My Story

When I flashback on my life today, I truly believe and feel that I have come from rugs to riches no matter what else other people might think. I might not be as wealthy as I might have been and I might have all that I would desire but my current status and life is worth writing home about.

This is my story and it might be the story of my family. I was born to a primary school dropout - mom and a veterinary assistant - dad who seemed to have been relatively wealthy in their earlier years of marriage. At least I could tell from the property my parents held and the land and the livestock we had. And my elder siblings did not really have an outlook of a peasant origin. The entry of polygamy into the family though seems to have come along with hard economics later especially for my mother who had to fend for us unaided most of our school going age.

We are a family of nine living siblings out ten children born to my mother and father and I am number five. I am told I was supposed to have been the last but four more children followed me.

I am also told by my mom that as a child I was lavished with many good things but they all wore out with the years as I grew into teen-age. I remember one very beautiful pair of canvas shoes and a baby court that was called Moses’ bed that only turned into firewood in my secondary school days. Those are some of the things that I did see in my childhood years that smacked of a decent or modest life.

I remember one Christmas eve in the late seventies we had porridge and peas for supper while the smell of roast meat from my village neighborhood filled the air as families prepared for the festivities the next day. Dad was obviously away at his second wife’s home and had done no Christmas shopping for us at all. Mom managed to buy us some meat on Christmas morning though. And we the chicken reared at home with had a good Christmas lunch.

Obviously I went to church that day in my school uniform like it had to be for most of my primary school years till I joined secondary school when I had the luxury of sleeping on a mattress, two bed sheets and blanket instead the straw mart and one sheet I had got accustomed to in the village.

I remember visiting Kampala for the first time in 1982 upon my elder brother’s invitation after seating my primary school leaving examinations and it was one long twelve hour train journey from Tororo in Eastern Uganda to Kampala in central. My brother was a physician at Mulago Hospital; the national referral hospital in Kampala and he had just returned from a doctors’ conference in India. He had a pair of beautiful Power canvas shoes for that quickly elevated me from the barefooted villager in the city to a decent looking lad – at least I wore them when I went to church on Sunday or visited other relatives in the city. On other occasions, though, I had to dash around home in Kampala on barefoot and in a pair of shorts that had torches (holes from over wearing and sitting on rough places back in the village) on the back, exposing my buttocks to the view of the public.

My torn pair of shorts often attracted ridicule from the rich neighbor’s kids. That is the only time I remember feeling embarrassed or having a sense of low esteem. It was normal to move naked in the village even up to the age of six and wearing rugs was not a big deal. Even in Kampala I had never felt embarrassed being the person that I was.

I went back to the village with my Power canvas shoes and it was a delight to join secondary school with my white them as a number of students admired and borrowed them to dance in.

For a while in secondary and high school I seemed to forget my poor background and got carried away by unworthy activities of various notorious groups that affected my academic performance. There were instances though that some rich kids tried to remind me of my poverty. I remember Friday when I was traveling home for the holidays in a taxi that was full of students from my village and one girl looked at my wooden suitcase and said in a derisive manner, “I would never carry such a coffin to school.” It was clearly meant to embarrass me because we were all excited to be traveling home and just wonder what my suitcase had to do with this pretty woman who was much older than many of the students in the taxi. I thought she had a better understanding of things.

I was naturally hurt by her comments even though I did not show any signs of embarrassment because it was what my poor mom could afford to see to it that nothing stopped me from joining secondary school. That wooden suitcase had also seen an elder brother of mine through O level and it was also the same suitcase my mom came with into my father’s home when she dropped out of college. It was the precious suitcase her dad had bought her for school. I can see that suitcase being given a blue paint touch after years of use by mom before my brother who excelled so well in his academics packed his few clothes and books into it. My brother is a senior forest officer in a Uganda government organization in charge of forests. I wonder if he remembers that blue suitcase and his first pair of trousers mom bought him when he passed his O levels with straight distinctions.

Today I am a regional marketing officer with one of the leading multi-media companies in the East African region. I have a company car to myself and a modest monthly salary that affords me a decent life and other privileges that a lot of Ugandans can only dream of. I have traveled to most parts of the country and beyond and I can enjoy the hobbies that were so difficult to practice in my childhood. For instance, I have access to IT that helps me write articles, publish, send mail and photos as I wish unlike the hard times when I had to hire with my little school pocket money a photographer for my first two articles published by the BBC Focus on Africa magazine. It was those articles that helped compete favorably for my current job that I have held for the pats twelve years. They gave me a competitive advantage over other applicants since the company was looking for marketers with interest in the media and the articles bore me witness to that effect.

Life is tough but manageable. I can determine and plan for my future thanks to our hardworking resilient loving mom who worked so hard to see that we got a decent education and never left us to starve. I no longer have to be called Maria or a sissy by the village boys who ridiculed me as I carried black soot pans on my head full of food and water for pigs - The pigs that were reared to raise part of our school fees.

To N From Kampala

I had quite a good time in Kampala during the two days for the monthly meetings at head office and Saturday home with my little family in Entebbe. I made the most of the time for our little boy Emitono, cuddling and teaching him to walk. Emitono is taking a bit long to learn walking. He can walk with support and without support, though. Probably it is his weight delaying him to walk but I believe he could do better with a little more training, unfortunately I am not always there for him.
I left Kampala on Sunday morning with a few trees plants from the nurseries for my garden back home in the village. It was a lovely cool morning as you might tell from the photo above. It had rained the previous evening and the sky was clear with a fresh breath of air unlike the past three days that had been very hot. And it was even more lovely to receive a new camera that got me immediately back on the photography track. I had waited for it all weekend long, hoping to capture some moments with sonny but it did not arrive in time. I am looking forward brisk season of shooting, though, this rainy season especially of my filed trips, Lira and my gardening back home in the village.
Two weeks ago, goats entered the church I was praying from and they wondered about the phew before going out. I wondered whether they had come to offer themselves willing sacrifices or some other thing they were up to. Anyway, I missed to capture the moment on camera just like I have missed many more in the time I have been without a camera.
I am back in lira having come over from Tororo Monday morning with my pick-up truck full of newspaper stands for various outlets in Lira town. It has been a very busy two day for me and I will be on the road to the next two days that will see me in Lira, Dokolo and Amolatar district rural outlets. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to the village for the weekend for some tree planting and gardening.

Journey to Sudan Border

I had a great journey to the Southern Sudanese border last Thursday. It was not so much about the visit to Nimule but my experience on the way from Gulu through Amuru District on to Bibia border post on the Ugandan side.
Amuru was once a rebel infested district and driving through was extremely dangerous. A colleague was shot dead and his car burnt while from a field trip such as the one I was on from Adjumani district to Gulu through Amuru. Thank God the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has been subdued and pushed to the jungles of Central Africa Republic by Uganda government troops and they now pose no or little threat to the security of northern Uganda.
The last time I drove down this road, I stopped at what was the largest displaced people's camp a at the height of the insurgency; Pabo camp. This time round though, I drove down to a place called Atiak and then to Bibia. The landscape was generally flat Savannah grassland like the rest of north and north east Uganda with very few homestead along the road. Even though peace has returned to this area, many people still prefer to stay together in the centers rather than return to the former or establish new homesteads. Probably the fear of the return of the notorious LRA haunts them or they are too traumatized to go back to homes where they saw their loved one s slaughtered, raped or abducted.
I met two ineresting war traumatized boys at Atiak of about age 10. While the two walked aimlessly talking, singing and begging they still had a pleasant human side to their life, even a good sense of humor. One boy spoke on Acholi, the local language and the second boy spoke both Acholi and fluent English. While one of the boys just begged for money and food items one after another with a sheepish smile after receiving just before asking for another, the other boy said thank you, laughed aloud, gave out the biscuit he had bought with the money he had begged me and walked away singing and laughing.
I asked my self, "What is the point?" He begged for five hundred shillings to buy biscuit which he got, bought it and immediately gave away after saying thank and laughing aloud. Well, I cannot answer but I was humbled by his generosity.
Further down the road were some other war returnees chafing at logs with locally made chisels in an emerging trading center of wattle and straw huts. The people here who are mainly young men in their twenties are making stools and pestles from wood and other are selling charcoal as part of income generating activities in this very rural and poor war ravaged district of Amuru in notghern Uganda. Both the stools and the bags of charcoal are going for about ten thousand Ugandan shillings (U$5).
I bought two stools and two bags of charcoal and by the time I got to Gulu I was being trailed by an old lady who begged me to sell her my stools. She had really fallen in love with these artistic pieces that I had intimated to my friend would envied by many townsfolk. I was right and just had to let the lady take the stool for a few bucks above the price at which I bought it. I reserved one, though, for my friends who had always asked me to buy one from the West Nile district of Pakwach. These ones were even stronger and more attractive than the Pakwach type that often have inscription such as "Remember Pakwach." These ones were also plain, leaving room for self customization if one wished to.
While the scramble for my beautiful stools went on in town, a thought of starting a business in the local artifacts came to me if I could buy them in the rural areas and add a bit of value by way of polishing and vanishing before resale. well, I am still toying with the idea. Watch this space for what I will be up to three months down this road.
I was elated to pulled over at Bibia especially while along the way from Lacor Hospital in Gulu we had been subjected to a speed we did not like by a Uganda People's Defense Forces truck that drove ahead of us and did not allow us to overtake even while we made at least three stops of more than 30 minutes along the way but still catching with it. We sold some magazines and newspapers while we sought a reseller for our products at the border point. And it while we where at Bibia that we heard of the riots in downtown Kampala by some Baganda (subjects of the Kabaka, the traditional leader/king of the people of central Ugandan region of Buganda) over the refusal of the government to grant the king permission to visit Kayunga district for the annual Buganda youth celebrations.
Of course we were far far away from the riots, like over 600kms up north from Kampala. Funny, as it may seem, it was an interesting time to open a new outlets for the newspapers. naturally, the various business people, immigration and revenue dept workers, insurers and clearing and forwarding agents were eager to know in detail what was going on in Kampala. Bingo, we manage to find a willing business person to take on the task of being a sub-agent at Bibia and the newspapers who have selling since Friday.
I will be revisiting Bibia again next month to check on the progress of the new sub-agent and I will be glad to check out the lovely stools again, probably meeting the interesting boys at Atiak again. I hope and pray that I remember to carry them some gift that they wont have to beg for.
I made home to the village Saturday afternoon and as usual got pretty busy with gardening and other farming work around home. i got a chance or two to relax while watching TV with some friends in town and also went swimming Saturday afternoon. Once Emitino and the mom were absent. Hopefully, I will see them this week when I go over to Kampala for the monthly sales meeting.

Today

This is my maiden post on Blogger and I hope it is going to be as exciting for me here as it has been on Live Spaces. I am not feeling very well today and I have given myself a break from field work. I have visited a doctor and nothing has been found to be medically wrong with me except fatigue. I have a long journey, though, tomorrow to the Southern Sudanese border town of Nimule to appoint a distributor of Vision Group products there.
I did jog a bit this morning despite the general body pain, especially in the neck. Hopefully, I will be ready for the MTN Kampala Marathon due in November if I can successfully adjust to my work schedule here that is a bit unlike that in Eastern Uganda where I could literally train from any town that I slept in and the work was less stressful. Here in northern Uganda, things are quite different as the towns are so far apart from each other, making difficult for me to have ample rest. The environment in the towns too, especially Lira, my current station is not very conducive for Jogging.
The roads in town are potholed and often crowded especially in the evening. I have not seen a serene place out of town yet where I could stretch my training to. Somehow, I hope to get around the conditions here and get myself fit for the half Marathon.