They killed my brother, my father, my mother……..they killed my heart!

Who am I? I don't know! it's the question that has always been at the back of my mind every time am introducing myself.

The words that come out of my mouth are not the words in my mind. My mind keeps asking the same question over and over again that I keep denying — who am I?

After all, no one needs to know but as I grew older I realized that there’s a need for me to answer it at least to myself, and put my mind at ease. Just be honest with yourself and talk about it or rather write it down- it's easier that way.

My name is Sarah Kyomugisha also known as Sarafina to my departed parents. Born in the mid 90’s in a small village in Kabale south southwestern Uganda.

It is a really beautiful place with a lake, hills, and dark-skinned stout Bakiga people. The Bakiga tribe is known to carry truth in their vocabulary but some people rather interpret it as arrogance and rudeness.

I spent a happy childhood there and I was just an ordinary village little girl. I used to look up the trees in the evening in wonder and dream dreams of an ordinary girl.

I used to imagine that I was a magician who would turn eucalyptus tree leaves into money. I would then give the money to my parents to buy us meat and rice and would even build a big house. Then my father’s family would never abuse my mother or mistreat us anymore.

Am the daughter of my deceased father and my deceased mother. In my memories, I think my heart stopped when I was maybe eight or nine. looking back, I think that's when I started to worry about what other people thought of me.

I began to see myself through their eyes and forgot about looking up the tree leaves in the evening wind blowing through them. I stopped daydreaming and became a version of myself that floats on earth like the kites we made out of notebook papers.

My mother was never the liked daughter-in-law or sister-in-law no matter how much she tried to win them over. My father became a disappointment of a son and a brother when he chose to marry his wife. And so the offspring of my mother were referred to as the children of that woman.

I began to try and let my father’s family see me through themselves. I thought if I could just listen to my aunties and grandmother, I would help my mother be at peace with them.

I shut down and began to listen to other people’s voices, their voices, my father’s relatives' voices’. I thought if I could just fetch them jerrycans of water and collect bundles of firewood every day, they might like us. At least they would think that since I was working very hard for them, my mother wasn’t that useless. Something good came of her.

I was mistaken, nothing changed. No matter how obedient I became or how hard I worked in their gardens, I was still my parents' child, that woman’s daughter. They talked ill of my parents, cursed my mother in my presence, and denied me and my siblings food even when they knew we hardly had food at our home.

Whenever they did give us food, we would eat it while my aunt at our backs mocked us—questioning why my mother gave birth to us when she couldn’t take care of us.

My mother later became ill. She developed a mental condition. My young sister was already malnourished and then my mother became ill. No treatment worked for my sister- when I grew up I realized she was never feeding well and we never fed her well. That’s why she never got better.

We were always in and out of the government hospital with her all the time and now my mother was also sick.

Sometimes my mother would lose cautiousness for days, without talking or understanding a thing. My name/ my siblings’ names changed from that woman’s daughter to that crazy woman’s children. No one called out my name and just like that, my heart stopped. so like this, I lost my name and became a ghost wandering around my home.

I always saw two gravestones in the family cemetery. One was big and the other one small which meant the bigger one belonged to my grandfather. He had died before I was born and I knew that was his forever home because they told us to never go near it for reasons that I would talk about one day. For now, I always wondered who the small gravestone belonged to. No one ever talked about it but my intuition told me something was off even at 9 years.

I later learned from my auntie from my mother's side that my mother’s firstborn child was not alive so that answered my question of who the small grave belonged to. My mother talked to me about everything but why did she never talk about my dead brother?

There were a lot of incidents that raised my suspicions and made me question- what was the cause of my brother’s death. I should maybe tell you that as a kid, I was always curious. I could never miss any detail not even a tiny roll of eyes.

I finally found answers following the death of my mother’s firstborn child.

It was my aunt, my father’s sister, and my mother's sister-in-law! She killed my brother! he was about six or seven while grazing a young goat his father had bought him. He went to play and left the young goat on its own and it ran off to the bean garden that belonged to my father's family.

My auntie came and found their garden destroyed and my little poor brother was there pulling the goat that had a rope around its neck. She got angry and started beating him, she gave him a heavy kick in the belly and broke his kidneys.

By the time my parents returned from where they had gone to someone’s garden to work, it was too late. They didn't make it to the hospital, my little brother died on the way and my father’s family just covered it up.

That’s right, just like that, no justice was made for my brother. My mother was told by the family that if she had been a good mother, she should have watched her son cautiously

“Who are you asking? who is supposed to be your son’s keeper?” one of my uncles asked.

I had doubts, I knew we were hated by my father’s family but not to the extent of killing our little boy, I mean their blood.

I came to wake up from my doubts when I came back from school one Friday evening and found the whole family abusing and cursing my mother in broad daylight. I don't know what started the heated argument but it cleared all the doubts I had.

I still remember the words like it was yesterday. I used to go to school wearing a hat because of the nasty wounds I had covering my head- I had a very big head then, it's cute now though lol. So whenever I left the road that had many schoolchildren, I would take the hat off to feel the fresh breeze.

That day when I removed the hat, I saw a blood stain. One of the big wounds had burst, so I was rushing home to show my dad that the medicine he got was working. When I saw blood, I became hopeful, I thought finally, the nasty wounds would go away. I would grow hair and hold a puff like the other girls in my class. The hope vanished instantly and was replaced by a memory that would forever live with me for the rest of my life.

My dad wasn’t home, there was chaos, a heated argument! My mother said between tears.

“What have I ever done you? all the evil things you have done, why didn't you kill me instead? why did you kill my child? I will never forgive you!”

My aunt responded,

What makes you think I care whether you forgive me or not? and what are you going to do?

I froze, I couldn't believe what I had heard with my ears. My aunt had shamelessly admitted to having killed my brother otherwise she would have denied it or defended herself from the murder accusations but instead she told my grieving mother that she didn't care about her forgiveness.

All along I thought maybe, my brother could have had an underlying sickness that could have caused the bursting of his kidneys leading to his death but no I was wrong again about my father's family. Not only do they hate us but they are also murderers.

It was okay for them not to like us, for them to see us starving and not give us food but to kill my mother’s firstborn child! just like my mother I told myself that I would never forgive them.

Two years later when I had grown older at 14, my father passed away. The disappointment of a son and a brother was out of their sight. On the other hand, the pain in our hearts was unspoken. The hard-working, loving father and husband had gone to rest.

He could no longer come home with food. He could no longer listen to us when we told him what Auntie had done to us during the day, and he could no longer sign my homework but worse than that, my sick mother had to face this tormenting family alone.

My mother didn’t recover from the death of her husband, seeing me toiling to put food on the table added to her suffering. My brother’s drug addiction and notorious behavior added salt to her injuries as a mother. You could think that my father’s family would become a little sympathetic after my father’s death but no! Nothing changed, they bad-mouthed my mother like never before and blamed her for my father’s death.

My mother was trying, I know she was, I could see it in her eyes. She blessed me the moment I stepped out and the minute I stepped back in.

I worked in people's gardens, went to school, and cried at night in the kitchen making dinner. I remember one time my sister found me crying I told her it was sweat. she told me to take off my sweater if it was too hot and I laughed through tears. I thought to myself, how stupid, you bought it? but why wouldn't she, she was a kid and in her eyes, I got us, I handled everything just like Father did.

See, the thing is I don't know why I was crying. It was normal for me. I always got episodes where I sat alone and cried, it made my chest feel lighter.

I still do sometimes, especially when people say they see mother in me- am exactly my mother’s photocopy just except am darker than she was.

When I sit in silence and imagine a six/seven-year-old little boy wearing a torn big t-shirt that probably belonged to our father, the fear he must have felt when he saw his auntie getting closer, he must have been terrified to death but probably didn’t think she could kill him for real!

The pain he must have felt must have been unbearable for a boy his age. He must have cried in agony for no help. I wonder if my parents had arrived earlier, could he have died on the way to the hospital? If my father’s relatives had taken him to the hospital immediately wouldn’t he have survived? Maybe?

Time went by and the aunt who killed my brother found the love of her life. I was at her traditional wedding, I remember very well because we were happy that at least we were free from her. I said to myself thank God, Mum doesn’t have to see her every day anymore. I always felt like the sight of her was torture to my mother and now she has gone. Not gone forever but less is better than none, right?

We were all invited to her traditional wedding, our house is close to my grandmother’s which made me think we were invited because they didn’t want outsiders to bad mouth them, or think that maybe they don’t like us or something. Whatever reason they had, we were invited.

If we refused to attend my grandmother would announce to the world how my mother turned her grandchildren against her after her son’s death. She played her cards well, you could never think of the injustices that were done to us, she even had a hand in them.

In the evening, my mother walked slowly as weak as she was, and went to the last place on earth she would want to go. On arriving, everyone at the party had been drinking and they were drunk on local beer including my uncles’ wives. My father’s relatives were all good at acting and pretending.

Had they lived in a different world, no doubt they would have rooms full of Oscars for best actors and actresses, my grandmother- best director or producer?

When my mother arrived, they were talking about us not that it would have surprised her, but my uncle’s wife was telling the guests that my father died because God was punishing us for the sins he and my mother committed. That mother was cursed and that she had bad luck.

When she turned, my mother was standing behind looking at her, out of shame she asked what my mother was looking at. She is known to have a temper even today. All my mother said was,

“If I have bad luck that shouldn’t be your problem. Just pray that bad luck never comes to your house.”

Just one word from my mother is what she needed and in a moment of anger, my mother opened her mouth, giving her the trigger she so badly needed, she immediately grabbed a walking stick from an old woman who was sitting across and hit my mother four times on her left side. My mother fell on stony ground, I was in the house when I heard people yelling at my uncle’s wife to stop.

I ran outside and saw my mother lying on the ground unable to move. I called her and she didn’t respond, it was only her chest that was heaving. I looked around at people encircling us and everything was in a blur.

They helped us carry my mother to the hospital and we reported the case to the police station. My uncle’s wife was arrested and it was somehow a relief, a glimmer of hope for justice in Uganda. But this lasted only for six hours before she was released on bail after my father’s relatives had paid a couple of thousands of shillings and she was allowed to go home while my mother lay on a hospital bed with broken ribs.

On the day of the hearing, Grandmother, my grandmother aka Kaaka stood in the courtroom after she had, left hand up, right hand on the Bible swore to tell nothing but the truth and told the judge that my mother fell down a high terrain and rolled in front of her house.

“Sebo judge, am an old woman. I have no reason to lie to you. The accused and the defendant are both my daughters-in-law, but I don’t know why she would make such accusations. Guderia[my mother] was drunk and started throwing stones at guests. She tripped and fell down the terrain and fell in front of my house. I wasn’t told, I was there and saw it with my own eyes.”Kaaka told the court.

My dear mother didn’t even drink at all. I had never seen her drink alcohol but the above was my grandmother’s words/testimony. I just couldn’t understand how they could just choose to hate us the way they did.

They paid our witness who had promised to testify and he changed his testimony on the last day. I wasn’t allowed in the courtroom because I was underage. I was waiting under a tree when I saw my father’s relatives come out first with smiles on their faces. I didn’t move an inch but their smiles notified me of the verdict.

I remember thinking, Father how long are you going to sleep? I had heard stories of ghosts coming to haunt people who torment their families so I started wondering why my father slept and never cared to look back. I thought maybe because of their hatred, they must have dug his grave so deep, and not even his ghost was able to escape.

Honestly, I wished lightning would strike them at once. I woke up from my evil wishes at the sight of my mother leaning on her sister who had accompanied us. She wasn’t able to walk well so my aunt was supporting her out of the courtroom. I ran as fast as my little feet could take me and stumbled on a stone. My already old shoe left my foot and continued with one on and fell in my mother’s feeble embrace.

For the first time, my mother broke down in front of me.

“Mwana wangye bashuba bakigarukamu, obujurizi bwabura.Ekibakorire omwana wangye bashuba bakikora”[my child, they have done it again. that there is no evidence. They have repeated the same thing they did with my firstborn child]

My mother’s mental health couldn’t have gotten well or even improved. There was no way. There were lots of triggers, no one was responsible for my mother’s condition except them. My relatives from my father’s side are responsible for all my suffering.

Only God knew what was going through my mother’s mind. Her condition could get worse at times, she would not open her eyes or even talk for an entire week. I would go to greet her in the morning before I left for work and talk to her but she would not respond. Sometimes a tear would roll out of her left closed eye. I thought that was her way of responding, letting me know she was listening.

When I was seventeen, she got very ill and I took her to the hospital. The doctors said she had developed a stroke. Her left side got paralyzed. The cause was the beating she had gotten from my uncle’s wife the year before. The nerves were damaged and because she didn’t get proper treatment it was just a matter of time. And that time had come. The hospital bills were piling up so we were sent home, a urinary catheter connected to my mother.

Two weeks later while I was in class marking my pupils’ books one at a time, my phone rang. I remember slowly turning my head toward the direction where my cell phone was in my handbag. It wasn’t very far but at the moment it felt like the handbag was miles away and I just couldn’t reach it. My body couldn’t move.

I was brought back by a tap of Rose on my hand. Rose was a beautiful dark-skinned nine-year-old in my class. She had big eyes and black gums, somehow I found myself smiling whenever I saw her face. If am being honest I looked forward to her greeting me with a smile every morning.

Her mother’s mental condition was far worse than my mother’s, true to say, she was the younger version of me.

Rose tapped my hand and gave me my handbag. My hand shaking I reached for the phone and the caller ID confirmed my fears. The words that came from the other side of the phone were

“Come home”

Is she……..I asked

“Not yet but you need to come home now”

I ran out of class, chalk dust all over my black little skirt that stopped around my knees and when I was in the mid-school compound I heard a little voice behind me. Rose was trying to catch up with a handkerchief in her left hand.

“Teacher, you have chalk on your skirt,” she said.

I started cleaning myself with the palm of my hand trying to avoid eye contact with her because of the tears filling up my eyes but made a mess with the dusty hand instead. She caught up and helped me clean my skirt. I thanked her without looking at her and ran.

I understood when someone is sick and they call you to come home it’s either because they have finally breathed their last or it’s just a matter of seconds. On a boda boda, I wondered what the “come home” meant. I just hoped my mother was somehow still breathing and that I would be able to feel her warm breath at least for the last time.

A week after we left the hospital, we started preparing for the worst but I wasn’t ready to let go of my mother. She had been motionless and you could only tell there was still air in her lungs by placing a finger very close to her nose and feeling a warm feeble breath.

I knew it would take a miracle for her but that warm breath gave me hope. So I started imagining what it was going to feel like if I placed my finger on her nose and felt nothing.

It wasn’t long before I finally reached home. When my young sister saw me she started crying. I ignored her and walked to the wooden bed where my mother was lying. My mother had lost so much weight, that you could hardly tell that there was someone inside the blankets.

She hadn’t eaten anything for days, we would just force drinking water through a natural gap between her front teeth. My mother had the same dental formula as I so while we forced drinking water through the front gap, they made fun of me that the bigger gap isn’t that bad after all. I wondered what we would do if she had closely tight teeth, lol.

I had told myself that I would not cry. Even if my mother dies, I will not cry. I will not give them a chance to see me break down and give them a topic to start a rumor. I had heard them countless times saying that God should just relieve me from the burden of taking care of my mother and give me one less mouth to feed. I would just think to myself, “You batch of wasted God’s creation precious time, have you heard me complain to you?”

“She should just die and save Sarah the burden of taking care of her. It’s not like she is useful to them in a way. At least Sarah will have one mouth less to feed.” I overheard them say one time.

The sight of them, my father’s relatives surrounding my mother at her last hour made me so angry.

“Why are they here? why are they pretending to care? They are probably here to collect rumors to keep themselves entertained after words” I murmured.

I had a rubber band around my wrist. I removed it and used it to tie my two-month-old braids to the back of my head. I sat on the wooden bed next to my mother and brought my finger close to her nose. I couldn’t understand it, was I feeling my mother’s breath? Was it warm? Was it cold?

I felt something in my stomach that I couldn’t explain, fear engulfed me and my entire body started shaking. Suddenly I remembered my mother’s words two years ago.

“One day when am no longer here, I want you to know that I will always be around and you should never feel alone or afraid. I will be watching you even if you won’t be able to see me. There’s a time you are going to come back from work and you won’t be able to talk to me or even see me but when that day comes, remember that I love you and always will. Also don’t forget that they might smile at you but that doesn’t mean suddenly they love you.”

My body was shaking as I looked around at the women from my father’s family. My brain tried to alert me that the day my mother had told me had finally come. As I was lost in my thoughts, I felt something on my finger close to my mother’s nose and heard my name being called.

When I turned, I saw white stuff coming from my mother’s nose and mouth. I couldn’t feel myself and finally, I broke down. I had heard that before a person breathes their last, such stuff comes out of them so that only meant my mother was dying.

Tears rolled down my eyes, I didn’t move an inch at first but just held on tight to my mother’s wrist but the white stuff continued coming and I got so frightened. I let go and started shaking standing over her.

Looking around, these so-called relatives were also crying. A voice told me to pray because my mother needed a dying prayer. We always prayed, it’s what held us together all the time. Whenever I felt lost, I prayed and as hard as it was, the thought felt right. A woman had told me — the only family friend since childhood visited us and prayed with us every evening.

“Sarah you need to praise the lord even at the time of death, am telling you this right now in case something happens and am not around, you need to be ready,” she said.

I went to the next room- my mother’s original room and knelt on the hard floor. I don’t know how long I prayed but it was long enough because when I came out the nurse who had been coming to change my mother’s catheter came to do the usual but found her dead so she dressed the body instead.

I walked closer and touched her but it felt like she was still warm. Her body was warm and I knew that a corpse should be cold. That’s right, I finally faced the reality and called my mother a corpse! So I asked the nurse why she was warm. The nurse explained to me that it was going to take a while before the body was completely cold.

The scriptures say,” Blessed are those that mourn for their dear ones for the angel of the lord shall comfort them”

I was mourning, so the question on my mind was, was I being blessed? Was I blessed? Was God even real? Was He watching me? Was his angel aware that I was mourning?

Having faith is not easy and if you can hold on to faith, you can go through today. And if you can hold on a little longer, you can face tomorrow.

However, my tomorrow was the day my mother was to be put deep in the ground where it never shines. As speeches were being given, a brown wooden coffin keeping my mother’s body lay amidst genuine mourners and my father’s relatives gathered around. A square framed photo of my smiling mother on top.

The last words from my mother’s in-laws were read by the MC because they were too sad to speak you know! Hahahaha!! Funny! Not so?

After about an hour of reading eulogies, it was time. A time/ hour that no one should have to go through, my mother had to be taken to her grave. The coffin was carried to her new home by her two brothers and other men who were my father’s friends. My sisters and I carried the wreaths and followed to the cemetery.

On the right side, my father’s gravestone, and on the far left my brother’s whom I never got to meet, my mother’s grave was dug next to her husband’s. They lay next to each other, I think they must be holding hands till this day because I thought they were put too close. Ok. I think I have taken this joke too far, I apologize.

I watched as the tomb swallowed my mother. The surroundings/ everything felt empty or maybe it was I that was an empty girl standing. Thinking about it, it must have been what the scriptures meant in Genesis that in the beginning, the earth was formless and desolate.

And so, according to custom traditions, my siblings and I had to throw the first soil in. I picked a handful of rocky soil and threw it in, it hit the coffin and the same sound 4 years ago echoed in my ears once more. Just like my father, my mother had also gone to a place where she could no longer hear me when I called her, she would no longer answer my cries. She could no longer cry whenever she saw fatigue on my face. She had gone to rest.

As my mother’s sister dragged me back to our house, behind me men with spades were hard at work throwing soil on my mother in the ground. My teary eyes met my aunt standing opposite my brother’s gravestone, the innocent one she murdered.

I screamed, and for the first time, I screamed as loud as my diaphragm could allow. I didn’t keep my promise, I broke down in front of them but I guess it was okay. It’s okay to cry when you are sad, right?

Life has taught me that pain is physical and suffering is mental. In most cases, it’s easy and possible for doctors to heal our pain. Our brain is an organ that works like a computer storing data which works under a user’s command. The difference is that with a computer one decides whether to keep the data, delete it, or even store it on an external hard drive depending on whether it’s important or not.

However, suffering is different. Our brain has no external hard drives. Let it be bad or good memories, past, present, and future are all stored in there. Raise your hand if you sometimes feel like your brain is about to explode!

Most of us are guilty of this and there’s you whose hand is shaking, it’s neither up nor down. You don’t know where you belong. You are so confused and guess what, it’s also adding to your brain storage!

I now know to eliminate hatred, envy, jealousy, and selfishness and develop love even for the most annoying person in the universe including the meanie auntie, and most importantly love for myself. I can achieve peace because it’s me turning into the universe, a place that is free of charge.

I have witnessed the universe providing me with extraordinary people who call my name without knowing who am. The people who are not blood-related but will call my name and because of them I can call my name and my heart is beating.

It took me a while to realize that I don’t have to worry about my father’s relatives not liking me and my mother’s offspring, I understood I could never have chosen my blood relatives but I can choose to emotionally cut off every form of negativity and disregard any un necessary opinion about me.

I choose I, me, myself, whoever matters and I call my name!

Thank you for reading! I would love to read your comment.