For the Mothers

As Mother’s Day approaches or dawns today, depending on when you read this, I send my love to all the moms.

I hope that despite Namibia’s most recent, awful realities of missing and murdered children, you may find a moment of peace – a second free from the tightness in your chest during school drop-offs and from the ceaseless worry that threatens to swallow you whole.

For those who are mourning, I wish you strength and the support of your community. I pray for swift justice, real, world-changing safety measures to protect our children, and for the grace God gives to those who have experienced the unthinkable.

I also wish this for the good fathers who hold sweet mothers up. It’s Mother’s Day but you are not forgotten in your anguish, in your loss and in your stoic waiting in the wings.

I read somewhere that when a child shouts for their mother in a crowd, all women turn their way. Whether they’re mothers or not, have been or may never be, there is something in the yell of “Mom!” that demands our attention and our care.

I think this communal feeling extends to the grief one feels when a mother in our midst loses a child. Even more so when the child’s life has been brutally cut short and the perpetrators walk free to strike again.

At times like these, it can be hard to feel like celebrating. The sanctity of school has been breached. The neutral faces of strangers have become sinister. Five-year-olds seem to be fair game and mothers have been tasked with the impossible, ensuring that someone, somewhere doesn’t decide to abduct their children.

This Mother’s Day, the mothers of Namibia are mourning and afraid. As always, it is a day for flowers, cake, breakfast in bed and appreciation within our means, but it is also a moment in which to recommit to safeguarding our communities.

Come Monday, may we ask again about progress in the police investigations into the murders of Ingrid Maasdorp (5), Roswinds Fabianu (6) and Beyoncé !Kharuxas (15).

Let’s demand once more that surveillance is installed at schools, that a vetted and trusted teacher watches each child walk through the school gates and that calls are quickly made when a child is not where they are supposed to be or fails to appear in class.

In our own capacities, may we know our community and its children. May we report suspicious behaviour, teach children about safety and stranger danger, and foster safe spaces in which children can speak about who or what troubles them.

In the English language, a child who has lost both their parents is an orphan. A woman whose husband has died is a widow and a man who has lost his wife is a widower. There is no name for a parent who has had to bury their own child.

The pain of losing a child is beyond words.

It is something outside the natural order. It defies comprehension. So, we, as a community, must do our utmost to spare our fellows the agony.

This Mother’s Day, for our dear and devastated Namibian mothers, may our greatest gift be swift justice, safer communities and fewer tears.

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