manuscripts Jeremy Jjemba

Mock ... Daft in work .....   

Part I  

Memoirs of loosing my mother to AIDS here in Uganda! Early life etc ... written about 2005 rough draft...all rights reserved

In my life if I was to write one book. This will be it. If I was to write about one subject, it would be death. And if I was to write about one woman, it would my mother.

I was born in Kasubi; one of Uganda’s Ghettos in the suburbs of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. Kasubi is home for some of Uganda’s working class people. Most people here like my family live in slams. Housing is simple and somewhat ancient, some are made out of made bricks and some still have grass rooftops.    

and most of the sub-Saharan countries during the mid nineties and on through out the end of twentieth century, we had a plaque that was sweeping through our countries killing most of our parents. Not a single day went by without me seeing a dead body being transported to a funeral. Something bad was killing most of our parents but we were so naive to know why all these people where dieing. Everyday news got to our ears that someone we knew had died. All that were dieing had the same symptoms. They were all kinds of reasons I heard to why all these people were dieing. Some said it was witchcraft. That the country was bewitched some said, other claimed that the Europeans and other countries overseas were trying to wipe off the black race in the world and what better place to do that here in Mamma Africa. I heard people say that white countries of the Western World had planted a virus within our human species therefore the virus was to spray killing all the were exposed to it. We had radical that called this massacre a punishment from God to the dear people of Africa. What greater sin did we commit to deserver such a punishment? That part of the story was never told.   

Millions died from this plaque. Kasubi had a number of carpenter shops and their profits had now more than tripled because they were making and selling wooden coffins like never before. Most business Men in the town were all throwing their capital into the business of carpentry if you say so but the hottest product on the market were the wooden coffins all the shops made. All the men that were creative with wood took up carpentry to make coffins. Some shops had a buy one get one coffin free special. Some shops offered a special buy where the buyer would choose a set of coffins, either one for a grown body and a small child or have two coffins for grown people. The best dealers were far out of town were the shops offered three coffins for one price. You can burry Mom, Dad and Child all for one price and maybe same colors. You could buy which ever special suited your need and nothing else in Uganda was selling more than these wooden coffins.

Farmers were planting more timber trees to maintain the supply of coffin demand. People died everyday that the priests at Kasubi Church of Uganda had to hire more priests to attend all the funerals. On Radio Uganda, the only major radio station at the time in the whole country. The hour of special death announcements was now extended to two hours of special death announcement during the day and an hour during the night. During those hours the announcer would read the announcement in hundred of all the people that had died non-stop. The reason for this was the our dear country had not yet invited a way for its people to community privately in times like this due to a lack of ground phones technology. So announcing death on the radio was a norm as it is for most people who tune in to the radio for entrainment. Everyone tuned in and those that didn’t have a radio gathered to one close by to listen to all the names the guys was calling out and to my surprise we all knew at least one person from the hundreds of people that were dead.

Carpenters won’t the only one cashing in during this era. Taxi drivers were banking like never before and most of their prices were set therefore the price was the same everywhere you went. Sometimes it was impossible to afford a taxi so the dead bodies were then carried on the back of a bicycle as the carriage a family could afford to transport a dead body.

*The dead on the back on the bicycles were scarily for an eye to catch. These are images that still come to me in the deepest of my sleeps. The flocks of these dead persons were not carried in a coffin rather in bed sheets or brown backcloth on the back of a bicycle with hundreds more bicycles carrying  hundreds of family members flowing behind to escort their loved one that their final resting place. Husbands carried their dead wives on the back of these bicycles. Fathers carried their dead children on the back of these bicycles. Since most people in Uganda do not own cars therefore in those Ugandan days a car still wasn’t a major form of transportation to reach some of the remotest places in the World where these families had to burry the dead one. Places like in the deep green villages of Masaka and others way across the country past my hometown deep at end of Hoima Road toward the majestic villages of Masindi District, where roads are still unpaved to help a car transport Ugandan people to their burial place.     

Most of the bicycles in Uganda come with two seats to carry to people at the same time. So when a family could not afford a coffin or a taxi to transport their dead relative. *The bicycle was the way to do it then. The dead body would be wrapped first in bed sheets or backcloth, then they would place sticks all around the body that were it stays in place as they rode through the dirt roads of Uganda to go burry their loved one at the family cemetery.      

During this era every early morning the streets were filled with school children walking to school. Workers going to work, farmers were going to their gardens and people taking dead bodies to burry them. On weekend mornings the roads were filled with more dead bodies than anything else. Coffins where in every direction you turned you head. People were crying in every direction you faced your ears. Everyday someone was getting ill and sick enough not to go to work and soon died. All the kids of my generation shared something in common and that was that our siblings that were born in this era and on through out the mid-nineties were dieing off with our parents, just like my brother Jonathan.

Our fathers and mothers were dieing living us in care of extended family members who were also sick sometimes and soon died. There was a group of special persons that my heart went out. Our grandparents, especially grandmothers, these are the angels, idols and heroes that have saved my generation for becoming children with no parental care. The majority of our grandparents all the out the soils of Africa are uneducated about the modern world; most never stepped a foot in a classroom and none of them understood anything about the plague that was eating their own children leaving them with mouths to feed, clothes to wash, extra water and firewood to fetch and above all this hard work. They were left to care for hundreds of sick children in their little villages that were battling the same illness that killed their parents.

Our grandparents turned to what they new best to cure the little ones left behind and that was God and ancient medical. “Our Father who art in Heaven, why dear God have you forsaken us,” they cried. “What have we done to deserve this Father,” they asked God above the skies with their faces tilted above the sky. The work was hard that’s the known fact but not giving up was even harder. No matter how hard these old ladies worked to save their grand children that fact still remain that pretty soon around the corner they would be burring all the children they cared for within months of burring their own children. This didn’t stop them. Every morning they woke up and went to work odd jobs to earn a few shillings to help cure the plague that was killing their children and grandchildren. Every sunset these women woke up and went to the bush to hunt for bush medications that had cured all their illness when they were young. They were not working for money, all saw no result of improvement with the sick and it wasn’t a job they had to do. But it was what they did because they loved us, their grandchildren.    

As the plaque swept through Sub-Saharan Africa most of all ours parents died leaving the youngest kids possible to care for themselves if they did not have a loving grandparent. By the time I was ten years old most of my friends had dropped out of school to care for their dieing parents, some never returned to finish their primary education because after the death of their parents. These little boys and girls not even teenagers yet became the primary caregivers of their family. Caring for the sick and growing food to feed a family

None of us wanted to move in with our aunts and uncles after our parents died. In some cases this was the worst that could happen. Orphans were treated us Cinderella in extended family and some as work horses that would stay in the working fields working from sunset to sun raise to earn just one plate of food. An orphan to this plaque had limited favorable option, which included the oldest to care for the youngest, move in with grandparents if they were still alive. And pray to God that some of the missionaries that were coming from overseas would take you and you siblings in one of their overcrowded orphanages. Those were the best choices after you watched both your mother father died from a disease so complicated that you yourself could not comprehend in the smallest detail.

All us the had a dieing parent had seen first hands what was happening to our peers that had lost their parents long before our own parents got sick. All our neighbors had all almost taken in an orphan from somewhere within the roots of their family trees. My closest relatives were all taking care of somebody else kid who had died and I had seen how those kids were treat without the presence of their parents. To say that they were treated like slaves might be an overstatement but unpaid servants would suit the case. AIDS orphans have suffered some of the most devilish treatment a person in our modern world can undergo. Little girls have been raped in every corner of our countries by their closet relatives forcing them to loss sense to the meaning of life.

    Our grandmothers stepped up the plate to help some of us that made it out alive during that time. I’m telling you that nothing else mattered to a child that had lost both parents than a love of someone who could take them in and protect them from all abuse a young child might face after being orphaned by AIDS. Only grandmother could save little orphan girls from getting raped by sexual predictors whom Africa isn’t short of but most of these don’t have this on their record, for our so called Democracy hasn’t paved away yet to even keep sexual predictors off the street. For when a young lady is raped, silence becomes the only hope they would turn to if they wanted their life. Grandmothers were the best option for every orphan left behind because they not only fed you well and understood the pain you were going through. But they protect you from all harm to the best of their ability some even loosing their lives.