Loneliness drove him to hard work

By Immaculate Tumwesigye

Samuel Agaba has never known his mother. Born on November 7, 1977 at Namirembe hospital, his mother bled to death, one hour and 33 minutes after he was born.

Nalongo Margaret Male his grandmother is the only mother he has known. Some of the neighbours at their home in Kisaasi, a Kampala suburb say Agaba is Nalongo’s son.

His fate made him work hard and this year, he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Planning from Makerere University.

Those who do not know the truth, think Agaba was breast-fed by Nalongo. Though she never did so she took care of him after his mother’s death. Agaba describes himself as a “survivor” while his grand mother says he is a miraculous child. No one expected him to grow.

Nalongo says she would have breast fed him, if it was not for the fact that it is taboo to breastfeed the son of one’s daughter.

“When his mother died I was still producing but I started using family planning methods so that I could look after Sam,” Nalongo says.

While still a child, he would wonder why his grandmother encouraged him to call her “Jajja” (grandmother) yet her daughters called her “Maama”(mother).

“When I asked her why this was so, she told me she had two names like anybody else so I started calling her “Jajja Maama,” Agaba says.

This made his friends at school mock him. They would tell him that it was impossible for one to be a mother and grandmother at the same time. This did not stop him from calling her “Jajja-Mama.”

However, one day, then in Primary five, he painfully got to know the truth when Nalongo showed him his mother’s grave.

“I was confused. I asked her what she meant by ‘this is your mother’ and she explained that she wasn’t my mother but my grand mother,” Agaba vividly recalls.

“She told me my mother had died one hour and 33 minutes after I was born. This shocked me because I had never imagined that my grandmother was not my mother,” he says.

This set off a new chapter in Agaba’s life. He wanted to know more so his grandmother told him the whole story.

Nalongo said upon his mother’s death, his father Fred Bashaija was going to leave the child in hospital because he did not know what to with it. He was puzzled by its mother’s death.

“I then told him to bring the child to me,” she says.
Bashaija would buy tinned milk for the baby and give it to Nalongo.

When Agaba was old enough to go to school, he was taken to stay with his father’s family, but he could not stay there. He kept disturbing his father and step mother until he was brought back to Nalongo.

Asked why he did not like to stay with his father’s family, Agaba says he never felt at home there.

“I didn’t feel loved as much as I did at my grandparent’s home.
Besides, at my father’s place we could speak English, yet here I would speak Luganda,” Agaba narrates.

Although he fondly speaks about his father, Agaba admits that his father was always too busy to be with him. He was always travelling out of the country.

“My worst days in school were visiting days. I always saw parents hugging their children and this made me so lonely because no one used to visit me at school,” Agaba says.

“My father always reminded me that I was more disadvantaged than his other children because I had no mother and thus should work hard,” he adds.

His hard work did not only end in class, he says outside class he always did compound designing for people. “What inspired me is my dad who used to give me some pocket money.”

“I have always prayed for Sam to go through school successfully and now that he has completed his studies, I feel so grateful to God,” Nalongo says.

“Sam has wiped away tears that I have always shed since the death of my daughter.”

Looking after Agaba together with the other grandchildren, has not been easy, Nalongo admits. This was so, even when her husband was alive because he had other wives.

“I have had many problems looking after them,” she says. “As a result I developed high blood pressure because of worrying a lot.”

Asked what her source of income is, she says she makes mats for sale. “I used to have a sowing machine but it was stolen,”
Nalongo says.