Like every queen has her throne from which she rules her kingdom, Maama had one too.

Her balcony.

For 4 years before her demise, she’s ruled her kingdom from the 2nd floor balcony of her home. The balcony being on the 2nd floor wasn’t a hindrance to her. She inquired about people’s health, the price of bananas from the local market among other things from up there. Like I said, she was a queen. From her throne she could see almost everything; people who enter and exit the house, what the neighbours prefer in terms of groceries, new girlfriends and boyfriends, peculiar looking people possibly new to the neighbourhood, people’s smoking and Supari consumption habits and most importantly, what the neighbourhood cats have been up to.

The latter was our favourite past time. Every time a cat was in the vicinity Maama would call for me and both of us would simply just watch them. I remember there was an orange tabby cat that she found most fascinating. Every time she spoke of it there’d be a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. She’d laugh loudly and say, ‘This is an especially naughty cat. He eats leaves from the neighbours tree. As if that doesn’t suffice he goes on to vomit all of it on to the other neighbours roof.’. Ekkala Orenju Bulhaa is what we called him. If I wasn’t at home when the cats made an appearance, Maama would report back to me when I got home and say, ‘It is a pity that you weren’t around today.’.

I remember looking up, every time I left the house, to see if Maama was there. We’d both exchange funny hand gestures and make silly facial expressions. Sometimes the neighbours would look at us funny but we didn’t care! It was our thing. Without fail she’d also ask me when I was going to come back home and I’d say that I won’t be long.

By force of habit or not, I still look up at the balcony every time I leave the house, hoping that I’d see her on her throne … at least for one last time.