Today is Mothers’ Day. We celebrate motherhood and its unrivalled significance in our lives. They are the greatest people on Earth: girls, mothers, stepmothers, stepdaughters, aunts, nieces, grandmothers, spiritual mothers, etc. The influence of mothers in our society cannot be overemphasized, from our babyhood to our adulthood. They are the ones who do the daily house chores at home on top of executing the biggest responsibility of taking children to school every day. They unenviably play the role of shaping families and society as a whole.
Sadly, in our Third World countries, their significance is often overshadowed by the social ills here: family squabbles, poverty, domestic violence, divorce, HIV/ AIDS, etc., some of which come from the husbands, and others from some of the mothers. Consequentially, we witness suffering on the side of the innocent children. Their education gets a big dent. The children drop out of school as a result of divorce, or death from HIV/ AIDS. Some girlchildren painfully get into seething cauldron of early marriages.
EDUCATION
We must encourage the girlchildren to take on courses that have traditionally been known to be for men: Engineering, Medicine, Law, Accounting and others.
THE WELL-BEING OF MOTHERS
In this modern era, we must drop the stereotypical thinking that bars women from succession rights and ownership of property. We must ensure our girlchildren go to high levels of education. The issue of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender) at hand also needs our very careful thought, for it is a big threat to the existence and perpetuity of our society. Mothers must enjoy every right to get employment in any field of work. We (men) must support the mothers at home and at the workplace. We must not leave all the home duties to them. We need to participate daily.
Today, we need to gift our mothers with flowers, cards and heartfelt gestures to express gratitude towards them. But in essence, there is nothing we can offer to pay them for the tremendous work they do throughout our lives. So, here at SIBLA, this message is our everything to our loving, selfless, honourable mothers. Today we dedicate the following songs to our highly treasured mothers: Mama, Mbaga and Maria Guma by Judith Babirye. Athough they are in Luganda, I am pretty sure everyone will enjoy them on this day.
As educationists, our only word today goes to both parties, father and mother: Educate your children no matter what happens. Don’t forsake them in any way to suffer with this cruel world. An individual who is not well educated is very hard to inspire or mould towards development. They easily become jealous/ envious. They resist change for the better. They do not aspire for greatness in life. Keep the number of children you produce very small because good education is very expensive nowadays.
Two children are just enough now. It becomes very unfortunate when a parent halts the education of one or two children in order to make their elder/ eldest sibling finish a particular level of education or course at university. It is psychologically very disheartening and demoralizing. A child must never have an unnecessary momentary break or stop in their education cycle.
Learn to say sorry to your partner when you wrong them. The other partner must reciprocate this by being ready to forgive you. Marriage is a complicated institution, which requires a great deal of patience and discernment while handling the day-to-day issues that keep arising. Thank you for taking the time to read this article. Intelligent people never stop reading. May God bless you!
Happy Mother’s Day to all our beautiful mothers! Enjoy your day!
The writer is an expert at English teaching, a teacher trainer, a graphics designer, an author, a speech writer and a motivational speaker at educational conferences.
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