Blind but not broken: Widow battles darkness to raise orphans

BUYENDE - In the heart of Buyende district, along the dusty stretch of Bugaya– Igwaya road, stands a crumbling two-roomed house in Nabbuku-Ngole village. 

It is here, surrounded by silence and shadows, that 45-year-old Rose Nabutono wages a quiet war against blindness, hunger and grief — as she single-handedly raises 12 orphans, including a pair of toddler twins. 

Her life is defined by hardship, but also by an unyielding spirit that refuses to be dimmed, even in complete darkness. 

Three months after burying her husband, James Baaga Wule, in 2019, Nabutono’s world went dark. 

Cataracts robbed her of sight completely, just like it had done to her late husband, who battled a three-year illness before passing in 2018.

Four senses  

With her vision gone and her heart shattered, she was left with four senses — hearing, touch, smell and instinct — to carry on. Each day begins with a familiar ritual. 

Nabutono crouches near the fireplace in her home with a toddler strapped to her back, with tears trickling down the little one’s face from hunger. 

Her cries are echoed by her siblings, who range from four to 17. She gropes the ground for twigs and scraps of firewood, then moves with deliberate care, guided by feel and memory. 

Inside their humble home — shared with chickens and two goats — Nabutono crouches by the fireplace. 

She arranges dry grass beneath the wood, fumbles for the matchbox and listens for the whisper of flame. 

“Bring me that kettle with water so I can boil tea,” she calls out gently. Veronica Namaganda, aged 10, hurries to place it on the fire. 

Using her hearing to track the bubbling water, her touch to feel the heat, and her nose to sense the scent of the brewing tea, Nabutono prepares what the family calls “dry tea”— hot water with a few precious crystals of sugar stirred in. 

“I use the hearing, feeling, touching and smelling senses,” the blind mother explained. 
“I cook the tea, until it is ready. Then I throw in a few sugar crystals to make dry tea,” she added softly. The tea is a common substitute when there’s no money for proper meals. 

The house Nabutono and the children live, in Kagulu sub-county, Buyende district.

It’s often all they have. She serves it quietly. The younger ones begin to cry again, their stomachs barely touched by the few sips. 

The older children lie on their bellies, conserving energy, their eyes never leaving their mother. 

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the eyes of 12 children look to her. They wait for her to plan the meals, to lead them to the garden, to be their strength. 

At the far end of the room stands her bed: A fragile frame with a papyrus mat for a mattress. A frayed, dusty mosquito net dangles above it, and an old, worn blanket lies across it. 

This is the only resting place for the woman who spends nearly every waking moment planning for 12 children. 

There is no break, no pause. Her days blur into nights and her nights into early dawns. 
“Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week — she’s the centre of their lives,” Denis Serikale, a neighbour, said. 

“She plans the meals, gathers food, cooks and leads them to the garden. Blind, but determined,” he added.

Journey through darkness  

Each morning, after tending to her crying children and preparing what little breakfast she can, Nabutono prepares for a journey that has become part of her survival ritual. 

Between 9:00am and 10:30am, especially when her older children are away or too tired to help, she takes a hoe, young ones in tow, to the garden in the rolling fields of Buyende district. 

Her path is not smooth. Guided only by memory and the feel of her feet on the soil, she makes her way slowly, sometimes staggering or veering off the narrow footpath. 

The terrain is unforgiving — full of creepers that snare her ankles, uneven ground, and freshly dug holes that cause her to stumble. Still, she presses on.

After digging, Nabutono gropes her way across the field to harvest sweet potatoes for lunch. Balancing the basket on her head, she adds a few wild vegetables — ddoodo and ejjobyo — to make a sauce for the day. But her return journey is rarely simple. 

More often than not, she loses her balance and crashes to the ground. “I sometimes step into a depression or trip over creepers,” Nabutono shared. 

Nabutono preparing a meal for her children.

When I fall, the potatoes and vegetables scatter,” she adds. She then calls out for help. Her children rush to her side, collecting the scattered tubers and returning them to the basket. 

Together, they resume the trek back home, each step another small triumph in a day that demands so much from her. When there’s no food to harvest — when the garden is bare or the season unforgiving, Nabutono turns to her cassava reserves. 

In a large wooden mortar, she pounds dried cassava pieces into coarse chunks, working the pestle with practised rhythm. It’s a taxing process, but it yields chada — the flour that becomes their only meal of the day.

“I have no money to take the dried panels to the mill,” she said. “What would have been spent on milling, I use to buy tomatoes, eggplant for sauce, or even a bar of soap,” she added. 

Once the cassava is crushed, Nabutono sits patiently sifting it using a handmade wooden sieve. 

Her hands move with confidence, separating the fine flour from the coarse residue. It is a delicate process, done with the care of someone who has done it a thousand times before.

Cumbersome life 

Six years have passed since Wule died, and with him went the last shred of stability in Nabutono’s life. What followed was not just grief and blindness, but abandonment, neglect, and the slow vanishing of support from those she thought might stand by her. 

Since her husband died in 2018 and her complete loss of sight shortly after, Nabutono has been left to navigate a brutal world, often leaning only on her children and a walking stick. 

“My late husband’s family is no longer bothered to know whether I have meals or not,” she said quietly, her words tinged with hurt. 

With no stable income and no external support, school became the first casualty. All 12 orphans have now dropped out. Her story is known in the village, but the silence around her plight has grown louder with time. 

These journeys between garden and home, between pounding and sifting, between falling and rising again form the rhythms of her life. But they are only the surface of a much deeper struggle. 

By 7:00am, the compound at Nabutono’s home is already stirring with the day’s demands. From her modest bed, beneath a torn mosquito net, the blind mother rises to lead her household. Even in darkness, she commands order. 

Rose Nabutono's bed

“Dress up your young siblings. Wash their faces,” Nabutono calls out softly. “In the absence of my children, I use a walking stick,” she says. 

“Sometimes, one of the children holds it to guide me,” she added. This is how she accesses the garden. It’s how she finds her way to the firewood, the water containers and the cooking stones. 

Her body has memorised her environment, down to the uneven bumps of the compound and the direction of the morning sun.

Aware of how scarce water is, she sends two of the children to fetch it from a well nearly 1.5km away, located next to the Igwaya livestock market. 

“While they are gone, I don’t sit idle,” she said. “I cook. I wash. I clean,” she added. Robert Serwano, the LC1 chairperson of Nabbuku, remains awestruck by her ability to adapt.

“She bathes her kids, sweeps the courtyard, weeds the backyard vegetable plots and cassava gardens,” he said.

Blind faith

Amid the bustle and heat of the kitchen, Nabutono’s blindness often betrays her. In the rush of activity around the fireplace, her hands may wander too far and land on hot coals or burning pans. 

“I make some mistakes. Sometimes, my fingers stray to the live coals or the hot kettle and I get blisters,” she said. But she doesn’t cry out. Nabutono doesn’t stop. 

Pain is just another part of her routine. During the rainy seasons, Nabutono takes her family to the garden. She plants maize, cassava, beans, groundnuts and sweet potatoes — just as she did when her husband was alive.

“To set up a potato garden, she piles the mounds and inserts the vines with surprising accuracy,” Denis Serikale, a neighbour said. 

“She is a veteran when it comes to weeding maize and cassava,” he added. Her life has been shaped by love, loss and relentless responsibility. 

Born in 1980, Nabutono met her husband James Baaga Wule in 1995. They began their family young, and by the time Wule passed, they had 12 children, including a set of twins. 

When he died, he left behind not just a widow, but a woman forced to become both mother and father, blind, hopeful and grieving all at once.

Rose Nabutono

Blindness journey

The story of Nabutono’s blindness is a long one, rooted in childhood. She began suffering from cataracts (known locally as ensenke) at the tender age of seven. Her right eye failed after she had given birth to five children. 

For years, she relied on her left eye, pushing forward in life with half her vision. In 2019, the world went dark. Cataracts clouded the last of her sight, closing her off from the visible world forever. 

“That was the beginning of my new life,” she said. “A life I have now lived for seven years as a blind widow, a mother and a survivor,” she said. Even her husband’s blindness remains a mystery. 

He, too, lost his sight in his final years, as he battled the illness that eventually claimed his life.

According to Dr Fred Tibamwagaine, an eye specialist at Kamuli General Hospital, Nabutono’s condition was the result of cataracts — a condition that, if treated early, can often be reversed through surgery. 

“Cataracts are a common eye condition where the lens of the eye becomes cloudy, leading to blurred vision and, eventually, total blindness,” he said. 

“They usually come with age, but in some cases, like Nabutono’s, they start much earlier,” Tibamwagaine added.