Those were days of struggle ; each leaf added to the tree. I waited each night, outside the trembling hut, waiting to see a lonely traveller in need of food or accommodation. “A man can sleep outside”, I remembered my mother’s voice when I initially started sleeping out, shaking and screaming at night in fear. That me doesn’t exist anymore. Of course, that mother too. Living alone, I had to fend for myself alone, but living-in all my life, I didn’t know the kind of work other men did. All I knew was to take care of the house and surroundings, to weave baskets out of wires, and to knit baby clothes. “What woman would like you?” my old mother would ask during her last days. I’d sit there like a good daughter-in-law, listening to the taunts at her husband’s home. Sadly, they expected me to bring a wife home. How do I tell them, that I’d rather be married off?
