Benezeri and mother, Monica Chibita
In one of my darkest moments last year, someone released a diss song where he said ‘I’ll make you retake classes like your mama did’
In almost every semester at university, I had a retake or 2 (never 3). The idea was that it was because I was juggling with music. My mum is the head of department of Mass Communication at the university I studied. Every time I got a retake, it hurt my mum and it hurt me too.
One time I walked into her office and she was crying because she had had to send me out of a test she was conducting (I’d come late). Some people could not understand why my mum wouldn’t intervene and make my retakes disappear. They don’t realize that the bond I had with my mum was established and made firm close to 20 years earlier. And that for those 20 or so years, she had taught us virtues such as fairness and integrity. Virtues that have set her apart from other academics.
Anyway, when you hear lyrics like that, they stay with you. There’s no response to that. Someone is implying basically that your mum doesn’t love you enough to cheat for you.
Fortunately, I graduated (1 semester late) and whenever I look at this picture, I’m almost brought to tears. My mum was so proud of me, you could think it was her graduation. She had the excitement of a little girl. Her and my dad were so happy. In my graduation speech, I couldn’t hold it back. I broke down. Words failed me.
The humiliation I’d put my mum through and the way she had loved me even harder. This picture is a representation of the love between mother and child. A love that no bystander or spectator has the right to try and understand or comment about. Absolutely one of my best pictures ever.
