The Saddest Story I've Got

I had seen Agnes twice since her mother’s passing; once as I was leaving the video store in town about a month ago, maybe a week after the death; the girl greeted me shyly and mumbled something about dying and I knew she meant her mother and I hugged her while she stood stiffly, looking away for a minute fighting tears in a stoic Ugandan way; then again I saw her at Ester’s shop about two weeks ago with her youngest sister, Rachel, who had a rash covering her body and fluid running from her nose and ears.

“They are coming back tomorrow,” Ester said as they walked away in the late afternoon. “It waz too late to see the doctor todae. They come here tomorrow and I take them.”

Tomorrow came and Agnes and the kids didn’t appear. And so passed the next day and the next…

“We should go check on them,” I said to Ester one night over dinner.

“Yeah,” she said strongly.

Then I was recovering from malaria, then I had meetings in the village, then the car was broken, then Mummy had meetings in Kampala.

“Can we go for them tomorrow?” I asked Margaret as her, Ester and I stood in the kitchen finishing dishes Wednesday night.

“Yes.”

The next day I waited in the house until the afternoon, not sure when the car would arrive; African time, communication and planning at work. The bell rang. I opened the door to a smiling Aunt Vinnie, Margaret’s sister, paying us a surprise visit. Very much like her sister, Vinnie is sincere, loving, smart and generous. She is also smart as Ugandan’s mean; donning African dresses and skirts of her own design and making, having studied fashion in London. We lounged on the couches, so hot outside, chatting about the children I was to visit, the plight of African children in general, and what we had been doing since last seeing each other over a month before.

The white car finally pulled up below our house. Vinnie, concerned about the children, decided to join us before returning to Kampala that evening. We drove around the block to pick up Ester who closed the shop for the call. I was getting nervous. I didn’t know what we would see.

Agnes’ mother had died of AIDS over a month before. I learned through my family that the father was cruel and it seemed, possibly psychopathic; abusing his children physically and emotionally, as well as the wife when she was alive; stealing his wife’s ARV treatment, despite it being free, and killing her. Ester told me that the wife, her cousin, said the man would sell all their crops at market, go to a hotel with his son to take a nice meal, and leave his four daughters and wife without food. He also enjoyed local drugs and drink.

Then there was the boy’s leg. The son had an accident over a year prior and Stephen and Margaret sent the car to take the boy to the hospital. They told the man they would pay for treatment and return the boy in the evening. The father refused. He thought witchcraft had caused the boy’s ailment and claimed he was helping him with local herbs. The boy’s leg had since become septic.

“I want to buy eggs for the kids,” I said as Ester got in the car. “But I’m afraid they won’t even get them.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “He’ll just make them prepare them for him.”

We stopped off in town and purchased food stuffs for the family. A very fat little girl with falling out black and red platting ran up to me a tattered dress, her huge checks creasing in a massive smile. She grabbed my hand and squealed, “Mzungu! Mzungu!” She skipped and jumped manically then ran back to me throwing her arms around my legs.

We climbed back into the car with bags of beans, rice, sugar and maize flower. We turned off the paved main street that bisects town onto a dirt road marked with a sign painted God’s Way. We wound through the edge of Lugazi and into the sugar cane fields. The massive network of stalks creating an impenetrable wall on either side; up a hill, down again, round bends, passing some small homes.

“I can’t believe Agnes and Rachel had to come all this way when they were sick,” I said after a few miles.

“Yeah. And the boy too.”

“What?”

“The boy, Richard. He waz with them that dae. It took many hours for them to get home with hiz leg.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that. If I had known I would have gotten them a boda boda,” I said wishing that Ester had told me that evening two weeks ago.

After emerging from a valley, driving along the far mountain, the sugar cane gave way to villager’s plots and mud homes. The men, women and children watched from their land, waiving at our car going by, its presence and certainly its mzungu passenger unusual. Then we pulled in front of one of the homes.

“Is this it?” I asked.

“No, we must walk,” Ester directed me.

We followed a narrow path for maybe 100 yards. To the right, the low green shrubs of sweet potatoes; to the left, a farm overflowing with bountiful maize, plantains, coffee, tomatoes, cassava, beans, sweet potatoes and papaya.

“This is his plot,” Ester said pointing to the left. I was surprised. I wasn’t expecting him to have so much land, so many fertile crops.

“This one?”

“Yes,” Ester said nodding at it.

We rounded the vegetation and emerged onto the dirt clearing where their mud home and open kitchen rested. Agnes ran to us from the other side, hugging Ester tightly around the neck. The other children emerged from the house, staring at us vacantly in the doorway.

We called Rachel to us. The four year old reluctantly obeyed. The girl’s rash was worse, starting to scab over, covering her left ear and check; looking as if a bird had defecated on her face. There were still spots on her forehead, neck, abdomen, arm and hand. And her stomach was bloated; worms.



The boy watched several yards to our side, his forehead permanently rutted in grief, leaning on his good leg. He had to wear long pants over it at all times. We asked him to expose his wound. He looked away and pulled it up warily and we gasped. It was swollen all the way down to his ankle, still oozing all along the front of the shin; the pain he tried to conceal, but obvious in his eyes.





Vinnie, Ester, Sumete and I just stared at the miserable children in disbelief and concern. We agreed that the little one and the boy had to go to the hospital the next morning. I walked the boy to the side and took a picture of his leg. He glanced across the dirt before pulling up the seep stained cloth; he doesn’t want his dad to see, I thought. The father paced towards and away from us slightly nervous over and again, knowing all of the adults despised him, lying about the children’s condition, offering excuses in his insincere, high-pitched voice.



We visited with the children for about an hour grasping at lightness, wanting to give them relief. Their faces void of feeling then contorting into sculptures of anxiety and hurt. Agnes walked to a short ledge on the edge of the dirt clearing and climbed onto a rope that hung from a tree then launched herself into the air swinging. Despite recently losing her mother, caring for her younger sisters and brother, abused by her uncaring father, a soft smile spread across her face; but the other children never showing happiness.



“That girl was forced to marry?” Vinnie asked Ester. Ester nodded and Vinnie drew her head back in amazement.

“The husband ran her off though,” I explained.

“I told her that she can’t get married again. That the children need her,” Ester told us. I imagine they shared my thoughts; the children would surely die without her.



We said goodbye and promised to return the next day.

We drove back moved and incredulous; the three Africans clucking wildly in Lugandan to each other, sometimes translating to me.

The two little ones are probably positive, especially the youngest; so mulwadde. The boy’s leg is terrible. The children are so unhappy. The father is so careless. He killed the mother.

“You can see the pain on the boy’s face,” I said aloud to the whole car.

“Yes. And Sumete asked him if hiz leg pained, and the man said, ‘No, it doesn’t bother him,’ answering for him,” Ester told me.

“Maybe I can take one,” Vinnie said; so thoughtful, not even children from her side of the family, and still raising her many, as well as a nephew depressed because he is positive.

“Those children are so upset,” I said. “When children see a mzungu they get excited and happy. These children weren’t. They couldn’t even smile.”

“Yes! “ Aunt Vinnie exclaimed. “Compare them to the fat girl at the stage,” she said throwing her arm into the air.

“I know. That little girl was like all the other African children. Even the poorest ones, ones you know don’t always eat and are dirty in torn clothes, playing with trash, at least they are happy. At least someone is trying their best to care for them and love them.”

Yes, a child at least needs love.

“They just looked through us. Their father isn’t even that poor!”

“No, he haz some money,” Ester said. “He just doesn’t care. Did you go inside the house?”

“No.”

She shook her head. “It’s terrible.”

When an African tells you living conditions are terrible, you trust it an understatement.

I stared out the window; we were back in the outskirts of town. I imagined what the children did every day: wake up; Agnes bathes them, if they are lucky she maybe cooks some cassava for them; at least two go to school occasionally, but mostly they work on the farm, their father emerging from the foliage to beat them and chastise them, then disappearing again. Maybe more cassava at night. Working until the evening, no friends, nothing to do, just fearing; fearing life, fearing death, fearing their provider. Not living near anyone, very much alone. The father with them at night and he had just lost his wife. And Agnes. Slowly becoming a woman sleeping near him. Shit.

“I wonder if he is molesting them. Maybe taking advantage of Agnes,” I said suddenly.

“Yeah. We were just saying that. He can do anything on thoze drugs,” Ester said frowning deeply.

“Great. He’ll infect her if she’s not positive already.”

“Yeah,” Ester said softly.

Margaret and Stephen asked about the children that evening. I shook my head and said they were horrible. I showed them my pictures and they could not believe the swollen stomachs, oozing legs, scabbing skin, and hopeless faces.



“They are so unhappy,” Ester said shaking her head. “When you are that unhappy you hate everybody. You even hate yourself.”

“We’re going back tomorrow to take them to the hospital,” I said.

“Yes, I will tell Sumete to bring you,” Margaret said not taking her eyes from the images on my screen; these were the children of the young girl she helped raise, the sick woman she use to care for.

I waited; then said, “Ester and I were talking about keeping them.”

Margaret raised her eyes. “Yes. I think so. They can’t stay there with that man.”

“He’s slowly killing them,” I said very seriously.

“Yes. Just like their mother,” Margaret mused. “We’ll go get them tomorrow.”