Hope as Good Samaritans aid defiled Zana teenager

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On the edge of a flooded swamp in Zana, just off the old Entebbe Road in Wakiso District, stands a battered mud-and-wattle house. Its sagging walls and roof patched with groaning, rusty iron sheets bear witness to relentless storms.

Inside, the air reeks of dampness and decay—a reminder that rising Lake Victoria waters have swallowed much of the neighbourhood. Yet amid this ruin lives a girl whose childhood was washed away long before the floods came.

Margaret Saaba, a name neighbours speak only in hushed whispers, appears weary beyond her 14 years. Her eyes dart aimlessly, chasing invisible shadows, and her words emerge in broken fragments when she speaks—lost between memory and trauma.

One year ago, at age 13, Saaba was raped. The perpetrator remains unidentified. Her mother, Zeulence Namuyonjo, cannot recall the exact day of the assault but noticed Saaba’s enlarging belly and breasts—a sign she recognised as pregnancy without clinic confirmation. "I have no idea of who impregnated my daughter," she says with a cracked voice, "so I could not trace," she adds.

Saaba might have named her attacker, but her speech is limited to murmurs; her mother explains she was born with this condition. As a child, Saaba’s challenges intensified, leading to treatment at Butabika Referral Hospital in Kampala city. After returning home, she became vulnerable to the assault.

Today, Saaba’s baby is nearly one year old. She breastfed for only one week before rejecting the child, forcing her mother and aunt Gertrude Gimbo to feed the infant. Their dilapidated two-room house, flooded, smelly and infested with mosquitoes and snakes, poses grave risks.



"Whenever it rains, floods take about a day to subside," neighbour Regan Sserunjogi says, adding that water often rises halfway up the walls.

Saaba now roams barefoot through the flooded compound, her thin dress clinging to her frail frame. She sometimes wanders into the swamp, laughing until her brothers pull her back. Inside, eight family members sleep on damp mats elevated on bricks to avoid floodwater.

Frogs croak through broken windows at night, mosquitoes swarm, and rotting stench seeps in.

For Namuyonjo, survival is a daily struggle. She washes clothes for wealthier families uphill, returning with cracked hands and barely enough food. Her greatest burden is Saaba: "She rarely sleeps," Namuyonjo says.

"She cries, screams sometimes, or walks out into the night. I can’t leave her alone, but I also have to feed the rest of my children. I don’t know what to do anymore."

In Zana, Saaba’s story circulates in whispers at chapati stalls and boda-boda stages, where people dismiss her as "the mad girl." Though some admit witnessing the crime, "even when the local police were informed and given a clue, it had never done anything to bring justice to the girl and her family." This silence, woven from fear and poverty, leaves Saaba’s pain "irritates, untreated and unspoken."

Zana itself feels forgotten: A casualty of urban expansion and environmental neglect. Rising waters have destroyed gardens and latrines, deepening poverty. With no counsellors, social workers, or safe houses, Namuyonjo faced insurmountable barriers seeking help: transport costs to Entebbe Hospital and endless police queues.

"She needs medicine," Namuyonjo says, glancing at Saaba tracing circles in the mud.

"They told me it costs more than I can ever afford. So, I just pray."

Hope emerged when the Rotary Club of Lubowa and Mildmay Uganda Hospital intervened. They provided sugar, powdered milk, juice, blankets, bedsheets, matooke, cooking oil, mattresses, and other essentials—ending the baby’s reliance on water as milk.

Drollah Nabukenya Ssebagala, the club’s membership director, explains they identify girls like Saaba through local leaders, noting "most girls are impregnated at a low age and their future gets tough."

The club has promised safer housing, income support, and a small business to replace their shillings 50,000 monthly rent.

Dr Yvonne Karamagi of Mildmay Uganda adds they’ve "helped over 40 girls, looking after them from pregnancy time until they give birth."

As darkness falls, frogs and crickets blend with distant traffic while life rushes on elsewhere. But in this drowned house, time stands still—a fragile pause before the next flood.