Snapshots

I was staying at Aunt Vinnie’s in Kampala, recuperating from another illness, seven of her eight children were packed in the three bedroom house; sleeping in bunk beds, on couches, on homemade mattresses on the floor; two of the children are usually away at boarding school, but were out on holiday making the already crowded house overflowing.

I reached for something on the dresser in the room I was sharing and an old photo caught my eye. A grinning woman with a baby face and sparkling eyes was knelling down in a fashionable seventies jumper with a tamed afro, a light-skinned familiar baby staggering to stand at her side, on the other side of the baby sat a slight girl on her knees, barely in her teens, her hand stretched out as if she just released the child, hesitant eyes and a dark complexion, the girl also familiar. I studied the photo for a moment and smiled; I recognized the faces: my Ugandan Mummy, a young Margaret, content and eager, looking barely past a child herself; at her side, her baby Timo virtually the spitting image of his now 2 year old daughter, Anique; and my kids’ mother, Alice, looking the same age as her oldest daughter, Agnes, now, both pretty, petite and slightly shy. I knew much of these three people’s lives, what had happened to them since the photo was taken just over 30 years ago. Could they have ever imagined a mzungu from America years in the future would come to know them so intimately? I marveled at the moment snapped decades ago so capturing their spirits and foreshadowing their lives and that of their children.

“Their mom first ran off when she was in P4,” Margaret told me after I told her about the photo, asking more about my children’s mother.

“She ran off just in P4? How old was she?” I asked knowing that a child of about age 10 would be in P4.

“Not old. She had just started to get breasts. And she ran off with a man. I think she wasn’t good in school and she kept having to repeat, so she was somehow frustrated,” Margaret explained, her face contorting as she tried to find the words to explain the difficult situation.

I imagined my kids’ mom years ago, maybe 14 years old and still in P4, far away from her village, her aunt and uncle trying to offer her a life her own parents could not, but she felt stupid, maybe not very interested in studying, many girls didn’t attend school in those days.

Apparently my kids’ mother did this a few times: would disappear with an older man then come back to the Balazas to try and continue school and get her life together, then run off again. She had had a child with another man and left him with the father’s family. The Balazas told her she couldn’t keep running off with different men, that she needed to settle down, and she did settle down, but not with the ideal; the father of my children proving to be notoriously neglectful, selfish, and abusive.

But somehow, somehow married to a man who most likely passed HIV onto her through his extramarital affairs, who stole her ARV drugs ensuring she didn’t receive proper treatment to control her illness, effectively killing her, who would sell all his crops in town and leave his wife and daughters with nothing to eat, who drank and did local drugs, somehow my kids’ mom, Alice, raised five beautiful, thoughtful, considerate, grateful and caring children.

There’s the oldest, Aggie, seemingly so much like her mother in looks and temperament, but wiser. Before her mother fell ill, the Balazas tell me Agnes was becoming interested in boys at the expense of school.

“I think since she cared for the mother as she died, Agnes has changed,” Margaret and Stephen tell me. I tried to insert myself into her life; living in a mud house with soil for floor, cooking little food on a charcoal stove outside, entering the wet house to serve your mother as she slowly wasted away, dying before your eyes as four younger siblings look to you for parental support; I could see the situation’s gravity weighing down and instilling a seriousness, focus and maturity.

Agnes is 15 years old and is at once baba, the word for the eldest sister who has taken on a maternal role; cooking, cleaning and caring for the children; and still part child, befriending the other girls in P5 with her, girls three years her junior, laughing at cartoons, making silly faces at the camera.





I remember the day that we took the kids from the father. We sat in the clinic waiting for the HIV test results of the two youngest, Sylvia and Rachel. I told Agnes all of them would be going back to school; her face lit up.

“What do you want to be?” I asked her. She frowned not understanding, her English exceptionally poor. “You want to be a teacher, a nurse, a doctor, what?”

She brightened again, understanding me. She looked to the ground, fidgeting and smiled, “I want to be a nurse.”

She would make a good nurse, she is considerate and responsible. But she is behind in school like her mother was. I hope she has the strength and stamina her mother did not to finish the years of schooling required to realize her dream. But at the very least, she is happy now and is not solely responsible for four younger siblings.



Following Agnes is Richard, 13 years old; the only boy in the family, the one that had to walk on an infected tibia for nearly two years, the leg enlarging over time as new bone grew over the dead and decaying part leaving him permanently deformed. He has a stoicism I have never seen before, forced upon him by the obvious pain he has endured in the leg and by the pain in his heart; his father repeatedly told him to deny hurt, and the lameness has affected his ability to make friends.



Richard is sweet, but hardly talks, his father had often separated him from his sisters, and since their home was somewhat isolated, Richard I am guessing grew up with little social interaction. When spoken to by me, his family, strangers, it is nearly above a mumble. He sort of looks down and talks, but if you show him particular attention, ask about his school work, congratulate him on correct answers, tell him he’s done something well, thank him for mindfully doing his chores, a beautiful, huge, toothy smile spreads across his face.



After Richard is Beatrice, or B2 or Ajambo. She is eleven. Of the five mild children she is the most even-tempered, the most easy-going, being a good younger sister to Aggie, listening to her and minding her, and being a responsible, caring older sibling to the youngest two. When we went to the open-air market recently and I searched through the vendors for a new dress for Rachel, and it was B2 that most wanted to help find a new dress for her little sister, and the most eager to show the present to Rachel.



B2 always genuflects when she greets me, a custom the central Ugandan tribe, the Buganda, follow to show respect to their elders. She smiles so easily, gets along with everyone all the time, and is always glancing at me and Ester and her jah jahs watching what we are seeing, wanting her best to behave. She’s also very active. I come to their house in Namengo and always see her playing with the other girls in the dirt next to their home; throwing balled up pieces of plastic bags turning them into balls, trying to peg each other with it, jumping and dodging.



Sylvia is the second youngest and is seven years old. She is sweet like the others, but seems to suffer some from middle child syndrome. She’s not the baby of the family, nor does she have the elder respect the other two girls enjoy. She is the most emotional, usually greeting me by running to me with a huge smile, Mommy! Mommy!, throwing her hands over her delighted face, covering her eyes wild with excitement when I greet her back, so happy she can’t even look at me. She is often quick to whine and cry when she doesn’t get her way, pouting and throwing her hands in the air when the older kids get the soccer ball before her, or when another hits her during play. She seems the most vulnerable, but tries nonetheless, working hard to get her backwards numbers and uneven letters correct; running to do my wash when she seems me attempting to clean my clothes by hand.



“Mommy! Mommy!” She shrieked as she sloppily wrung a sudsy shirt over the basin in our shower room, a move sure to not clean the clothes properly; she was imitating my childish attempt at hand washing, which left her in hysterics, sporting a big grin, with adult teeth in a little mouth, gapping in parts waiting for more mature teeth to follow.



The baby of the family is four year old Rachel. When I first found the girl she was desperately sick: belly bloated with worms, face infected with a rash, chest rattled with a cough. With some treatment and love she has transformed into the single most happy child I have ever met; she laughs, giggles, bounces, coos, smiles, shrieks, contorts her face into all angles of delight, the most amusing of which involves her curling out her tongue.



She is constantly hanging on me, constantly playing with others, she loves her older sisters and brother, she loves going to school, she love her new home, she loves her life. I imagine she was perpetually ill prior to coming under our care, during her entire short existence she probably didn’t know what it felt like to be healthy, now that she is disease-free she is reveling in the new found incredible feeling of good health.

She is usually overjoyed, but it’s obvious when she needs a nap, when it’s time for kwebaka. She becomes a little obstinate and her eyes flutter. I’ll grab her and bring her to the back room of jah jah’s to lay down, sometimes she yields, other times there are tears, but she always falls asleep. And when she’s tired she won’t greet people.

“Say ‘I am fine.’” I’ll instruct her to reply to a greeting from an elder and she’ll just look down, trying for avoidance. I’ll repeat myself, maybe ask her a third time, finally her little lips will move and you can almost hear it: I am fine. Everyone just laughs, staring at the girl with amusement. Even when stubborn she is delightfully cute and fills your heart with love.

Rachel carrying a doll on her back like African women carry their babies.