04.02.02 My Personal Experience as a Value-Adding Daughter

My Precious Parents and I

A Personal Experience

I am the first born of four children, three girls and one boy. Growing up, my parents instilled in me a value-adding culture, starting with learning how to help my mother with home chores. In my early years, that involved carrying my siblings around, playing with and taking care of them as my mother attended to other duties.

I vividly recall the day we shifted into our half-completed house at Bunga Hill. My dad had been offered a scholarship to go for further studies in the United States of America (USA) and therefore could not leave us in a rented house in Nansana. I was about ten years at the time.

With my father out of the country and my mother a primary school teacher by then, she really had to cut every possible cost. That was when I learnt to cultivate cassava, sweet potatoes, beans and other foods that we would grow in our home garden; as well as bananas, plantains or matooke,  the most common staple food in our part of the country. I also learnt how to cook using firewood. One of the most tiring chores was fetching water from a rich man’s house down the road given that our daddy had left before installing the plumbing system. Although life was tough, I remember going all out to help my mother, led by a cousin who was slightly older than me. By the time daddy returned and moved us to start residing at Makerere University, I had already acquired a wealth of indispensable skills that would enable me to add value to the lives of my parents, siblings and other people that came along my path in later years.

Then came the civil war that ravaged our country, Uganda, for over two decades, depressing our economy to an all-time low. Every home must have felt the blow. It was during that time that my parents, my father, a university lecturer and my mother, a primary teacher albeit of a higher rank, started facing financial challenges to keep the four of us in school. With my sister and I in Gayaza High School, my brother in Kings College Buddo and my baby sister in Gayaza Junior and later Makerere College School, the education bill was steep, at least for my dad and mum. That was when I started a small but successful income generating activity during my ‘O level vacation’, baking cookies and selling them so that I could contribute to our school fees and other requirements that I and my siblings would need in order to return to the boarding schools. I was sixteen years old at that point. After completing my ‘A level’, I would buy plain bed sheets, embroider them then sell at a profit; which also run reasonably successfully.

After my first degree, I started a cosmetics business which also enabled my husband and I to contribute towards my parents’ and siblings’ needs from time to time. Thereafter, my family and I left for Australia for further studies after which I worked as an expatriate in Tanzania where we were able to regularly send money and other support to our parents.

I do recall the fateful morning when I got the news that my mother had passed away having suffered from a stroke. After her funeral, my father was so devastated that we had to take him with us to Dar es Salaam, where we were living at that time. That was when I got one of the rarest opportunities that any daughter living in the diaspora would long for…; having daddy all to myself, to chat with, confide in, have fun with, date, cook and care for, do his laundry and all that. The months whizzed by so fast that in no time, we had to escort him back to Uganda so that he could proceed with life. He settled in well, worked for private university where he was the vice chancellor and continued to be the Local Council Chairman at Bunga Hill.

However, things took a different turn when one day, my brother, a medical doctor also living in the diaspora, requested that I should visit daddy since he had not been feeling well. It was thereafter that we chose to stay longer and keep him company since my mum had passed away two years prior. That decision gave me another opportunity to be there for daddy during his last days on earth. My heart echoes with memories of him expressing how grateful he was that I was around. Truly, staying away from our consultancy firm in Tanzania for those two years was a great financial sacrifice but daddy was more than worth it.

Then came the time when he started refusing to eat unless I was there. A short while thereafter, he lost appetite for the meals that his houseboy would prepare. I had to cook his food myself and sit with him until he finished eating and taking his medicines. Then, he refused to take his medicines. We had to blend them in his juice on a few occasions, but being an extremely intelligent professor, he must have discovered our ploy. Soon thereafter, he started wishing that he would join my mother. And to cut a long story short, he left!

I do not know if l will ever get used to the fact that he is gone, but I am grateful to God for granting me the opportunity to add value as a daughter to the two most highly esteemed people in my life, my mum and dad. It is an honour that I will never take for granted.