Africa-Press – Uganda. The first time I met my real father, Mzee Kimbowa, he told me he was an ardent supporter of [former president] Apollo Milton Obote and a mobiliser for the Uganda Peoples Congress in the 1980s.
Supporting Obote later became a grave act when President Idi Amin Dada took over power. My father told me he was hunted day and night until he found his way to self-exile in Kenya.
My father said before going to Kenya, my mother, who was his girlfriend then, was pregnant and they both agreed that if she gives birth to a baby boy, he would be named Franco. [François Luambo Luanzo Makiadi] a famous Congolese musician at the time whom my father idolised.
When my mother gave birth to me, she moved with me in different families where I was given different fathers as my name kept changing. In fact, my mother told me that she gave me away to different people before I was born as she tried to seek for survival.
I was once named Kyamagwa, Njabire, Lawrence Muyimba, Frank Kimbugwe, among others. In Mitala Maria, Mpigi, where I was baptised, I was given the name Stephen Ssali. I grew up using different names to the point that when I got a woman to marry, I told her just in case we ever bump into someone and he calls me a different name, she should never get worried. Much as I was given different names, the name Franco was always part of me.
I find it hard to explain the life that I went through, having been raised in seven families before finding the right one. I was mentally and physically tortured, but finally found the right one.
Beauty in scars
I do not recall that father who carried me as a baby, the one who looked after my mother’s pregnancy, but, of the seven that my mother confessed to me, two men shaped my life. Much of my childhood was spent with the family of Mzee George William Tamale in Kyabadaaza in Mpigi District. Then there was that of Joseph Kimbowa, who emerged as my biological father.
However, I can confess that George William Tamale shaped my life, taught me a lot of values, and parented me to be a better man. This is in spite of the fact that it is in his family where I endured unthinkable torture.
Tamale never chased me away from his house. And much as he treated me like a “last alternative child”, he educated me and provided generously.
In that family, I was bullied by the head of the family and the children as well.
Today, I have a couple of scars on my body which I got in Mzee Tamales’ home and each scar has a story attached to it. But I usually find solace in thanking God that those scars basically paid for what I am today. I would be a nobody.
Hard knock life
My mother had five children—one girl and four boys—who she laboured to fend for. It is only me whom she gave to different ‘fathers’, and I had no choice other than respecting her decision.
During my primary level, I was taken to Buyuwa Primary School in Tteketwe. There, I studied with my biological brother, whom I didn’t even know. School visits were never honoured. One day, I failed to find transport home and ended up carrying my metallic suitcase for several miles on my head back home.
At school, I was a loner who would sometimes not return home for holidays. I would spend the holidays cultivating the school gardens to get school fees waivers.
At one point, I wanted to join celibacy as a Catholic brother after being convinced that I would be a sad parent in future. I attempted to be a celibate and I joined St Balikuddembe, where I was discontinued with an explanation that I was a bastard.
At school, the brothers liked me so much since I worked so hard in their gardens. They, however, later told me that the Catholic Church would not allow a child born outside wedlock to be a celibate.
Peter Luswata, my unknown real brother, became my friend and he drew me closer to him. During visitations, his family—that turned out to be my real family—kept supporting me in the name of being a friend to their child.
Finding my father
My mother was in a different relationship and I had no one to speak to about what I was going through. In the home where she had assigned me, voices would regularly echo that I never belonged to Mr Tamale.
I opened up to my friend’s mother—a one Ssemugooma—at a village near the school. Shockingly, the woman knew the story and who my father was. She gave me directions to my father’s home.
I suspect that she had got the information from rumours from the village or from Mr Tamale himself, but she never told me where she got the information from.
In 1989, I burnt charcoal and cultivated in people’s gardens to raise Shs30,000. I used the money to go to Kampala to hunt for my family. The bus conductor dropped me off at Namasuba stage, where I took another bus to Namasuba. I was dropped off at a house in Najjanankumbi called Ku Nkoko. It was opposite a bar then called Vision Bar where my mother was.
My mother was shocked when she saw me because she had lost contact with Mr Tamale and she thought I had died in the war. Actually, she confessed that she lied to my father that I had died during infancy just because she could not trace the man she gave me to.
I let my mother be and used the money I had moved with to buy a bicycle to fetch water for people at a fee. I started a life of fetching water everyday from Mabanda and selling it to a one Stella to earn a living.”
Carrying out a ‘DNA’
“My elder brother, who was living with my mother, guided me to my father’s home in 1992 at Kevina house. When I got to my father’s home, he acknowledged that he tried to look for me, but stopped after my mother told him that I was dead. He invited his brother and they drove me in a pick-up truck to Namulanda to his land in a bush.
It was there that they checked my fingernails, ears, and the eyes. They told me to remove my shoes and checked my toes one by one.
He had moved with a black and white photo of his which he used to do a comparison. After a painstaking process, the verdict was that I was indeed his child.
I think every child deserves a right to know their family. I wouldn’t wish what I went through on anyone. If a DNA needs to be done to clear the air, so be it. That said; in cases when you find out that the children are not yours, raise them if you are given an opportunity.
I have for several years looked after both my biological and adoptive fathers. I cannot begin to thank Mr Tamale enough.
In 2004, I travelled and later settled in the United States, where I have carved out a career as a businessman. I have no regrets or bitter feelings. In fact, my dream is to start a home for rejected children and encourage them to be better persons and also trace their blood families.”
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