SHADED VIEWS

My mum is a big character. She comes in all shapes and sizes...most of the time she's complaining about something but when it comes to bringing it down and knocking some sense into someones life...she is always dead on!
This is a belated mothers day wish to my mum...she has her negative sides but lately I have seen a lot of wisdom in the stuff she is saying. The latest is how i should be the boss of my house. (thats another story). But yesterday, I was at her home and just like mum does, she had gone all out with the chapatis, pilau, stew and fruit platter. As it is custom on a sunday afternoon, there were visitors and i had to cook a lot of tea which coz of my teabag ways was quite the challenge since I was having problems measuring the number of cups of milk, (since she gets her milk delivered to her straight from the cow), water and amount of tealeaves to make the tea.
It was at this time that more visitors came, it was a lady and her two kids. Mum came into the kitchen and asked me to warm the food for them. Now warming food is not a problem, warming food without the help of a microwave is. My mums microwave had died on the Friday so here i was trying my best to use the science i used to use as a child (before microwaves came to kenya) to warm this food, nevertheless i succeeded. Mum came into the kitchen and said she would serve the food and leave me to continue with the tea. As she was serving, I noticed that she had put a mountain of servings on each plate, I did not mind it for the mum but for the kids, i thought she had placed too high hopes on them finishing even  a quarter of what she served so naturally i pointed it out.
The next thing i know, my mum has pulled me aside and talking to me softly, she says "stop shouting, the food is enough, they can eat it." At this point im of "huh". So she goes on to explain about how the family is not so well off, the kids have food to eat but its not enough so they are often hungry. "when you see me doing this Mueni, its because I know they might not even have dinner tonight," mum said.
That just got me of at another level! I had never in my wildest dreams ever thought of that possibility. You see, where my mum lives is relatively for well off people so naturally i assume that her neighbors are all well to do people. I was like heeeeeh!
Then i asked myself, are there such people in my neighborhood? People that need help but are doing so much to hide the fact because of where they live or a reputation they are afraid to loose? Then i thought, can i live up to be like mum, always helping people with whatever she can? Doing what she can to easen a burden that she sees around her? have insight into peoples troubles?
Lesson learnt.