Plot 959 Kigombya A, Mukono, Uganda.
ILONA story 9. The Stories of our girls.
Susan came to us through her paternal aunt who felt heart broken over the state of her brother’s children.
Susan’s aunt Mabel had seven brothers and two sisters. Four of the brothers had died from AIDS related complications, leaving at least 16 grandchildren in her parents’ home. Mabel’s parents were overwhelmed with many grandchildren, most of whom were not going to school because there was no money,
Mabel’s brother Kato was the firstborn and started life as a business man, but later he became an alcoholic. What started as a drinking problem progressed to the extent that he could not run his business. To make matters worse, his wife too was drinking heavily. They had six children. One of the sons dropped out of school and started running the business that was almost collapsing. Their mother died.
The family helped Kato to get another wife who eventually had 3 children. Susan was the youngest of her children. Kato’s young wife saw no future in the marriage and left and went and married another man. She left when Susan was three years old.
She left her three children in this home where there was never enough food and all other needed resources were scarce. It was a common occurrence when children like Susan were sexually abused in the community where they did odd jobs for food and money to survive. Susan and her siblings were never taken to school, as were the majority of the grandchildren in this big homestead. Susan had also started getting some kind of seizures, which the family thought were epileptic but appear to have been triggered by the multiple forms of abuse she suffered because from the time she joined ILONA she has never suffered any such problem.
Susan was brought to ILONA by her aunt Mabel who is a sister to her father Kato. Susan no longer has a memory of her mother. From the age of three when she left her she never went back to check on her.
At ILONA, Susan who was really interested in attending school is thriving and doing her best to catch up with grade 1 work. She is healthy and happy and no longer looks underfed. She says her biggest challenge in life was being born in a family with too many children and having to fend for herself when there is no one to provide or protect her.
