Fresh chapter: genuine reason to smile

By Gladys Kalibbala

It's 2013. Three miserably looking children sit together with their mother desperately munching away on roasted groundnuts. It’s not enough for them, but it’s all they’ve got.

It is already midday and, still hungry, having slept the previous night on empty stomachs, they longingly watch their mother sip a Coke.  Of course they want a bit of it but she won’t share.

“I am suffering from tuberculosis so I cannot share this bottle with any of them [her children],” Jennifer Nangwedde tells me.

A Good Samaritan, having found them looking desperate and hungry, bought them the groundnuts and the soda.
 

They sit silently under a shade after spending the previous night out in the open. Amid bouts of cough, Nangwedde accepts to share with me her story. She is too weak to cross the road and make it up to the New Vision offices, so I decide to settle down there with them.

Her sad story rolls all the way back to the beginning; before she was even born.


Going back in time

Her father, Bwire, told her that he had lost his parents (Nangwedde’s grandparents) when he was a very young boy. He grew up with his uncle and when Bwire felt he was ready to move out and start his own life, he asked for a share of his deceased parents’ land to help him start off.

But his uncle told him that his parents had not left any property behind – something Bwire believed was an untruth.

Angry that he had been cheated, he abandoned his family and landed some casual job around Njeru town near Jinja town.

There, he fell in love with a young woman from the Bagwere tribe whose parents lived in Pallisa district in eastern Uganda. Before long, the young woman got pregnant, and nine months down the road, Nangwedde was brought into this world.

After the birth of their child, Bwire was contacted by his in-laws who demanded dowry (bride price) – that he did not have. Enraged, the young woman’s family handed him the baby to raise, and they set out to prepare their daughter for marriage to another man ready to pay dowry.

A young Nangwedde was raised by her father with the help of an old woman she called grandma near Njeru town.

She never got a chance to see or meet her mother.

At the age of 12, Nangwedde was attacked by a strange illness, forcing her father to take her to a traditional healer called Wakholi, who stayed around Namwezi village near Jinja town, for treatment.

The ailing girl spent some three months inside Wakholi’s shrine, all this while cared for by Jennifer Namakoye, the traditional doctor’s wife.

Three years on, her father took her to Namiringa village in Kiboga district where he joined the charcoal making business. They stayed in the forest where the charcoal burning was being done. That effectively subjected Nangwedde to the fate that she would never get a chance to go to school.

Several years later, a grown Nangwedde got a husband, Moses Wanyama, who had come from Nakuru in neighbouring Kenya and worked with her father. Together, they had three children – Vincent Matovu, Gida Mudondo and Joy Nabitabo.

When Nangwedde’s father fell ill and died, he was buried in the forest at Namiringa village because no one knew his other family members.

Having left Njeru when she was young, and time having since long passed, Nangwedde did not know whom to turn to. Her father had solely been her everything.

Later on, when her husband also died in 2013, his friends and workmates helped bury him in the same forest since Nangwedde had never met his family – nor had she ever stepped foot in his country Kenya.

With no father and husband any more, life turned into real-life misery for her.

Three months after her husband’s passing, 35-year-old (then) Nangwedde whose health was already deteriorating – she looked sickly and feeble – was helped to leave Kiboga and seek her relatives around Njeru for assistance.

The small house where she had left the old woman she called grandma during her childhood was no more. Instead, in its place, she found bungalows. Asking around for grandma’s whereabouts, no one in the area knew her.

Frustrated, she was resigned to sleeping on verandahs – together with her kids – of some shops around Njeru town near Nile Breweries. Here, Good Samaritans would offer them food, although they would go hungry most of the days.

A month on the streets, Nangwedde’s relentless inquiries about the tradition healer who had treated her back in the day were finally answered. She was told that he was long dead but that his wife Namakoye was still alive.


Teary reunion

A resident of Namwezi village (Bulimanjaga zone), Namakoye explains that one evening, Nangwedde arrived at her home on a motorcycle with three children. At first, she could not recognize her.

“I was coming out of the shower and I saw this woman whom I did not know. She surprised me by calling out my name and hugging me while in tears.”

It was only after narrating her story that Namakoye was able to recognize her and eventually taking Nangwedde and her children into her small two-roomed house.

The following day, she took the family of four to the nearby hospital for a medical check-up, for they all looked sickly.

Right away, Nangwedde was started on tuberculosis (TB) treatment as the children were treated of cough and flu.  Because Namakoye could not afford to provide education and care for them, she advised Nangwedde to visit the New Vision head offices in Kampala for assistance.

On her part, Nangwedde felt that in order for her children to have a bright future, they had to get some education.

Unfortunately, she did not live to see her dream come true. The widowed mother passed away just three days after Saturday Vision had published her story in April 2013.

After learning of her death, I set out to find the children, hoping to help them in one way or the other. Being total orphans and with no known relatives, I was determined to trace these poor kids – and I did. They were still at Namakoye's home.
 

Namakoye (with baby) with Nangwedde's three children after her death. (Credit: Gladys Kalibbala)

After a visit to Namakoye’s home, another story was run by Saturday Vision urging Good Samaritans to come to their aid.

The three children looked so miserable and forlorn after their mother’s death, understandably so. Among those who responded to the desperate call was Kidron Children’s Home located in Buikwe district which later took the orphans into their custody.

There, they started school and looked up to the director of the children’s home Pastor John Mukuya Shiundu and his wife as their new parents.
 

Pastor John Mukuya Shiundu and his wife Barbara of Kidron Children's Home with the late Nangwedde's kids. (Credit: Gladys Kalibbala)

Turning point

Dr. Kenneth C. Weimer, a medical doctor at Memorial Medical Center who is from the US State of Wisconsin, together with his wife Heather Weimer, have been frequent visitors to Uganda.

A priest from their area once worked in Uganda where he left friends like Sister Solomy of St Kizito Primary School in Mityana and many others. Through the nun, who is their family friend, they got to know about an abandoned girl at Nsambya Babies Home whom they adopted.

Later on, Heather learnt of the three orphans (Nangwedde’s children) at Kidron Children’s Home. She suggested to her husband that they adopt them.

“I asked my wife whether she was really serious when she mentioned we needed to rescue them. We are blessed with four biological children and a two-year-old girl from Nsambya, so I couldn’t take in what she was suggesting!” Dr. Weimer told me.

According to him, theirs was already too big a family to think of any additions, and so he asked his wife to give him time.

“I kept on praying that my husband comes to the rescue of these poor children as their story had touched me greatly,” Heather told me. Indeed, her prayers were answered when after her husband learned about the orphans’ background, he accepted to adopt them.

And, as they say, the rest is history!

 

Dr Weimer playing with the children in Bukoto, Kampala. (Credit: Gladys Kalibbala)

Heather shares quality time with the children in Bukoto. (Credit: Gladys Kalibbala)
 

Today, the three children are in the US enjoying pizzas and chicken and getting used to a fresh life – a life they would never have even come close to dreaming about in their previous miserable existence.

I would be right to believe that their current stay with their new parents has since brought genuine smiles on the faces of the three children.

And good enough, Dr. Weimer, who is a pediatrician, has promised to continue with his visits to Uganda during which he says he will be able to bring the kids along to pay Namakoye a visit once in a while.

On her part, Heather says the visits back home will help the children keep up with their culture.
 

The three children adopted from Kidron in a group photo with their new family on arrival in the US last month. (Courtesy of the Weimer family)