My mother abandoned me in childhood

“Ssenga, I am not going to invite her,” I told my aunt this morning after a quarrel.

Aunties don’t come with such goodness, but I was very fortunate to have aunt Nora. She has seen me through life. My mother abandoned me when I was six months young. My grandmother tells me that she sneaked out of the house at night and left me in bed.

My father and her met at school, and had a teenage affair that resulted into me. My grandparents took care of my mother until I was born, and thereafter sent her back to school. After one term, however, my mother eloped with another man.

“You are just a child. Do not judge your mother. Invite her to the party,” Ssenga insisted.

“No, I won’t. She abandoned me, and you took over her responsibility. I want you to be at campus as I receive our awards – mine and yours. You must see the fruits of your hard work and the long journey of paying school fees. Then we shall party together. You are my mother, father, friend and aunt,” I insisted.

“Doris, don’t let anger get the better of you. She is still your mother,” Ssenga said.
“Yes Ssenga. I can’t refute that, but that’s just about it. We have nothing between us,” I responded.

My mother did not care about me. I gave her the benefit of doubt when I argued that she was young and did not know what she was doing. But when I was in S4 vacation, I looked for her. Later, I learnt she lived in a town in eastern Uganda.

I went with her pictures and some of her dresses to prove I am truly her daughter. She shouted at me, and neighbours gathered. She said I was a muyaaye from Kampala who had come to steal from her. She was doing well, because she had a shop and was married to a rich man.

I cried as I tried to explain that I am her daughter, but she refused to listen. It was getting late. One man took me to spend the night at a police station. I was put in a room alone since I was not a criminal.

That night, a policeman raped me. I swear by my aunt’s name: I will never forgive my mother for abandoning me twice to this harsh world. I was helped by a policewoman who took me to a nearby clinic. I was given some drugs, which I was told would help me not to get pregnant or even acquire HIV/Aids.

But when I returned home, I told Ssenga Nora about everything my mother had done to me – except the rape ordeal. (She was against the idea of me looking for my mother, and especially going unaccompanied.) Subsequently, I counseled myself and somehow triumphed over the rape incident.

I have successfully gone through school, and will be graduating soon. On the other hand, my mother was facing challenges. Her husband got to know that I had come looking for my mother, yet she had never told him she had a baby before they met.

The following day, he went to the police station to look for me. He wanted to take me home and welcome me as one of his own, but missed me by a whisker. He went back to his wife, my mother, and asked her to either bring me home or lose her marriage. My mother refused and, consequently, things went from bad to worse, until she was let go by her husband.

And here she is now, fighting hard to be given a special place on my graduation.

“Ssenga, I will not invite mother. She shut her door on me, and left me out there to be devoured by a sexually hungry man,” I opened up to Ssenga for the first time about the rape incident. “I will not have her on my graduation. One of us will attend that graduation: me or her. Ssenga, it is up to you to choose.”