My name is Kyampire Charlotte, also known as Nalongo. I am the mother of twins. I was borne an illegitimate child to a wealthy married man who wanted to have a boy. Since I was borne a girl, he didn’t want me. He told my mother to take me away because he wasn’t going to risk ruining his marriage for a girl. Before their separation, my mother got pregnant again and told my father that if he couldn’t build a house for her she would abort because she wasn’t going to keep giving birth in the dark. When she finally aborted, she found out it was a boy. When she told my father he got very furious and told her he never wanted to see her again.
Eventually my mother found a man who wanted to marry her, but I was told I couldn’t go with her because the man didn’t want me. I insisted on going with her but life got very hard for me and I would get food only when my mother was around. There were times she would be gone for many days and I would find that I couldn’t even stand because of hunger. When I was eleven years old, my mother got very ill. She decided to ask my father to take me. He objected but his sisters came for me and after two weeks my mother passed away. When I came back for the burial my step father said he didn’t want me. This meant I had to go to my father’s place, even when I knew he didn’t want me there. I stayed there for a while until he decided I shouldn’t stay with them anymore and also gave a warning to any of my uncles and aunties about taking me in. I didn’t know where to go because I had no place where I was wanted. That was very devastating for me. I attempted to commit suicide to escape from everything and that’s when I met an old friend of my mothers who found me almost dying of hunger. She took me in, but didn’t have the best intentions for me because she made me work for her for five years without pay or even a decent meal. I tried many ways to escape in vain. Finally I went back to my step father”s place where the wife didn’t even want me to stay for a day. I had to endure abuses, a lot of work and insults on why my wealthy father rejected me.
I was looking for a way of finding a place to call my own. I met a man who had come to that village. When he approached me I just asked him if he had a house, a bed and a place we can call ours. He lied about that and because of my desperate situation I didn’t have time for assessment’s or getting to know him better. We left together for his parents place and to my shock he didn’t have a house, didn’t own a bed or even personal clothing. He just woke up every day to drink alcohol. Soon, his father chased us from his house because he wouldn’t tolerate laziness in him. I went to kabale to look for a house and I found one I could afford. I was extremely happy it existed. His family was not happy about us staying in town, but never the less we came and started a new life. He used to potter at different construction sites and I used to work for a lady that ran a small restaurant. She used to pay me 800 Ugandan shillings. That could barely pay rent, since my husband would take his to the bar. Life didn’t get any easier.
After a while, my employer had to close the business. I started moving from place to place looking for a job. I was very pregnant, so people didn’t want to risk hiring me. I just decided to work in a saloon where I would help the lady clean or finish braiding until I was due. Giving birth wasn’t easy since I couldn’t afford the requirements. I almost gave birth in the backyard of the hospitals until one lady offered to buy me gloves. On coming back home, I had to start from scratch from looking for food to getting a job so as to be able to pay our rent. I later got offers for doing chores in people’s houses. In this way I was able to get lunch for me and my son. At this point all my husband was doing was to taking alcohol and getting into fights or getting us into debts.
When my son was a year and a half I got pregnant and promised myself that I would only have two children and that would be it. I kept doing those numerous small jobs until my due date to have my child. Because of the previous experience I had in the hospital, I didn’t want to risk going there and decided to deliver from home. I called a friend who helped me cut the cord of the baby and then waited for the baby sack to come out. I kept bleeding endlessly and nothing came. Little did I know I had another child in my womb. I called the lady I used to work for and asked her to call a midwife. When she came she said that my uterus was covering the baby and the baby didn’t have a way of coming out. She suggested I rush to the hospital, my worst nightmare. When I got there they put me on a lot of medication. Immediately after the baby was pulled out I was unconscious for many hours. When I woke up I couldn’t leave the hospital since I had a bill to take care of. Since my husband was home nursing his wounds, I went and borrowed from friends and also sold my only goat and was finally discharged. Coming home, life had never been this hard, I had to wake at 3pm to wash for my new born twins, leave home at 6 sharp to look for work, yet I would not have slept the previous night since they would cry just like any baby. I got rejected at places of work because I had twins. The worse thing was their father ran away because of the addition that we couldn’t afford to take care of.
All in all I am grateful I survived death and that God has stood with me and my children. Even with the struggles He has given me the strength to carry on. I accepted Christ as my Savior. Even if it didn’t take away all my suffering, it brought blessings and a different attitude about living. My children are healthy and my twins recently got a sponsor From Two Roads foundation. I am very grateful because He has not even for a day forgotten about me.
With the fellowship we have every Tuesday and Sunday at Two Roads Junction, I have been given an opportunity to share the word of God and give my testimony. This has not only helped me grow in Christ but also be confident in talking about his word. I have a family now with the women and men at the fellowship. I now have somewhere I can say I belong to and I am very grateful for.