Mma Shaw � The mother of Palapye
Sandy Grant | Wednesday February 17, 2016 15:55
The routine seemed to be more or less standardised. Some sort of food, although not as far as I remember a meal, tea, fat cakes, whatever, a hymn and a prayer and a handout of whatever Mma Shaw had managed to garner in the preceding days – soap, cooking oil, and so on.
All fairly small scale but sufficiently demanding to require loyal helpers. It was not, I think, the handouts which so resonated with visitors such as myself.
It was the opportunity which Mma Shaw provided to bring so many of Palapye’s older folk together – who she described as ‘my old people’ - where they could enjoy the companionship of others of their own age, sing, pray, chatter, enjoy and of course complain, the right of all older people. Mma Shaw had an unusually querulous, but attractive, way of speech.
How could she be expected to cope when newcomers from Lecheng were coming in by the back door in addition to, ‘my old people’ who, by definition, were from Palapye only?
Understandably, for her, there had to be limits. How could she manage when her own LMS moruti so often let her down, promising this and that and then failing to deliver?
She had a long time domestic helper called De Fly – after the first airplane to land in Palapye - and it could not have been long after that great event that she started to deliver Palaype’s babies. And then continued doing so for the next 40 or so years.
I have not the faintest idea if she had previous training – which seems improbable – but in a situation where traditional expertise alone was available, she was drawn in to help where other forms of help were required.
Presumably she learnt entirely by experience and bit-by-bit earned the confidence of both the expatriate and local communities. But there is probably no record as to how she did what she did.
Or how anyone ever paid her, if they did! Did she go from home to home? I know that she had helpers but who they were may now be publicly forgotten.
Today there seems to be general agreement that Mma Shaw did indeed deliver almost everyone in Palapye who is locally important and great many of those who are not. Although from the UK, Mma Shaw never returned there.
She explained that she and her husband did once get as far as Cape Town docks but there he received a telegram saying that there was an outbreak of foot and mouth, and they immediately turned back.
Yes, I know that a clinic in Palapye was very properly named after her. Other than that, I don’t know what might be appropriate. A lovely, tough, pugnacious, uncompromising lady who I, and many others, remember with much respect and affection.