With 8 mouths to feed, her hope lies in a miracle

By Gloria Nakjubi & Agnes Nantambi

The nine-month-old baby holds on to her mother like her life depends on her. She will not let her mother go even when she beckons her to join her siblings in play.

The baby has a rash all over her body. Bugs seem to feast on her every other night. She and her mother, Florence Mbekeka, 40, live in a mud-and-wattle shack in Namusere, Wakiso district.

The thought of the wet season leaves Mbekeka in fear. The roof of the shack leaks every time it rains.

But even worse, chances are that the family will be thrown out of the place they call home because they are squatters. To add salt to injury, the man she knew as her best friend and confidant breathed his last on January 27, leaving her alone in this dire state.

Journey of unending trials

Born in Buikwe district, Mbekeka became disabled at the age of nine. Her left leg got paralysed and she solely depended on the other for support.

Her childhood was one full of stigma from her own father. He never saw anything good in her and reminded her of her disability every day.

 “He always told me disabled children do not go to school. My role was to cook and till the land as my other siblings went to school,” Mbekeka narrates.

She would spend hours picking coffee beans in her father’s plantation or doing housework. No one supported Mbekeka as her mother had also left the home.

To add more pain to her already tormented life, a witchdoctor, who had been brought to treat one of her siblings ended up defiling her.

With pain in her voice, she narrates the gruesome ordeal that not only took away her virginity, but left her pregnant.

When Mbekeka eventually opened up to her father about the pregnancy and who was responsible for it, he threatened to kill her, accusing her of blackmail. Her father could never accept that his friend, the witchdoctor, could ever do such a thing.

“How can such a respectable man rape a useless girl like you who crawls on the ground?” the words of her father still echo in her mind.

At 14 years, Mbekeka gave birth to her first child with the help of a traditional birth attendant. No one was willing to take her to the nearby health facility. The baby made the conditions much harder. Mbekeka had to work twice as hard to support her child.

“After working on my father’s farm, I would go to the village to do odd jobs to get money to buy basics for the baby. My father would never help me,” Mbekeka says.
 

Her children having jackfruit for breakfast. (Photo credit: Agnes Nantambi)

Finding love

One day as she went about with her work, John Musoke (RIP), a fisherman, caught her attention. It was love at first sight.

When he proposed, she did not hesitate to say yes.

Mbekeka introduced him to her father and off they went to start life as a couple. She was barely 17 years. Regardless of the challenges, she speaks of her marriage life as a fulfilling one. The couple supported each other and shared every joy and pain together.

“We never fought in our marriage. His family had also deserted him so we had each other to rely on,” Mbekeka says.

However, she has since regretted trusting him too much to never question his decisions. In 2004, he told her of how he had sold off their land in Buikwe and bought land complete with a house in Namusere, Wakiso district.

Mbekeka was excited. By that time, the couple had five children. The family relocated to Namusere. However, Mbekeka got the shock of her life when the family reached Namusere only to find a one-room shack, which they were to rent.

When she tried to ask Musoke what had happened, he ignored her. Mbekeka was left with no choice, but to accept their new life.

Musoke turned to fetching water to earn an income. Mbekeka could not just sit back and wait for the little money from her husband to support the family, especially as the family continued to grow bigger every other year. She started doing petty jobs.

Her husband would do the shopping, especially for foodstuffs on market days and bring to her to sell at a profit.

 The landlady eventually needed someone to keep her land and Lady Luck smiled upon Mbekeka’s family. Since then, they have not been paying rent.
 

The roof of Mbekeka’s house has been eaten up by termites. (Photo credit: Agnes Nantambi)

Mbekeka also started laying bricks, but this has since become a challenge. Her other leg became paralysed when she gave birth to her last baby, something she blames on the nurse who attended to her.

“I told the young nurse not to inject me on the buttocks because I always had them through the hand. She insisted and since then, my active leg has also become paralysed,” she notes.

Of all her eight children, this was the first to be born in hospital.

“Disability had never been a problem to me. I always did my chores very well with that one leg.”

However, she has suffered two miscarriages and three other children died of natural causes.

Trouble sets in

A few years ago, wrangles erupted between the landlady and one of her siblings over the land on which Mbekeka and her family lives.

Apparently, when she was selling off her piece of land, the landlady also included the plot where Mbekeka and her family live. The case is currently before court, but Mbekeka is always on tension wondering what the next day has in store.

And with the increasing developments in the area, her fears keep growing by the day.

Son worried

At 17 years, one of Mbekeka’s sons, Wasswa Musoke, seems to worry more about his mother than his other siblings. He just does not seem to understand why their relatives do not like them and would rather sit back and watch them suffer.

“After dad’s burial, we begged to have at least a small piece of land on the over 10 acres our grandfather left behind, but no one seemed to care,” he says.

Wasswa says his mother is a very strong woman, who, even when their father was still alive, provided more for them.

“My mum is disabled, but she can do almost everything. I am only worried that we will have nowhere to go if we are chased off this land. Mum used up all her capital to cover our dad’s burial expenses,” says the teenager.

Wasswa dropped out of school in Primary Six because his mother could not afford the fees of sh50,000 they were required to pay per term. He now does odd jobs in the village to help support the family.


For any form of support towards this family, please send email to csr@newvision.co.ug