RACHEAL NINSIIMA
It’s a
bright sunny Thursday morning and the space of the sky above me is the ever
changing colour of gold and grey. Suddenly, the car I am travelling in pulls
into a large compound of a large grey and white house. Then, before I can
properly alight off the car, about five three and four year olds run to welcome
me. The quickening of their steps is barely audible but their giggling is
unmistakable.
“Kulikaayo maama… (welcome back mummy),”
a little voice calls from my back and as I turn, another runs and hugs me.
These adorable gems are among 28 children being looked after by Jjaaja Benna
Nakijjoba. There is no outward beauty to attract you to this place but only
stories of transformed lives.
Their 73
year old jjaja has been their bread and butter for all their life and no wonder
when they cry; she is the only one who can calm them down. Donned in a blue
gomesi that has seen better days, she squints her eyes, looks at me straight in
the eye and smiles. It is evident she is happy to receive me and when she
narrates the story of her life, I understand why. She thrives on people’s
attention and on any given day, the doors to her house are open.
Her turf of laying down her life for
other people’s children, donning in that one blue gomesi and going without a
meal on some days makes her a local hero. “In this community, she is well
known and respected for her work with the abandoned babies. She does her best.
She is a local hero,” Swalley Kiyingi, one of her ‘children’ says.
Her story:
Jjaja Benna
was born on 1st January 1940 in Masaka District and is one of the
four surviving children out of 18 her parents bore. Her days fell short of
happiness at an early age of eight when her father passed on. This was on 25th
June 1949. Afterwards, her education was throttled at Primary six and hence her
dream of becoming a teacher.
For fear of
being a social misfit as orphans were regarded then, she was married off at the
age of 15.
“I got
married to a 35 year old business man but when I failed to bear him children, he
told me he was going to bear children in another woman whom I can take care of.
I refused,” she recalls.
But this
position earned her scorn from her in laws. She did not take this lightly. It
stung her heart, causing her to lose weight and live a sombre life until she
could not bear it. She walked out of her marriage of eight years and went to live
with her mother, Rose Nakoode in Namulonge.
Luckily, she
scooped a job as a nanny at Cotton Research Company handling mainly the white
workers kids which earned her shs 80 per month. But like every story that has a
beginning and an end, the whites left and her nanny job was brought to an end.
Perhaps not, given that she still changes babies’ diapers and feeds children
even today.
She then moved to Wandegeya in 1971
scavenging for a job and living in a flimsy one roomed mud and wattle house in
Katanga. With her meagre savings, she established a textile stall in Wandegeya
market which earned her about shs. 30. She nevertheless continued to care for
neighbours’ children.
The 1980s holocaust brought more
demise. As people fled from Bulemezi to Kampala, many dumped their children at
her door step. At that moment in her life, she developed an idea that she calls
‘the love of your fate’ to care for wrecked and abandoned children. This she
has done for the last 40 years.
Infanticide (killing of young ones
within the first year) of 'guilt children' is still a problem in Uganda
especially in rural areas but is rare in cities, where children are usually
abandoned but not killed. This is how Jjaja Benna has accumulated all 28
children.
“Many of the slum girls used to get
pregnant and because they had no means of caring for the children, they dropped
them at my door,” her voice slackens as she narrates.
Needless to say, the room which they
were living in was beyond un liveable measures. It was grotesquely small to
accommodate herself and all her 28 children, unhygienic with a few broken bunk
beds and soiled sheets. The children’s clothes were almost fully torn, filthy,
and the younger ones were suffering from acute malnutrition, kwashiorkor,
diarrhoea, polio,
pneumonia, malaria and measles. This is only a hint to their inglorious life.
But against these odds, Jjaja did not give up on them. Her life is best
described by the rule of the jungle, ‘survival for the fittest’ but she lives
and loves it.
“I am sometimes grateful for being
barren because I would never have taken care for abandoned children if I had my
own. This was God’s making and it has paid off,” she says before burying her
head into three year old ‘Acram’s bosom.
With her limited resources, she continued
taking care of them, feeding and clothing them and even paying their school
fees. It’s only recently that her burden was halved with the creation of ‘Live
it Up-Uganda’ an organization that has been formed to specifically cater for
her and the children. The children are between ages two to 18.
The breakthrough:
When I asked Jjaja Benna of how and when she left
Katanga to live in the spacious and modern home she now occupies, tears began to stream down her face. Her
heart swelled up until she felt she could not bear the joy of it and lifting her
hands, she said;
“Banange Katondo ono-ehhhh (This God!),” she
exclaims…..’mweebaza nyo’ (I thank
Him a lot). She narrates:
I
remember it was the 2011 Idi Aduha when a certain Hussein visited me with
Germans saying they wanted to help me. Hussein says he saw me on TV. Indeed
when he reached my makeshift home in Katanga, he was short of words for the
condition we was delirious.
He
connected me to a lady called Yasemin Saib, the founder of Live it Up Uganda who brought me a lots of
goodies-two cartons of milk, rice, sugar, toilet paper etc.
In
fact I remember her giving them chocolates and they had running stomachs
because it was something new to them.
Yasemin told Hussein to
quickly look for a house fearing that we might die anytime. She offered to take
all the children for medical services at St Catherine’s Clinic along Buganda
Road. Luckily, all the children were HIV negative.
Shortly,
we shifted to Kyebando in October 2011 and at the end of last year, we were
brought to this house in Kajjan
Memorable
moments;
“My most painful memory is when I learnt that a certain gentleman
who had been sent to give me shs. 15m made off with it,” she says adding that
the money was meant to help her and the children.
However, she also cannot forget Christine, a student at Makerere
University who showered her with love.
“Christine would visit me every week, and even bought a piece of
land in 2008 on which she uprooted cassava so that she can build for me a house,”
she says
“However, she disappeared from me and I do not know where she is
now.”
Jjaja’s
children speak out:
Sandra
Nalukwago, 18:
Although she does not recall when she started staying with jjaja,
the least she can say is that jjaja has been with her through it all.
“Although we were cramped in one room in Katanga, Jjaja managed to
pay my school fees,” she says peering at the floor. As a payback for this
kindness, she hopes to give jjaja whatever she needs.
Nalukwago has completed S6 at Tropical High School, Kabalagala and
hopes to become a teacher.
Swalley
Kiyingi, 18:
He started staying with jjaja in 1995 after his mother; Nulu
Namwanjje dropped him at the Katanga home and never returned to pick him. Kiyingi
recalls eating one meal a day and donning in ragged khaki shorts for almost a
year.
“I have learnt to be a patient in life because good things always
come to those who wait and while jjaja is still alive, I pray every day that
the golden gates of heaven usher her into paradise,” he says.
Jjaja has not only carried the children but has also instilled
religious morals in them. Every morning and evening, they gather to pray.
About live it up-Uganda:
The
organization was formed in September 2011 after Yasemin and her friend Najla Al
Midfa from Dubai visited the slum community and discovered Jjaja Benna. They were
in Uganda for gorilla tracking
Quickly, an
11 person group was formed and one of the members conducted a live it up
fundraising marathon in Dubai and raised $ 1000 for jjaja. On January 16th
2012, under the auspices of live it up Uganda Executive Director Ada Mugenyi
Magezi, Jjaja Benna was shifted to Kyebando and later to Kajjansi.
“Live it up
has ensured to pay jjaja’s rent of $ 800 a year and every week, we spend at
least shs. 1m in running the home,” Mugenyi says.
Live it up’s
goal is to equip jjaja and the children with all the necessary tools that will
help them become self-sufficient and productive. They have been instrumental in
educating the children and on the day I arrived, several of them were going for
interviews to be enrolled into school.
“Our
measurement for success is not whether we have helped keep them alive, rather
the elevated quality of a life we help them achieve. Our work has just begun,”
Mugenyi says.
The
organization boosts of five staff; a cook, watchman, matron, cleaner and
operations manager that help in running the home.
“Looking
after 28 children is not an easy task and I almost left but reconsidered after
seeing jjaja’s struggles,” Magaret Babirye, the matron says.
In future,
Live it Up-Uganda hopes to secure land and build a home and school for Jjaja
Benna and her children.
To support
Jjaja Benna, you can contact Mugenyi on 0775599533 or
ada.magezi@liveitupuganda.org
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