Celebrating forty years with fresh-found romance

Nov 21, 2002

“The proposal hit me like a bomb. I felt like time was running backwards and I was a teenager anxiously looking forward to my first date.”

By Titus Kakembo

The earth beneath Annette Nakalema moved further and fast. She had a surge of energy rush in her heart. A surprise gift on her 40th birthday was a second marriage proposal!

“We are wedding in December. My 40th birthday is going to be different in my life. It is amazing –– Michael Mukasa all the way from the UK drops in Uganda and drops on his knees and asks me to marry him!” says the director of Afrique Voyage, a tour agency in Kampala.

She heaves her chest and takes in a deep breath and suddenly relaxes.

Kironde says the day Mukasa proposed to her, the sky shone bright with the saucer moon and stars curiously staring at her and Mukasa.

“The proposal hit me like a bomb. Suddenly I felt like time was running backwards and I was a teenager –– anxiously looking forward to my first date! There he was with a bouquet of flowers asking for my hand in marriage,” recalls Nakalema.

Other than a casual hello and intimate whispers, Nakalema had always said no to Mukasa’s rapid succession of pleas whenever they met in UK and talked on telephone. Talk about suggestive Valentine gifts and late night telephone calls, he did it all.

“The moment he learned that I broke up with Kironde in 1991 he began the concerted hunt –– that I become his. My birthday was the climax,” she narrates.

After the dramatic proposal, the Saturday gossip column in The New Vision ran the story. And guess what woke Nakalema up –– not the alarm bell or the customary cockcrow. It was her son Senteza Kironde.

“Mom, you ought to have told me about this. I should not have read about it in the gossip columns,” Senteza complained on his mobile phone. He was calling from Makerere College.

Asked how the four sons she had from the first marriage reacted to the issue of her latest catch, Nakalema’s face lights up with a smile.

“You cannot believe it. But there are no secrets between us. They tell me they do not mind me having another man,” says Nakalema.

Mukasa has been a family friend for 15 years. He has always dined and wined with them. The kids know him. Starting from next month, he will be getting another ‘face.’

“I don’t believe that parents should always teach the dos and don’ts to the young ones like we were brought up. We ought to demystify things to them. It may be love, cars or socialising,” she says.

While at her plush home in Ntinda, Nakalema performs her motherly role satisfactorily.

“Mom I am going back to school,” Gulemye Apollo, her son comes to report. She gives the car keys to Mpagi, the driver in his teens, who then takes Gulemye to Makerere College School.

Then she continues with her love life story.

“I had four boys with Kadumukasa Kironde. When we split, my challenge was to make them happy. They are in their teens now. We talk about their love lives. They tell me about their girlfriends!” she recounts.

She says she has had challenges bringing up kids as a single mother. “As they grow older, their needs change. At some age when playmates were talking about their daddies at school, sadly, my children’s dad was a distance away.

Like VP Specioza Kazibwe’s recent call upon couples to separate if their marriages hit the rocks, she wonders why many couples do not let go an affair that has gone sour.

Contrary to the customary advice of staying with your husband to bring up the children, Nakalema left the man she had shared a pillow with from 1983 to 1991. Today, Nakalema strongly objects to couples remaining in loveless marriages involving persistent fights.

“Have people never heard of divorce? Why can’t they live apart? she wonders.

“Although I am an admirer of the marital institution, people should learn to let go. The nasty scene of a teacher murdered recently in Kampala is everybody’s nightmare,” she adds.

Opposing loveless relationships is a lesson she got in her teens while studying at Advanced level in Jamaica in 1984.

“Unlike relationships in Uganda, the women in Kingston Jamaica do not expect their men to be providers. They pay their bills when they have outings in a discotheque, candlelight dinner or luncheon,” she stresses.

This is a habit Nakalema inadvertently adopted.

“There you have to keep a distance from the forest of handsome men. The law has it that kids belong to a man. Men impregnate you and run away to shun responsibility. While there, I survived them because I was saved,” adds Nakalema.

Nakalema, who has widely travelled in the USA, Australia and the UK, says the women abroad are completely different from the ones she had seen while she was a girl in Kimanya primary school and in Kololo Secondary School.

“A woman’s goal today is career development, not meeting a rich man to offer you a plush home and cater for all your needs,” said Nakalema.

While in office at Afrique Voyage, her face shines with a smile as she stands up to shake hands with a client. Her warm smile accompanies the hospitable treatment she shows her clients.

“You are welcome, have a seat,” she tells a client.

Afrique Voyage opened 10 years ago. Nakalema is the brain behind its success.

Located on Kimathi Avenue, Afrique Voyage is a decorous plush structure adjacent to Kampala Casino. The tour company attracts corporate bodies, government officials and the business community.

Destinations vary from within the country and beyond.

Nakalema, also secretary of Tugata (Tour Uganda Operator) says, much as a man and a woman are complementary facets in life, separation (when it happens) should not switch off one’s happiness.

With a successful business and a new man, the sky is the limit for Nakalema.

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