Photo: Gwengrine (Gwendolyn) Kanshoga, 1932-2020
This beautiful lady who died on Sunday December 13, 2020 was my wife's paternal aunt and Godmother. A very beautiful soul with a story of valour and graceful endurance that is familiar to mothers all over Africa, her name was Kanshoga ka Kakorwa Muhara w’Abaitira.
She lost nine children in infancy/toddler age. Her only child that survived to adulthood died while giving birth in early youth, a victim of the high maternal mortality that silently devastates families and the continent. She lost her husband so long ago that my wife does not even remember what he looked like.
To imagine the pain of such loss at a young age is a futile effort by one who was neither in her shoes nor had suffered similar personal loss. That she retained her mental health and pressed ahead with dignified acceptance of her lot speaks of God’s abundant grace and the power of the human spirit.
One of her remarkable feats of courage, selflessness and triumph involved a fire that engulfed my in-laws’ house at a school in Rutooma, Kashaari, Ankole in the late 1940s. Everyone had evacuated the burning house when they realised that a toddler was missing. Kanshoga promptly dashed back into the house and quickly brought the little girl to safety. But she was not yet done.
Unfazed by the terrifying inferno, Kanshoga sprinted into the house again and soon emerged with a pile of paper documents that did not belong to her. They were her brother’s official papers. Why did she take that risk? She explained that she had realised that if those documents went up in smoke, her brother, a school headmaster (principal), would be at risk of being suspected of arson meant to erase evidence of school accounts and other important matters.
The little girl whose life she saved (my wife’s older sister) grew up to become a distinguished teacher like her father, a wife, mother, grandmother and one of the finest ladies that I know. Kanshoga’s daring acts were propelled by love, a great example of the Golden Rule.
My wife and I last saw her in January 2018, at the funeral of her younger sister's husband. I was captivated by her straightforward speech. Utterly clear, to the point, with not a hint of deference to the so-called educated, Kanshoga reminded me of the women whose story was immortalized by Ousmane Sembene in God’s Bits of Wood. Perhaps one of her descendants or a child of the little girl she saved over seventy years ago will tell Kanshoga’s full story.