My name is Sarah Mirembe Byamukama, I studied Science at Makerere University, a teacher and a counselor but above all she is a born again woman. I work with the Institute called (ECUREI) Ernest Cook Research and Education Institute and we are located at Mengo hospital near Ndejje University, Kampala branch. ECUREI can also be found at Kampala MRI ,abarile abali kwetengareceive MRI but most of them come to Mengo So am ECUREI dean of students, God gave me this job but I want to be honest I never asked for it and up to today I believe that God is powerful. My job is to deal with students on a day to day basis and my work is to see that every student we have at the college is well in all ways. We have International students and when they come to the college we have to help them find accommodation and to see that they are safe.
So as dean of students, my office works on issues of students’ guild, queries, and anything that can affect the studies of students’ at the college. You can see that my background of teaching and counseling positioned me well because I do a job that I love with the students. A student can come to my office feeling sad but when we talk and I advise them on what to do they leave my office happy. So I love my job for sure, there’s a way God does his things. So you train students how to use scan and x-rays… Yes all machines that are used by doctors to examine internal organs, or in the head, in the legs or if someone is broken. So in hospitals we are in the area of imaging or diagnosing internal organs. So if someone has a problem may be in the stomach, you go for scan and they find out what is wrong and after you take the report to the doctor. So we train students at diploma and degree levels and we actually train them at certificate level. So you’re the brain behind all the people we see in hospitals doing the work of scans and X-rays?
Let me say my boss professor Kawoya is the brain behind it. He is the vision bearer and a man of wisdom and he has worked at Makerere for so many years and he has trained students in radiology. And when he retired he choose to start a school because he saw that gap of not having enough doctors in that area. And other doctors come and do radiology as an addition at ECUREI. In that area Professor Kawoya is a specialist together with his sons and professor Kasozi, they are all cream really. I was born in Toro, so am a Toro born in Nyakasura as you slope before the Nyakasura turn. My family home is actually on the high way road of Bundibugyo. My father was the late Mr. Ndora Kabushoke who was an educationist. That was my father and then my mother was the late Mary Kampi. She never stayed in my father’s home because they were not legally married.
I was her third born and I follow two boys and am also followed by another boy. So we were four children from my mother, actually I come from two families. Let me begin with that. And now I have peace about it but when I was growing up, it used to disturb me a lot and it was not easy for me to say that I come from two different families. Kigali, the second born is from Tororo, me the third born am from Toro, Fort portal and the fourth born from Tororo but in a different man. In the family that I grew up from until when I was 12yrs old, that was the environment that I was used to. I had a dad but I wouldn’t see him because we were always with mum. But mum was a secondary teacher teaching Home Economics that she trained from Kyambogo, so really she had studied minimum basic. So it’s my mother who taught me really because she was transferred from Tororo girls to Mbale Secondary School.
So I was born in Tororo but when I was two years old, she was transferred to Mbale Secondary School. A big school, that school was really big. We grew up from there learning in government schools and they were good schools because I went to the best schools in Mbale. And since my mother was a teacher, we used to sit together on the table every day to do homework, so I was a bit privileged. The only girl, my mother is a teacher, I can’t go to school without doing homework ,even the difficult work she would teach you and help you understand. And when I sat for P.7 I got 8 points and mum was happy but there was no money to push me to high school. But since time then teachers have been earning little money. And the payments during 1986, when the president had just come into power were very little. The teacher never used to have money at that time; as you know the education of those days.
At the time when the president came into power we were doing badly and there was no money. In a lot of pain, She let me join dad’s family. My father met my mother when he was going to America for studies on a US scholarship. But before he left for the US, he was staying in Ibanda. While in Ibanda he met a young girl who hurt him, I think when he reached the family of the girl; her family knew him so well. The family of the late madivani, when you are from Kyampangara, the late Madivani was well known. So he got this girl but he never wedded her but the family knew him. She gave birth to two babies but one didn’t survive. So when he went to study on a scholarship in America,He left the girl at his home in Toro with her child. God forgive me but the family didn’t treat her well. When they leave you a young girl it’s your responsibility to look after her until the husband comes back. But she didn’t find peace in our home The family of my father.
The girl returned to her home, and my father got another woman in the US, a Ugandan who had gone for studies. She was a beautiful woman, let me say the ‘truth beautiful woman’. She had studied and she was from a Christian home. Mummy was a good person. Let me be honest, as a child you would judge for yourself. My step mother was a beautiful woman. So they loved each other and planned to come back to Uganda, to work here and get married here, the wedding was supposed to take place at Namirembe and then the reception at Mweya. They saved their money together bought a car and then came back.But in that gap before the wedding, is when my father met my mother. And it wasn’t for a serious relationship, let me say because that’s what it turned out to be. As a child I asked myself, what was my father looking for? Forgive me but that’s the question that came to me.
The woman who became my step mother was wedded when my mother was 2 months pregnant and all wedding preparations were in progress. Yes you have helped me explain it well My father’s wedding with my step-mother took place when my mother was 2 months pregnant for me. As you know the pregnancy of 2 months even when you are seated it cannot be seen. My mother was a staff of Tororo girls school and after the wedding ,my father’s wife was transferred from Wanyange girls school to Tororo because the Ministry of education has a system of keeping marrieds together if they are both teachers to consolidate marriages. And that’s what happened. After the wedding they came back from the honey moon and she joined Tororo girls’ school but my mother was already pregnant. The pregnancy was seen by other staff members and then rumors began going around.
In short, they found themselves staying on the same staff quarters and in the same school. My mother and stepmother were all teachers at Tororo girls’ school. Same school, Tororo girls’ school, My father and his wife were staying like 400m away, from where my mother was staying, you know how staff houses can be. The woman has to bare her sorrow and yet you have a child growing inside you.
So when you listen to my story a head you will find a lot of rejection which is spiritual because my rejection started in my mother’s womb. So my mother gave birth when she’s still a staff but let me tell you what I heard. What I heard was that when I was born and people came to see me at the hospital, people started saying that the child looks like Stanley because even my stepmother was also pregnant. So me and my step sister we have a difference of 2 months. I was born in November 1973 and my step sister was born in January 1974.
I stayed in the community of Tororo girls school for 2 years and then my mother asked for a transfer to Mbale SS. But during that time the community started having quarrels about my mum and why they were transferring her and others were saying that the woman is innocent. The community divided into 2 groups, the one on the other side and the other on a different side but as a child of 2 years it was hard for me to understand but the words of the community that entered my life were not good. I still feel them now but it’s just because am experiencing deliverance. We are asked to be careful with the words you say to the child because they can affect them. So we went to Mbale until when I grew up, with my mother and I sat for P.7 then they sent me back to the same environment, Tororo Girls’ School.
Actually you can find that my mother had planned for me to study at Tororo Girls’ School but my step mother didn’t like it, and I also understand her because am a woman. You can’t get your own child who got 8 points and the other who got 12 points and you put them in the same school where you teach.
When we look into the names you were given at birth, your father gave you a name which is not the right name you use now. So, I understand you are called Kabanyonza, what’s the meaning of that name? We are abanyonza, that’s my tribe and actually in my tribe we also have, Lunyonza, Nyonza because that’s my totem. So you can see that when I was born, my father named me Kabanyonza and two months later he named my sister Kabahuma. So we were two kids, and when my step father gave birth to the second born my father also called her Kabanyonza. But when my mother heard it, she wasn’t impressed. I think my father’s second born came before we left Tororo because the first girl was born in 1974 and the other in 1975. So may be by the time we left Tororo the second girl was already born, she looked at it and said no. So when we had left for Mbale, one day my mother returned home she told me that I have two names for you and I want you to choose one and then I decided to choose Mirembe, so she removed the name Kabanyonza from me and I became Sarah Mirembe and those are the names I used when I was seating for P.7.
So when went to my father, he feared to look at my certificate and then he asked me where the name Mirembe had come from, but I think it was also right because we couldn’t be two sisters called by the same name. But God did it. but this name Mirembe came from God because even if I feel sad in the inside, I just say the word Mirembe and I get peace there and then. So it’s a prophetic name, how can I say it in Lunyankole? And that’s what it is, because even if the circumstances are bad, or the times are dark, God creates an environment of peace. So that name has really been great to me. Praise Yes Byamukama is my husband. You got a father figure in your life and so you got a chance of seeing your father at least every day. So tell us about that journey. I came from Mbale in the middle of the week on the third day which was a Wednesday remember my mother didn’t know anything about that home so she gave me her relative who escorted me to my father’s home.
By the way my mother stayed out of my father’s family issues. She didn’t want to bring misunderstandings between your father and his wife. She never did that because she never wanted to be in trouble with any one. She always kept herself away from trouble. By the way, when I look back, I really appreciate my mum for that because she knew that she was not married to him and the man had made a mistake ,so she acknowledged that there was a woman at home. So even taking me to my father he, she asked a relative to do that for her. When I reached Tororo, my father was working in Nairobi at that time .So I stayed home from Wednesday and then my father came home on Friday. But when the woman saw me, I came to my memory, I have been married for 17 years now. But as a child when I saw the look on her face I run away from home that very day. So you want to say that by the time they brought you to your father’s home, your step mother didn’t know that your father had a child outside marriage? She knew it because I was born at Tororo Girls School when my mother was still a teacher in that school.
When you are a bride, you met the man in the US, you have wedded and then you come as staff, she didn’t know the stories of that time, so I heard that she got to know about this later like in a month when I had been born because she used to hear rumors that don’t undermine that woman because she has a daughter with your husband. When you are a new bride, it can really… really hurt you. So I got to know that my step mother found out when everyone else had gotten to know but she just didn’t want to believe.So you were taken to stay with her when you were 12yrs old and all the memory came back right away. She had 7 children, and then me I was the 8th and remember my father already had his first child before he went to America with the woman in Ibanda. So by then we were nine children but we are ten in total. So he brought you all together and you started staying with your step mother?
Yes we started staying with our step mother and she waited until our father returned on Friday. Like grown-ups, we were treated as grown-ups but after 3 years I was told by a relative what happened. What I heard was that when my father returned, my step mother told him that she was not happy with what was going on and she asked my father to invite his people from Fort Portal. Actually my aunt had come and she was abit tough and she was keeping us busy with house work as you know when you are many children at home and we were in vacation getting ready for S.1. So they held a meeting and my step mother told my father that either the child leaves or I leave. But I was told that my father choose that the child stays. He told her that if you want to leave you can leave. I know the devil was doing this because he was trying to divide my father’s family. But God is so merciful; you decide to stay with 7 children, because of one child brought into the family.
I also needed a mother. why is it that she was only complaining about you? wasn’t your elder sister in the home? My big sister, in fact, when they were planning for the wedding, he insisted that my elder sister should be brought from her mother in Ibanda. She was about 2years You know when you are in the US, Am also a woman let me be honest, I have feelings as a woman. Am also married, but if a man does such a thing, it must have caused a lot of pain to my step mother. So me I don’t blame her at all, because women go through a lot of these things, isn’t it? So she composed herself, In fact am grateful to God, I can’t say that my stepmother denied me eats in that home, no in my father’s home it was an English style and we would all sit at the dining table and whatever was prepared, is what we would all eat. There was sugar, okay the times were not the best in 1987, I think the president had just taken over, there was scarcity but Tororo was a world food programme center, so Tororo Girls High school was highly favored, we had a lot of those relief services.
Like there was sugar and so on. So for things to do with home needs, you never lacked anything? No…We had world food provision and my father was working in Kenya, so even when he was coming from Kenya ,he would come with them, so we had everything we need at home and it was all shared equally. So let me tell the truth, my stepmother passed away but I want to pay tribute to her because she was a woman that God really used. Praise God. If you come to my home or to my other sisters’ homes you will find that we all do the same thing and where did we pick all this? From our stepmother’s home. She really raised us well, and so am grateful to God that she didn’t leave but stayed and looked after us, as a trainer. She gave us chances and we all attended government schools.
My brother went to Nyakasura, Ntale, me I went to Kyebambe and all his children went to Nyakasura, Ntale and Kyebambe girls, so you will find that we all went to similar schools. If you wanted to study, you would study, our father never failed to pay for us school fees. The Lord knew us and really God knew me for sure. No one used to tell me that do this, behave like this and you see that there were chances of getting lost but really God didn’t allow it to happen and really God protected me. You find that I was six years and I was still staying with mum and she left from the Catholic Church mum got saved. The revival preached the gospel in Mbale and she got saved with the Pentecostal movement. So the things of the overnight, congresses, staying at church on Sunday and helping children to know the scriptures from six years she used to take us. The child of six years can understand very well Very very well. So the word of God was inside me but I didn’t get saved but I was exposed and I got raised by a saved woman.
When I had gotten saved in 1979So for all those 30years, my mum spent them in So all the six years spent with her So she taught me the word and when she got saved she learnt how to pray. My mother would sit down and read for us the bible and most of the stories I read when I have grown up, the ones in chronicles and kings, my mother would sit down put the son one side and me on the other side and she starts reading the word for us. Of course as children you sleep off and she would take you to bed and then she begins to pray and pray for us and she could even fast, she could even fast the dry of 3 days. She would not force us to go to the garden but she would take us to church. She would pray and pray for us. But she would pray for you. Mother would pray and pray for us let me tell you.
My mother had a prayer she would pray every day. Remember she had four children, With four men She would start, God I lift up George to you she would pray and pray for him, let him not lack school fees and give him good sleep and Then she starts on the second child Jimmy, she does the same thing and then Jimmy knew that she was going to pray for all the four children and he reached a point when he hated prayer because she would do it every day. Then she prays for Sarah and Bernard, but Bernard was only 2 years because he was an orphan, so he became my mother’s son really. Mum would pray for us not to lack school fees, she would pray for us that we don’t get hurt by people, she would pray for us to know God and she would even add on, God I pray that what has happened to me doesn’t happen to my children. I have given birth to four children and they all have their needs, George you will marry and have children with one woman and you will not have children outside marriage.Then she goes to Jimmy and she says the same thing, my mother!
Up to now am a grown up woman, but I think my mother had a purpose. She then prayed to Jimmy that he would not have kids outside marriage and that he would marry one wife. And then she said to Sarah, you will not give birth to children before marriage. She would pray and pray, you will have children in one home and then she comes to Bernard and you would bare and work for 6,7,8 by10, I was tired of praying. I was thinking that either my mother has no faith or God is absent because as a child I would wonder why she keeps on repeating the same things every day and God is not doing anything about it. So whatever she prayed for I would agree but Even when she had gone, by brother who was left in charge told that mother has never stopped praying for us. She has never stopped praying for you Even when my mother suffered from cancer in 2007, she would still pray for us. When I got to Dad’s place I found out that he was an Anglican, so Iam born in an Anglican family.
My dad was an organist in the Cathedral of Tororo, St Peters; I remember JJ Bishop Okire was the Bishop at that time. Every Sunday during holiday time, when its church time you have to go, Dad would start the car and we all leave for church. We would reach church and they start preaching and you sing in the choir and we would listen to gospel and in Tororo they would even make altar calls. I leave church to go for lunch and da drives off and comes back around 8-9 pm drank, that thing disturbed a lot because the faith I had seen in my mother and that in my father was totally differentIt was separated, my mother was totally saved, but dad was even drinking those local beer. A man who goes to church, that would really confuse me for sure.
Yes, he would take you to church but when he comes back, he takes some beer. So when I got to Kyebambe chapel, because I used to know most of the songs and most of the students knew it so when we were preparing for the Easter production or Christmas, they would ask me to sing, I would sing in church but I wouldn’t pray in Kyebambe. So in Kyebambe wasn’t in the scripture union, I wasn’t like a born again but I was not an enemy. During that time, in Kyebambe we had a problem, girls would jump over the fence at night but I wasn’t part of that. Then we had a strike when I was in S.2 and they brought investigators and they caught all the ring leaders and they chased them. I was so timid so I wouldn’t be part of that. So I would stay out of such because even if you go to Kyebambe and asked for my file, it was a straight one.
I thank God I was clever in class, so by S.3 really I was among the top 2,if I would be the first ,my colleague would be the first next term. I think that thing helped me a lot because I would be academically firm but at home every holiday I travelled whether by train or I would sleep on the bus, my father would insist that from Kyebambe I come home. Every holiday, there is no holiday that I would go to someone else’s home. But I appreciate my father for what he did because not allowing me to stay in other people’s homes protected me a lot. At home, mummy was a disciplinant together with dad and we would work because we were children staying in modern houses and the school had a big piece of land so we would spent the day in the garden from 7am to 3pm. So when we grew up and we had reached S.6 we asked mum why she would make us do a lot of work, she said that we were born in 1973, 74, 75, & 76 so in 4 years they had 4 girls.
So we all grew fat at the same time and our father was also a giant, so you can imagine girls of 12,14,15 and 17 all in the same size. Our mum was size 12 but for us by S.4 we were all in size 16.When they discussed with our father, he advised her to make us work so hard so that we can put off that weight, and they really succeeded in that. They bought you hoes They bought us hoes and mum planned that we go to the garden and because we were many girls we would finish work at no time and after she would give us more work like table cloth kitting, my mother was indeed a very smart and organized woman. You see those table cloths which they make using a ring, she knew how to make them and there is nothing she didn’t teach us. The day we would come home for holidays was the day the maid would leave home and come back on the day we report for school but she would be paid for that holiday.
They would ask her to come back when the holiday is over. The maid would come back like today and we leave for school the following day.by the way it was an influent family and really we were somehow well off a bit by the standards then but she would make us do work, and all of us without segregation. So I was kept at home, and there was a time when the lady who was the headmistress of Kyebambe at that time ,the late Mrs. Tulyalikayo, was so good at grooming girls, but if you really gave her your attention, Kyebambe was a safe place to grow up as a child. So me I did my S.4 then I topped a class, but by that time Kyebambe had come up with a policy that students who were bright should go back and do S.6 but the students were few. In third term we made a click of about 7 students and we decided to walk on the school compound with un tacked shirts, uncombed hair so that they chase us from school and we refused to wear uniform.
She was such a clever woman, she called us and sat us down and she told us that she knows that we are good and clever students and that she knows what we are up to something but it will not work. You want to misbehave in third term so that you don’t go to S.5, so I advise you to go to the dormitory, put on your uniforms and black shoes and then go to class and read your books. Because even if you do what we shall not chase you, just get it out of your minds. We went to the dormitory when we are so ashamed and she didn’t even punish us .She just told us to go to the dormitory and do what we are supposed to do. I was even a prefect at O’level, so I read my books and became the best in S.4 1990.Then I pleaded with my dad please don’t to take me back to Kyebambe. So me being her friend, I knew that if I change from that school, I will be a doctor.
My friend who was in the house was listening to the conversation and that thing annoyed my friend. No, I mean the one who became a doctor, who was at Kyebambe and then went to Nabisunsa. So when my father left, the girl told her mum that you’re going Sarah miss the chance of studying at Makerere college school and yet she is clever and you know at Kyebambe students don’t make it to Makerere. Her mother told her, that your just a child and me am a grown up woman so let the girl My father accepted what the lady had told her and he convinced me to go back to Kyebambe with a lot of sadness but it was God’s plan, my father’s job in Kenya got finished. I was in S.5 and I had only studied for one term. The school fees we have been paying was coming from Kenya. In a lot of pain, that’s the time I felt like pain was tangible. I went to Kyebambe when am depressed and I knew that all of us who had passed through first grade none of us would leave.
The year I went to Makerere there was no private. I went to Makerere in 1993 and if there were private students in my year, I don’t think they were more than 10 in the whole university and most of them were children of the professors. So most of us were government sponsorship. I was given Bachelor of Science, they used to call it flat and that wasn’t a nice word for sure, because me I went to the university knowing that am going to do a course which is flat and then I realized that a person who does a flat course can’t do masters. Remember I was a bright student, I come to Makerere and first I get disappointed that I haven’t done medicine….then Medicine was my dream course It was my focus. My big sister had done engineering. I didn’t qualify because I got 10 points and at Makerere during our year for medicine they considered 13-14 points, so I missed. But I got Government sponsorship, for Bachelor of Science Bio-chemistry Botany and Geology.
Now why I tell you that the word flat really affected me, that was the mentality I had until I finished my degree. I knew that I wasn’t useful at all. But as if I was short sighted, there were post graduate students in the faculty but I didn’t care, and I never used to see them. You know when you’re sad and the devil puts you in a cage that even your eyes cannot see. I didn’t even tell the lecturer about it because I didn’t have the confidence to ask. So I decided to stay in the usual situation continued with my flat course, I don’t see any job and all my life ends there. Meanwhile, when I went to Makerere my father was so happy. Remember before my father acquired the degree, he had a diploma when he was still in Ibanda. He then got a US scholarship to go and study chemistry in the University of Massachusetts in order to acquire his degree.
So seeing his daughter go straight to University with all the points needed for engineering, my big sister did engineering. When my turn came and I also joined Makerere straight, my father rejoiced. Then I told him Dad let me go back to S.6 because I want to do Medicine, but he said it cannot be, my daughter, no…no you are going. More over you had gotten a chance to go to Makerere. The whole of Fort portal was congratulating him for giving birth to bright girls. When they were given transfer, Dad moved to Fort portal when I was in S.6. So everyone was jubilating, the daughter of Dora has gone to the university but I went to the University with a lot of sadness. So I want ask anyone in this world and you have received blessings where you are and you have missed blessings in the challenge your facing, just know that you fail to the next step.
I went to Makerere, but God made a miracle when I got there. Students who were at Makerere at that time know that the first year students were staying in big dorms. So I went in a room with 18 students and I reported two weeks late. So I only found one bed left and I put my mattress and the girl who sleeping under me was working in Nakasero, the flats near All Saints church which were occupied by public servants and she was called Stella. Stella was a girl from a born again family. A born again in words and deeds. Apart from my mother, another person I meet who was seriously saved was Stella. God had reserved a bed for you The other side of the dorm had girls who were drank, men with cars and the other side there were girls doing the same. The girl who was drank was sleeping on the bed above Stella and yet Stella was a born again.
Stella really loved me too much and not only me but even the other girls who used to vomit after getting drank and everyone talks about them. She would even wake up at 3.00am in the night to help a girl who was drank and she fell off the bed and she started to vomit. She cleaned her and put her back on the bed and then got the basin and started to cleaning off the vomits I was on my bed watching Stella and I got so scared I kept wondering why she was doing that So the next day I asked her why she had decided to help them and yet she wasn’t the one who takes them to drink. Then she said to me, Sarah, they are ignorant and they don’t know Jesus, do you think someone who knows Jesus can do that? Then I told her that I also don’t know the Jesus you are telling me about but I don’t do what they do. Why don’t they do what is right? Then she told me, Sarah you just ignore that. So Sarah came as a torch that I found at Makerere University.
We were doing the same course, move together to CCE, we would go the faculty of science to study, do labs and we would do practical’s every afternoon. We would be out of class by 6pm, and then go to the dinning for dry tea but with sugar, then go to the canteen for bans and after tea we go back to our room. At 7:30 we came back from mess which they used to call malamu. The food was not bad but the mentality of the person is the bad thing. we used to eat well, let me be honest I remember we would have meat 4 times, chicken once, weekends they would bring milk, we would have bread 3 times a week. So really the government sponsorship was a blessing. So I was protected by my bed decker- mate, in Makerere there was chance for me to get lost but God had put for me a guardian angel. But I stayed with her and we went to second year That girl preached to me every day.
She would ask me that Sarah you don’t drink, I had gone to the club only once and as you know disco halls can be filled with cigarette smoke and naturally I have breathing challenges, I think I was going to develop asthma but God had mercy on me. So when I came back from the dance, the cigarette smoke I had inhaled almost killed me and I fell sick for 3 days. So I decided to stop going to the club. So she told me that when we go to the club you don’t dance I had those feelings because they come when you are young, from puberty. From puberty stage, it’s within you and because Kyebambe was a single school, it also saved me a lot. So when we were coming from the dance I remembered when I was in S.3 ,I had a guy who used to write to me but I can’t say that he was my boyfriend really. But God is so powerful because if he knows you, he makes sure that you are saved. and how about the exposure at Makerere So when I came to Makerere chances of becoming wild were very high but in first year the holes of residences were holding meetings for girls and they invited consultant gynecologist who was professor Mirembe.
By the way, Professor Mirembe became my gynecologist So when she came to Makerere to give a general talk to the girls of first year, up to today the words of professor Mirembe are still in my head. She said thank you for coming to Makerere. I remember I was a young girl who joined Makerere when I was 19 years so I got shocked by the statement and I kept wondering, 100 men I sat down in a lot of fear, and she said campus boys will corn you, lecturers, guys at the washing bay at wandegeya will drive cars given to them to be washed and come to campus to corn you and the whole world will corn you. In your first year, first term, because am a gynecologist let me tell you what will happen to you .She gave us a big lecture. You will get gonorrhea. She mentioned things and I even got scared and started worrying. Then she said you will come to hospital, remember she has lectured Makerere for all those years.
She said you will come to the hospital when you have conceived and aborted and then see what will happen to you. Then I held my mouth, I was with my friend and then we went to our room and I asked her, will those things happen to us? Then she replied ,didn’t she say that if we are not careful those things will happen to us but if we are wise, we will not face them. So somehow out of fear, I put a limit. Of course boys would con us in class. By the way the ACCA had bigger boys, the upper flat floor had young men but the fear professor Mirembe had put in my heart was enough. She would say we shall remove your uterus because if it starts rotting, there will be no choice but to remove it completely. And you will get AIDS, and by the way I had seen AIDS in my father’s home. I didn’t tell you that story. Before you tell us that story, you feared to have a boyfriend because of the lecture of doctor Mirembe.
That lecture did it all. AS you remember I did my secondary, O’level between 1987-1990. That was the time when AIDS was at the peak The AIDS of that time was very bad .So somehow when I was still staying at my father’s home, I was about 13-14years I put on a lot of weight so you would see a woman with a big body but the age of a young girl. So in S.2,we had boys quarters but we were not using them, so my father put in people from Fort portal but they were not relatives but because they were his tribe mates, so he put the two drivers in the boys courters and one of them was driving my uncle’s taxi. But I don’t know how many wives that man had at that time? because even then he had a wife at home. I was coming back home from town and he gave me a lift and he made people move out of the taxi. I thought we were heading home but instead he went and parked at the bar. When we reached the bar, he asked me to come and drink with him and it was about 5pm and we there was no curfew, but the curfew I had was that of my father of getting home before 6pm, as you know the rule of a parent stands.
The curfew of your home. You come home after 6pm and see what happens to you. So it was almost coming to 6pm and I started begging him to take me home but he was already drunk. I kept telling him it’s getting late and Dad will punish me. Then he came out holding a beer and he asked me to come and drink some beer. He had a wife at home in our boys’ quarter where he was staying. He wanted to take advantage of me. So He put his cheek next to mine, he even had some beards, God forgive me but when he did this I got so annoyed and I told him if you don’t drive this car and take me home, I will tell my Dad about it. I also knew that if my father gets to know about it, He can kill him. He went back to the bar and finished his beer quickly and he came and drove the car in a bad way but I didn’t care because I was going home.So my brother who was in the house asked what was wrong with me because he was driving at a high speed and he parked at a very high speed. Then the driver moved out. So my brother asked me what has happened, what has he done?, then I told him.
He started calling him and he ran and entered the boys’ quarter and he told the driver if you do anything to my brothers and sisters, you will see what I will do to you. But I was S.2 by then and we had a cousin who living with us and she was at the college, but that man convinced the girl and he used her and impregnated her and so she was chased from home. And that was when I was S.3 and by the time I reached S.4 the man fell sick with HIV. The AIDS of that time was bad because that man was sick between my S.4 and S.5 and when I was in S.5 he died. I had seen him 3 days to his death. I went to the hospital to visit him and he raised his head to greet me, we the Batoro have Empaako, so he greeted me as Amooti and when he saw my face he looked down because he didn’t want to see me. When I went back to Kyebambe, I asked myself what this man was planning when he saw me.
A man who had offered you a free house to stay in his boys’ quarter and you decide to kill his daughter? I was young but tried to add up one plus one and I realized there was a problem. In fact when I went to Makerere, I was so determined even before I became a born again because I feared the AIDS I had seen, it was terrible. My cousin came back, she gave birth In school they used to inform us, so we knew it .In my days HIV was taught In Kyebambe, when I was in S.2, the Ministry of Health brought 10 people, and I have never forgotten until today. The ten people sat at the dining hall in front of us, and they taught us everything one by one and they educated us on HIV. Schools are a good really because my father was not informed about it and he hadn’t told me anything but the school informed me. In fact that habit of the Ministry of Health visiting schools to talk to students was not considered so much. So I had an example from home, we were informed at Kyebambe, In S.5 the man died in a terrible state.
The HIV that used to remove hair from the head, make your lips red and rashes all over the body. I really thank God we have ARVS. I do HIV work but I also tell the clients the ARVS adherence, I beg them to take their ARVS without missing. You don’t know AIDS. When I had reached Makerere, my cousin got sick and died. That thing disturbed me as a person. I remembered what Professor Mirembe was telling as campus students that by the time you complete university, you will have moved out with 100 men, we will have removed your uterus and all those things would worry me. But I got a boyfriend in first year, That guy had grown up from Mbale and we were all staying in the Indian quarters, developed community really, when you come to Mbale you know what’s called Indian quarters. So his parents were baganda so we knew each other as families. He was doing BCom before me,So he had been at campus already. So somehow we started a relationship, but when Jesus really knows you, behind me I had my Mother’s prayers.
What God did for me, I was in second year and my roommate kept telling me, Sarah please be careful, don’t do anything, And what I like about Born again is that they have doubt standards. That’s when you got to know about it . Haaah, my father, I would see the students at Makerere, on Sunday they would go for fellowship and the other days they are at the airport and cars would pick them. I would see those same girls and then begin to wonder. So those things would confuse me and when I saw my father, he confused me totally. So what helped me like I said that if God knows you, I went to this guy’s place, remember he was staying in Nakasero. He had left the key some where and when I entered the room, I found a hand bag of a woman on his bed. I was forced to open the bag, and I found out that It was for a student because there was a student ID. That was a thing God did for me. It was holiday and so I went to my brother’s home who was an engineer and was already working in Kampala.
I went home with a lot of pain and I had grown up with a lot of pain, but that day it was like, they had put a pile of stones on me. I had never felt such pain in my life. The thing of people having relationships that are unstable, I want people to know that when you commit to someone and yet you have another person, you cause a lot of pain to the person who had committed themselves to you. I was still a young girl of about 20 years, it happened and I saw it, I met the girl and she wasn’t his sister because I knew his family and his sisters and brothers had studied from Kenya, so I knew them. For me what I thought was that he didn’t only have one woman but he might be having many others. I shivered and that night I was like someone who has a fever.
Since the following day was a Sunday and I had to go to Watoto church to meet Stella my roommate so that I give her money for spraying bedbugs. In Makerere we used to spray bed bugs. How do you call bedbugs in Runyankole? So before we started the term, we didn’t want our things to have bedbugs so I took the money to her so that we combine and buy dioxin and we spray the room before the term starts. I got saved in September and when I went to Makerere we had to report back in October, so we wanted to spray before the holiday ended. I went to Watoto, and Watoto is that church that is in Nakasero Central but people were not as many as they are today.
