Kabatwairwe Olives legends

The joys of my entry into Senior 1 in Kibiito Secondary School were dashed right on Day 1, with the notification that Mother had collapsed while tilling the garden. The experience equally shuttered for a time the hopes of our first born, Charles, who was in Senior 4 at the same school and our sister Rose who was in Senior 3 at St Mary’s Kinyarugonjo Secondary School in Kibale District. The other two boys, Joseph and Francis, aged eight and six respectively at the time, may have been too young to get the full impact of the catastrophe though. A female neighbor in Mother’s prayer group had come looking for her and, failing to find her, sauntered into the garden only to chance upon her collapsed in a heap. A long-term sufferer to high blood pressure and ulcers, Mother had been rushed to Yerya Dispensary within Kibiito Town Council and had been immediately hospitalized. School was about two kilometers away from home, yet mum did not wish us to miss a day even in the midst of her ill heal...

On a bright Sunday morning when one is expected to be enjoying the “Mazongoto” (bed in English), Olive was preparing for Church, for blessings for the best in the forth coming training for Transformation in Gulu. Church was all well, at Christ the King Catholic Church in Kampala. Where I met the CEW-IT National Coordinator with the Family and we drove to the CEW-IT offices at spear house-Jinja road where preparations for the two weeks long awaited Gender mainstreaming training in Gulu was to be held. Well preparations went on as anticipated, everyone was just excited, print outs were made of the necessary documents, we picked up other vital materials and set off to the Baganda bus park where the CEW-IT/CU team was to board a bus to Gulu, the training was aimed at equipping Oxfam Novib partners with the relevant skills on mainstreaming gender in their organizations and partners as well as the communities they work with. OH…my God you created so amazing was it when the bus started an...

  Setting off for Murchison Falls National park was somehow between the develo and the deep sea for me. Having been admitted in a clinic the previous night, I was feeling under the weather indeed I felt down in the dumps that I was going to miss the trip. Life is full of wonders, on the early morning of Saturday 23 rd June 2012 i saw myself somehow strong and could therefore join my colleagues for the long awaited trip. HOW DID WE REACH THERE The journey from Gulu to the Park took us over two hour’s just due to the portholes, and the narrowness of the road, you know moving through Badege, to Custom boarder via Kochi-Goma road, then to Anaka-Anaka headquarters-Anaka Hospital-and we joined from the new tarmac road (work in progress),   from there we joined Karuma-Pakwach at Anaka-Purongo sub/county and finally branched off to the main entrance of the great Murchison falls National Park which covers 3840km/sq. Nevertheless we were there by 10:00 am, though we had some del...

  When I was young, I used to think a lot of who I was, and where I was heading to, fortunately whenever my mother got me silent, she would ask me, why I would be quiet, I surely never replied her at any moment because I used to fear, would feel timid.  One day she called me on and took me to the kitchen, we were there two and she was making soup, she repeatedly asked me, what I used to think about oftenly. Well i decided to open up, and told her, that I used to think of my future as a lawyer and that I wanted to see myself in court pleading for especially the innocent citizens of this nation.  Mum was so amazed and thereafter she also narrated her tale to me, siath that, it was her dream too, used to dream of being a lawyer however her parents weren’t able to take her for law, they never had the money, though she managed to go for medicine and she became a nurse. But when I asked her, whether she would support me pursue my dream, mum was more than ready to do so...

  As I write my book, #The Heroine in Me, I want to take a moment and share my last moments with My Mother today as I remember her in a special way, details will be in the book! The morning of 9th October 2002 was not like the normal days. I woke up terribly weak, my young brothers woke up to collect firewood from our garden at our grandparents home over 5 Kilometres from our home, as I remained home minding my ailing Mother. Mother had suffered with an ailment for two years and the pain was too much, that I cried as I watched her strain and struggle for her life!   She told me, I got a vision, your Mother will be called to Heaven today (9th October 2002). As the elder sister at home you have got to gather yourself, tie your waist with a strong wrapper...

  It was one morning of a Thursday in 2001, when I woke up heading to school, and on my way there with other pupils, we were told that the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels who started their guerilla war in the area in 1996 had raided my village and the entire now Bunyangabu district. I was in primary seven and preparing to seat for my PLE, my dreams of sitting my first academic level were put at test. For some reason, there has always been a huge stumbling block each time I wanted to achieve something along my life journey, but, I always found sufficient grace to sail through, and yes, here I am today.  So, the ADF story goes on, as we walked (with other school children) we ran direct to school which was close to our home; hardly had we entered the classrooms than we heard thunderous pellets of the famous AK 47 gun, I was flabbergasted and couldn’t stand the loud alarms coming in from a near by village, Busiita where they had shuttered some part of the national road. ...