Kuenza's Diary

There are so many joys in being a mother. The moment I held my baby in my hands, I felt that I was blessed. The enormous feeling of love that you feel in your heart as you hold the tiny, gentle hands in yours, the swell of love that engulfs you as you watch your little one sleeping peacefully next to you – and that special bond that you feel as you breastfeed her – there is no other gift in life that makes you feel that way. The excitement of all gifts big or small dies down overtime. But in being a mother? The moment of joy stays with you forever. Despite the occasional feelings that she is going to drive you mad because you can’t keep up with the energy and curiosity of a child. While a child is always looking for something, putting a finger in a hole there, or pressing a button here, she is always exploring and learning; she is making sense of the world that she is in. But because she has this excitement and zeal to see more and to know more, the mother has to have a big heart...

I don’t remember when was the last time I felt so euphoric and relieved to have achieved something. I probably did when I finished my engineering degree, but I don’t remember it now. This time, when I finished my masters in IT, I had a sense of relief run over me as if it was what I always wanted and I now had it in my grips for the rest of my life. I think the sense of achievement and relief is more today because I am a wife and a mother and the commitment and discipline required to shoulder the responsibility as a student more than tripled – and I am proud today for having made it without any major obstacle. While I felt it like a big challenge in the beginning, I was happy that I could now sort out my time and priority and was surer about how much time I should dedicate to each of the obligations. My family received my first priority and I am glad that is how it was. They dedicatedly stood beside me and this is what they deserve. In fact, they deserve much more. And it is in ...

I did not have to go to a boarding school right from prep. But I had to stay with my brother, whose house was closer to the school. By nine I was separated from my parents and I had to learn that growing up meant learning to adapt to changes.  But surprisingly, I could never come to get used to it. No matter how much further I went from home, how much longer I was separated from them – I missed them and cried all the same. Now I am a mother. But I miss my mother all the same. I am child to her all the same – with shortcomings and craving for her love. But the difference is that, now, I know what it is like to be a mother: how much heartaches she has to go through, how much tears she has to shed and how many difficult decisions she has to make. Life has never a clear cut answer for you. You have to decide on your own. This is to say that when you are a mother, you are torn by the things you have to do that make yourself and your child cry – all because the nature of way things...

It was 10:30 am and I was returning home after dropping my baby at the childcare. Two meters away from the centre, I met an old man…a westerner by his looks, but not an Australian by the way he spoke English. He smiled at me and said something like, ‘your baby was crying…but now he…(stammers, then hmmms and says) she is ok now.’ Then he asked, ‘daughter or son?’ I am taken aback for a second. I was like, ‘what is he saying?’ So I then asked him, ‘You mean you heard my daughter cry?’ He said, he stays next to the childcare centre where my daughter goes. He must have seen us many times, walking past his house to the childcare centre. He asked me if it is just me and my daughter or if I have any other family members with us. I told him that I have my husband and three cousins. And his next question threw me away in confusion. The full effect and understanding of his proposal of whether I was in need of a company didn’t register until I walked away from him. I said, ‘no’ and he walke...

It was in June last year, at the peak of winter that my family and I landed in Melbourne. The Intensive Academic Program that the AusAID scholars undergo for a month is honestly intensive. As is the purpose, it makes us understand what we will be expected to do as a master’s student and how we must perform the assignments. Having to attend the classes the next day I have been flown here, I felt totally disarrayed – more because I suddenly had to leave my 5 month old daughter at home for the whole day. It was a big change. A big change indeed. As part of this introduction course called the IAP, we had to conduct a short survey. This was a group assignment. We were going to pick our respondents randomly – from the park, in the train, at the restaurants, at the hospital etc. I didn’t realize that it is really, really hard to get people to agree to be a respondent. When number of people who said ‘no’ outnumbered the ones who said ‘yes’, I felt totally dejected. I even cried, every ti...

I had just become a mother and I was home all day, every day with my baby. I was overwhelmed by love one could feel and surprised by how different it is to just knowing something and experiencing it. I have only known and heard that mothers and children share a very strong bond and there I was, experiencing it for the first time and feeling joyful at this blessing that life offers. This love is like this: every time my baby cries, I feel the pain. Every time she falls sick, it worries me beyond reasonable extent. Every time she does not eat, I think she is not well. For the first time, you become so observant. You notice even the small changes in your baby’s behavior and every time you think there is a slight change from the normal routine, you worry that something must be wrong. On one of those days when my baby and I were simmering in the sun light filtering through the window to our bedroom in December in Thimphu, (one of the coldest months), I heard a mother and a kid hav...