Winnie’s Own Words

Note from ‘Daddy’; this was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to transcribe; had to stop a couple times to recover emotionally. I’ve been lifting weights for 18 months; lifting those thousands of tons would not require the strength this young lady showed any one hour in her early life.)

Chapter 1: Turning a Minus Into a Plus

I was born into a miserable life despite the fact that my father and mother were hard working parents. My father was a fishmonger and my mother a peasant; despite the hardships we went through, we were always happy. We were six children in the family living in my father’s home village known as Sabama. As a child, I was extremely shy and sensitive since I was later confined to a wheelchair. I never went to parties; never had fun and I never joined other children in outside activities. I felt I was ‘different’ from everybody else, and entirely undesirable. During this time, there was an outbreak of a certain epidemic, which attacked one of my brothers.

He was a charming young boy. We tried our local herbs to cure the disease but it was all in vain until Mama too Wasswa to the hospital for treatment; there was no money in the home. I hated hospitals terribly; you can imagine a home without money! Yet whatever was required in the hospital required money.

Daddy escorted Mom to the hospital. Stars began to shine up in the sky when the parents are both lamentably away. Later on, Daddy came back from the hospital and with a melancholic face. He ordered us to bed without a word about our hospitalized brother. Though I was still young, I could deduce that Wasswas’s condition was deteriorating because Daddy never appeared to us in such a state. That night, I didn’t get a wink of sleep because of thinking of my brother and mother in such a terrible situation. During this depressing period, my father’s average income was 300 shillings a month. It was a lot of money at that time! Sometimes, though, we didn’t have any money at all. This was because Daddy couldn’t get any money when he was ill.

The following morning, Daddy woke up very early, prepared breakfast for us and he also prepared what to take to the hospital. “Daddy, will Wasswa get healthy?” I asked anxiously.

The look he gave me was enough to convince m that my brother was knocking on Heaven’s door. Indeed, we learned that Wasswa’s condition had worsened, so much that he was on oxygen. I knew then that it was the end for my charming, young angel. Hope, though, remained alive in me and, as the days went by, I re-doubled my effort to beseech the Lord to let my brother live. “If you healed Lazarus, why not my brother?” I asked God. I couldn’t stand the situation because I loved so much. A sense of fear and dread grew in me. I became afraid to the extent of asking God to take my life rather than make me see my brother’s suffering.

On a Monday morning with a strange feeling of premonition, I lost my appetite and I couldn’t concentrate on whatever task I tried to engage in. Towards mid-afternoon, I was jerked back to reality when I heard the wails of a lady approaching our compound. My heart skipped a beat and my hope sank. “Wasswa’s dead.” I said to no one in particular.

“My God, this is incredible! Wasswa can’t be dead!” My very self rejected the idea. But it was true; my brother had succumbed to the epidemic at the tender age of three years. So poor was the family, the best we could afford was a back cloth to shroud him with.

Daddy was completely down-hearted when Wasswa died because he really wanted to see him grow; but time wouldn’t allow it. “With God, all is possible.” I told Daddy because I trusted God very much.

“A mere man alone can easily be defeated but a man with the power of God is invincible.” I knew this was a tragedy. Maybe you can picture the anguis my family and I went through.

As I said earlier, I was born and brought up in Salaama village. My mother being a shed tears. We never had a meal without thanking God and we never went to bed without praying. This helped us to fight life with courage and confidence. I don’t remember having a coin on myself but I can recall one Christmas celebration when Daddy gave me 50 Shillings and I tell you the whole world was mine.

I used to crawl a distance in order to attend Sunday Services. I normally did this when mist was deep. No matter whether it rained or not, God was always first. My knees always had wounds because of my crawling. I never had knee pads or anything to help, until Mother found a solution to that by making me a soft pad to reduce the pain I got. Later I got a wheelchair donation.

As a child, I never dreamt that anyone had warm, dry feet. During the rainy season. My parent slaved sixteen hours a day, yet we were constantly oppressed by debts and harassed by hard luck. My earliest memory is of watching the El Nino destroy our crops six times in seven years. One year, the rain didn’t drop. We raised a bumper crop, bought cattle feed and fattened the cattle with our corn. After the hard work of feeding and fattening the cattle, we only got 30 Shillings profit. Thirty Shillings for a whole year’s work!

No matter what we did, we lost money. I can recall the chicks my father bought, We fed them for two years, then hired men to slaughter them and take them to market. They sold them for less than we had paid for three years previously.

After ten years of hard work, grueling hours, we were not only penniless, we where in heavy debt. Because of too much poverty my mother got a loan from the bank. Try as we might, we couldn’t pay back after the agreed date. The bank that had the loan abused and insulted my mother and threatened to take away the only property we had and that was our house. Father was- at forty-seven years old- worn out from hard work, with nothing but a river of debts and humiliation. It was more than he could take; he was worried and his health was deteriorating. He lost appetite, in spite of the hard physical work he did all day long. He had to swallow tablets to give him appetite. He lost flesh; the doctor told Mum that Daddy would be dead in 5 months. Father was in such a flood of worries that he no longer wanted to live. Sometimes I hear Mum say that when Daddy went to the lake and didn’t come back as she expected, she would hurriedly go to the lake, fearing that she’d find his body floating. One time, when he came back home, he paused and looked at the house which the bank had threatened to take. He stood for a long time, looking down at the water, debating with himself whether he should jump and end it all.

Years later, Daddy told me that the only reason he didn’t jump was because of my mother’s deep, abiding and ferverent belief that, if we loved God and kept his Commandments, everything would be all right. Mom was right; everything did come out in the end.