* Advent Special * Blessings from Kenya: A Mother's Love and Sacrifice

Hello and welcome to Loving the Imperfect. Today we are hearing a story from Kenny Asewe. Kenny is the founder of At Home Music here in Rochester, he is going to tell us a really touching story about his mother, how she passed away, and some details of her funeral. He will also share with us three ways that God showed him and reassured him that she was in a better place and that she was at peace, which is something Kenny said that he really needed to know in order to be able to really grieve and move on. It is the story of a mother that was very loved by her children. 

I think during Advent, we want to spend time remembering Mary, who was the mother of Jesus, and the sacrifices that Mary made. And so, Kenny is going to share with us a story of his mother and the sacrifices that she made for her children. 
 
Today’s story is an exercise in deep listening. Deep listening is when we listen to someone else’s story with the ears of our hearts, with compassion. Kenny speaks virtually the entire episode, because he is simply telling us a story. Because he was born in Kenya and raised there speaking Swahili and English, he has retained his beautiful accent. I recommend those of you who have trouble understanding accents or who are hard of hearing to read along with the transcript. 
 
 

Enjoy!

For more information about me and my work, please visit www.BrianneTurczynski.com or www.LovingTheImperfect.com

#podcast #spirituality #episcopal #history #prayer #love #ministry #interviews #christianity #contemplative #meditation #Bible #Bible reading #religion #Biblestudy #christianmystic #mysticism #kenya #africa #mothers #advent

For more information about me and my work, please visit www.brianneturczynski.com or www.lovingtheimperfect.com

Transcript

 Intro:
 
 Welcome to Loving the Imperfect Podcast, a show for seekers of deeper contemplation. I'm Brianne Turczynski. For 10 years, I've been studying offerings from holy teachers and holy texts. I'm a journalist who has listened to the stories of many people throughout the years, and I continue to be captivated by the stories of how God nudges and directs us, either by closing doors or opening them,

So, join me as we listen to these extraordinary stories and become witnesses to the truth of love. 

Hello and welcome to Loving the Imperfect. Today we are hearing a story from Kenny Asewe. Kenny is the founder of At Home Music here in Rochester, he is going to tell us a really touching story about his mother, how she passed away, and some details of her funeral. He will also share with us three ways that God showed him and reassured him. 

That she was in a better place and that she was at peace, which is something Kenny said that he really needed to know in order to be able to really grieve and move on. It is the story of a mother that was very loved by her children. I think during Advent, we want to spend time remembering Mary, who was the mother of Jesus, and the sacrifices that Mary made. And so, Kenny is going to share with us a story of his mother and the sacrifices that she made for her children. And so, I hope you enjoy this. Thank you so much for joining me.
 
 Today’s story is an exercise in deep listening. Deep Listening is when we listen to someone else’s story with the ears of our hearts, with compassion. Kenny speaks virtually the entire episode because he is simply telling us a story. Because he was born in Kenya and raised there speaking Swahili and English, he has retained his beautiful accent. I recommend those of you who have trouble understanding accents or who are hard of hearing to read along with the transcript. 
 
 

Enjoy!

Kenny: I was born in Nairobi. which is the capital city of Kenya.

 My mom was a teacher all her life. Until I finished high school, that’s when she started getting sick. 

We lived in an apartment building. We lived for maybe two years there but that's when she started getting water. Some politicians were given money to buy chlorine to treat the water, but instead they put chalk—the [kind] teachers use to write—they put them in the water and kept the money. So, so many people drinking the water got so sick. There was an outbreak.

So, my mom, she had typhoid. So, with the typhoid, the treatment of that is you have like 60 injections, one a day. Every day she complained when she sat, she's like, oh, this is so painful. And if, with that injection, if you miss one, let’s say if you're on the 59th and you miss the 60th, then you have to redo it again. That's how they had it those days. Nowadays it's better. I feel like we can have like drinking solutions and stuff like that. But then, and then she had water in her lungs. 

My mom was always welcoming. Some of our cousins would come to live with us, just to get their footing. And then once they got better, they would move to other places. Maybe they found a job, and so she was very welcoming. Whatever we ate is what everybody else ate. She was always a welcoming person, and she treated everybody the same. She had that heart to be able just to help them. And she would always try to find money for school for some of my cousins who stayed with us.

And so, when she got sick, she kept trying. She just went through that medication. But she was getting weak. She would go buy fish, try to sell it. You can imagine you're a teacher the whole day and, in the evening, you have to buy that, prepare the fish. And you're sitting out in the cold until maybe 8 o'clock or 9. And whatever you don't sell, that's what you're going to have for dinner. I was never home because once I finished high school, the church had so many things going on.

 I remember one year I took courses from the church—computer courses—and because it was free for members of the church, I would always come back home late. There are days when I came home late and my mom would close the door, because she wants to go to sleep.
 
 But because she's a mother, she's worried. In those days we didn't have cell phones. And it's like nine o'clock, it's 11 o'clock. She would look and we had those metal doors. And she would just lock the door and say, go back where you came from. And so I would just sit outside. Then 30 minutes later she would come and open the door.

And sometimes she'd either pinch you, because that's the tradition, pinch you and say, next time make sure you come home early. But I always liked to be with my friends, so she got used to that. But even then, she would just wait. And when I came home, she'd say, How was everything? 

She would say, Okay, your food is prepared, it's there. So I would eat my dinner around 11. Then she would just go to bed. 

One of the Sundays a month before my mom died, I saw mom coming. I met her on the road, because there in Africa we don't have private cars. You have public means.

It's called the Matatu or buses. So, we're coming from Rainbow Church of Christ and she's coming from the Eastleigh Church of Christ, and we meet in the road. I look at my mom and she's so thin and I'm like—Mom! —but I quickly changed. I didn't want her to notice anything. My surprise is so like, Oh Mom, Mom, how are you doing? 

So, she said, I'm doing well, I have a sore throat, but I'm doing well, but I was so surprised, just hit me, you know, because whenever I'm going home every three days, she would be bundled up, and she would be excited to see me, and we would sit, we would chat and I’d say, Mom, how are you doing? She said, I'm doing well, but I just have a sore throat, but I think I'm going to be okay.

 I'm just going to go home and rest. That month I remember it very, very well, I remember it vividly. I remember the next day, which is a Monday, me and my best friend, Felix, we had our rooms next to each other. Just a small cabin, I wouldn't say it's just maybe this size. I'll say the size of this table. That's how it's like a small cube. We got those rooms and so we were excited. Yeah. I have my own room. I have my own place. It's good. And I love it. And so when I met my mom the next day, I remember, it’s just like God was telling me something.

I'm listening to a song, it's called As The Deer Pants For The Water and it's a new a cappella by a group. So I'm listening to that and the picture that is in my mind is my mom's coffin. And like, she's dead in front of the church, and that song is, it sings, As the deep pants for the water Lord, so my soul longs after you, my soul... And it was playing, so I'd never forgotten that song, and it kept playing, and I was crying. And that was like a month before my mom died.

 Because it was a shock for me to see her very thin. And so I went to my boss, and I asked, my mom is sick, and I don't have money. If you can just give me money, I [will] be able to have her go to the doctor just to get some medicine. And they gave me two thousand shillings, which was like, almost three quarters of my salary.

I took it to my mom, and she was so happy. I remember that day. Mom, I have money for you to go to the doctor. And she was so happy she came to the place. And she took the money, and she went to visit her cousin, and the cousin said, when she told her that, oh, she was buying medication, her cousin went and said, Give me the money. I'm going to buy you some good medication so that you can, you can be able to feel better. 

But the cousin went and spent the money on other things and got my mom bad medication. It's so hard to find money, so hard to ask people for money.
 
 The following month my friend Solomon comes to me and says, hey, I just need to take you home. I'll drive you home. So I said, why are you driving me home? 

He said, Your mom is sick. She's sick. So he drove me home. I went home. And as I went, as I was getting into my apartment, this lady comes in, one of the elders wife, comes to the apartment, and she just starts praying.

That's how I knew that my mom was dead. She just came in, walked in, and started praying. I just was numb. There's nobody in the house. It's just me, the lady. And there was somebody else that they came with. So that night my friends took me back home. They say, I know you usually go alone, but we're going to go with you. 
 
They took me back home. So, the preparation started for the funeral what they did is now we will have people coming in every evening after work, and they stay in maybe until 11, so they'll play like different kinds of music and people, they're going around maybe doing some games and people [are] giving. 

And you'd raise money like that for the funeral. I led worship at the church, so I knew so many people. I led it at the Eastleigh Church of Christ, and I led it at the Rainbow Church of Christ.

We had so many friends who knew us. They would come almost every evening just to spend time with us in the in the evening. So that's how we raise money. The day after the death of my mom, according to our traditions, you have to go to the mortuary to be able to make sure that the body is placed in a good place. 
 
 In Africa you leave the body like that you'll be so surprised. The body is just going to be bundled together. They don't do embalming, they only do that for richer people, in rich places. But this is a mortuary, poor people. She died at a national hospital called Kenyatta, like the first president.

And that Kenyatta hospital has its own mortuary, so we had to go the next day. So, my dad wakes up in the morning, says, Who wants to come with me to go view the body? And my siblings refuse. But for me, I just knew how mom had sacrificed for us.

So I said, I'll go. I remember the conversation I had. My mom asked us, it was a week back, what if any of your family members are dead, like in China or wherever. My brother said, we'll just leave them over there or we'll just burn their body. But I was saying, Mom, I don't care whether you're in China, you're in South America, you're in America.

I'll come, I'll, I'll fight until I find your body and bring it back home. Our traditions bury our people in the land that we have, we own. And so I remember that conversation. So when my dad asked the morning after the death, I said, I don't, dad, I'm coming with you. We are scared of dead people, but dad, I'm coming, I'm coming with you.

I'll do this for my mom. I'll go through hell, I'll go through anything—fire, I'll walk through fire for my, for my mom. So, I went with my dad to the mortuary and that mortuary, is just like a warehouse. 

You don't have closets for the body. It's like shelves, like you're in a supermarket. And the bodies are just placed there. They make sure that they remove the clothes, that way they don't stick. And the bodies are, they're naked and others have been there for one month.

And it's stinking. The stench that was coming from that place—and they have only one door—it's like I'm watching a horror movie. So, me and my dad we walk in through and my dad says, according to the traditions, you can't spit because if you spit that smell is going to be with you, stick with you and your nose for forever.

So, I have my handkerchief. I walk into the door. We went far inside, so I'm just looking, I'm looking at the bodies and I'm looking at…I remember there's this young baby that was born and just looking at me, it's like those baby dolls with the bright eyes looking at me and my dad says, just breathe through your mouth, breathe through your mouth. 

I'm worried I am going to have nightmares, but at the same time, something's telling me, I don't care, Mom. I'm doing this for you. I don't care. That's fine. If I have nightmares, that's fine for the rest of my life. 
 
 So, we were now trying to find the body of my mom. We were there, maybe around 10 o'clock and it's almost 12. They haven't found the body of my mom.

So my dad and I were just standing there and you're waiting, and they're telling us, okay, wait, we're still trying to find the body. And then around, I think, 12:00, 12:30, the mortuary superintendent comes in and they say, where is the body? The body is lost. But they say, we put the body here. Did the body walk out of the mortuary?

So I told my dad, I can't breathe. It's just too much for me. So, my dad says, just go out, get some fresh air and then you can come back if you want. So I told him, okay, let me just go and take in fresh air.
 
The mortuary superintendent came in and closed the mortuary. Nobody else is collecting their bodies, their dead relatives, everybody else now is trying to find my mom.

I walked out the door. I really just spent five minutes. My dad comes and they find the body. And I said, How is it that? [They said] your mom was just there, just next to you guys, but you couldn't see her. So I asked, okay, why is that? [They said] Because your mom was, she was kind of like a saint, a holy person, and she didn't want you to be able to see her naked. 

We have been there, standing there for two hours. They've been searching, getting bodies down. And they throw the bodies down like, I don't know what. And they would search everywhere. But how is it that she was there?

Like something opened our eyes. Their eyes, their eyes were just closed. So, I asked my dad, I said, How is that possible?  My dad told me, [your] mom did not want you to see her the way she was.

I was asking God, I just need you to tell me that my mom is in heaven. I just need to know that. So one of the things was that she was a holy person. She didn't want me to see her, nobody could be able to explain waiting for two hours there next to the shelf and not being able to see. Nobody could be able to explain that. And they had to close the whole thing. They said, I removed these things so many times, and you guys saw the shelf was empty. And immediately I walked outside, they call me and they tell me that we found the body. Nobody was able to explain that.

So when my dad told me that, I said, okay, that's one reason. The last Sunday before my mom dies. I took her to the other church, and then she comes to church. She spends church with us. That was the last church she spent. And when they asked, do you have any visitors in church? She stands up, I remember that, and she says, My name is Margaret Asewe, and Kenneth is my son. 

And that was the last thing she said. And then she drove in the same van with us. And so, the following week, we're driving, we're going to church with my best friend, and he looks at me and I start crying, because we were with my mom, but now she's not here.

So, when I saw people and see the sadness, that made me cry. But mostly it's like, okay, I'm going to be composed. I'm asking God just to show me signs that she's in heaven. She's in a good place.

They didn't bring the body to the church because they never bring bodies to church. So you just have a memorial service. So my friends and family went to the memorial service to the church and we sang with my group, Tech J.

 And as we were sitting there, one of the moms of the church stands up and says that my mom was baptized. 

I was like, She was baptized? I didn't know that. Oh, that's, that's so cool. So that was the second thing is like, Oh, just show me a sign that she's, she's with you. I just want to know. I just want to know. I don't want to cry. I want to be happy. I know she was suffering, but I want it to be a joyful occasion.

A memorial whereby people thank God for her. [The memorial] was in Nairobi. But, according to tradition, we have to transport the body to my hometown is Kisumu, by Lake Victoria. That's where my tribe, the Luo tribe, grew up. 

So, you have to bury your dead in your land. Not unless somebody is not claimed, then they're buried in the city. So, you raise the money. We would raise the money, raise the money. And after two weeks we have enough. We rent a bus or a van.

And it will hold maybe around 15 people. So it had to be the family members and maybe a few close relatives who would use that. Everybody else who was going to the funeral, you'd pay your way, and you'd get a public means and they'll give you the address and everything for the funeral. So, many people came to the funeral.

But the third sign that I wanted to mention was I gave my seat for the travel car. I gave it to one of my mom's best friends. Because I knew how close she was. She didn't have money to go to the funeral.

So, I said, you could have mine and the money that we were raising in the evening, I was going to use it for some of the funeral. So, I just paid my way and my mom's brother, we went together [by] public means. 

My other siblings were with the funeral and the body was on top and they drove for, seven hours, eight hours.

So, we got a bus and we got to the village, I would say maybe like an hour before them. And it was so dry that the area next to the lake, it's always dry. The rain, sometimes it take three months or if it comes in, it rains a little bit and then it's gone. So, I asked one of the elders there, Why is this place is so dry?

The grass is so yellowish. And it seems like there's no water. The small streams are all dried up. So, I asked when was the last time that it rained? [He said] It hasn't rained in a long time. You can see for yourself. And so, we walked into the village. We started preparing things. It's like you're in a Sahara Desert or something. 
 
 But as we were starting now to prepare the home, from a distance we started hearing the wailing. So, when the bodies come, they’re brought to the village. People are always carrying like sticks and they're always running. It's a tradition.

 They're driving slowly but people who are welcoming the body and they're running; they're coming towards the village.

I hear it from a mile away. And then the sound gets stronger and louder and louder. But the other thing that I was looking at, I looked at towards the sky and I saw a small dark cloud. And I didn't make anything of it. So the body is coming, it's coming, it's coming. And the more it's coming, the cloud is getting bigger. I'm paying attention. 
 
 Once the body arrived at the village, I was there with my uncle. We took the body off the car and we put it on a table like this and as the body touched the table, it started to rain. And it rained only for like 20 minutes to maybe an hour at most. 

And then it didn't rain again. I don't know for how many weeks, so I was kind of confused, but I was kind of curious. So, I asked one of the villagers, the old man, I would say he was maybe in his eighties, nineties. He says, there's something God wanted me to see.

I'm a family member. I'm supposed to be in that van that was bringing my mom. But I took a different route, we were there, we saw it was so dry. 

Once the body was placed on the table, it started to rain so he told me, Rain in Africa, it's a sign of peace. It's prosperity. Your mom was a very peaceful person. She loved people. It's like God was crying with you and was just telling you, yes, she's with me. 

And when I got my third sign, I was happy and I never cried, I never cried again. I wanted to know where she was. And he told me it's a sign of wealth. It's prosperity and it provides everything. And she's in a good place. Don't worry. Don't, don't worry at all. She's in a good place.
 
 I felt relief in my heart. I felt she's in a good place. Okay, God, thank you for showing me this. I was a worship leader. We sang at the funeral and we changed the mood of the funeral from people would have known her very well and gotten help from her crying to knowing that, okay, thank you, God. We had somebody.

She was a part of our life. She played a part in our lives. I remember the last time that we've finished everything. We're going to bury her. I was the one carrying the casket on the right side. 

That was the last time I opened the casket, and I said, Mom, I'm never gonna see you again, but I know you're with God and, just know, know that I'll never stop loving you. That was the last time, and I closed it. I was the last person to see her face.

She's in heaven, I know. I always tell myself that she struggled. To be able to help you to do so many things, she struggled for that. But change that to make her proud where she is, knowing that she hustled for you.

You know what to do. Just live a life that is good. Live a life that's an impactful life. She's always going to be proud of you. She could have gone to the hospital, and I know that she sacrificed that because she [thought] I don't want to leave these guys with huge bills. If I could say somebody is my hero, that's my hero. If I knew about it, I would have just taken her to the hospital and said, Mom, we'll deal with this.

But she never wanted to leave us with any of those huge bills. She just gave herself up for us to have a good life. And to me that's a sign of somebody who was selfless and just a hero. She was just, one of God's messengers to be able to bring us into the bigger picture, just for God's purpose and plan to be done. 
 
 Sometimes I listen to songs, and I feel like this, in Swahili, it's kiwaru, it's like you have a potato here, it's like a lump [in your throat]. You want to cry but all the crying cannot solve what you have. You’re just in like in some kind of pain and you cannot quench that.
 
 I miss her and I just cry when I'm driving and I'm alone. I listen to songs, and I listen to something, and I feel like I still miss her. It's like that missing will never end. It's like she's always there. 
 
 I always thank God. I always just tell God, thank you for my mom. Thank you for what she has done. Thank you. Thank you for her being my mom and the kind of the spirit that she brought.  She always wanted the best for us. 

 Outro:

Thank you for joining me today. For the holiday season, I'm going to take a little bit of a break. so I'll be back at the end of January, beginning of February with some more interviews and some more stories to tell. Have a great holiday season. 

Thanks for joining me. Bye bye.