through the mud tracks, who should come trundling up the hill but a Land Cruiser full of South African hunters and one Portuguese man in mirrored sunglasses. I knew them all. It was my friend Jose and his gang. They were coming back from a hunt, full of biltong and bravado and sipping from lukewarm beer bottles. And there I was, pyjama chic, one flip-flop, nipples absolutely visible, sitting on the tractor bouncing away. Without a bra that is. You can imagine the joy. The honking. The waving. The shouting. I waved both my middle fingers at them, like a diva does. And always should do.
I do not know where Mama Happy is now. Perhaps she is still walking to market on Wednesdays, two chickens under her arm, the road no less muddy than before. Or maybe she packed up and moved closer to her children, wherever they might be. We lost touch, as people do. Life shifted. Farms were sold. Children grew up. The Wednesday school run faded into memory. But I still think of her. Sometimes, when I make tea that is too bitter, or when I pass a stretch of land where tomatoes grow freely, I think of her hands in the soil and her voice calling me Mama Olivia. I think of her smile. And her silence. And how, even in the middle of nothing, she had everything that mattered.
And I never even asked and knew her real name.
With love from the ocean,
Annelies