Meet me Halfway!

Today I think I looked pain in the eye. Today I watched a family of only little children bury their only breadwinner – their mother. Today, I saw a crippled 14-year-old take over the leadership of the family 5 nearly homeless children. Today, I learnt that I haven’t even felt pain.

The headline this morning only read “16TH WOMAN KILLED IN ENTEBBE” And the people on social media all posted about how concerned they are getting about Entebbe deaths. Meanwhile, no one showed up while this impoverished family sent off their only breadwinner, their only hope, their single mother.

I struggled to hold back my tears but all this was in vain as I watched these little children painfully mourn their mother. The only relatives present contributed food for the burial and none was willing to talk about what the next step for these orphaned children was. No one knows their father’s whereabouts and he hasn’t even shown up for the burial. Annet is only 14 years old, crippled and now ladened with the responsibility to take care of her siblings, 11, 8, 4 and 1 respectively. They live in a little leaking windowless old house deep in Nansana. This house belonged to their now deceased grandparents.

They have a little cassava garden in the backyard. Their mother and 11-year old Brian tended other people’s gardens to afford a living for themselves and school fees for the children, except Annet who can not go to school because of her condition. Now without their mother, all their hopes of ever completing school are shattered. Annet can even barely support herself.

All the police did was carry their mother’s body to hospital for post mortem when they found it lifeless in a nearby swamp. And that was just all.

The headline tomorrow will read “ANTI PORNOGRAPHIC COMMITTEE TO BE GIVEN MORE MONEY” maybe. Or “17TH WOMAN KILLED IN ENTEBBE” And then we’ll be back to our social media, complaining, insulting the minister for gender and then back to slaying. Even the media will only tell us about how another body has been discovered and what police is doing to curb these killings. No one goes deep to find out more about these murdered women, their dependants, who they’ve left behind or even their conditions. No one knows who is getting hurt after these killings. It’s not our business maybe.

No one knows the murdered victims. They weren’t popular. They weren’t on social media. They weren’t our friends. They aren’t in our neighbourhood. And so we won’t bother.

Tomorrow we’ll continue to discuss the Anti Pornographic Committee. And life will move on just fine. Annet, on the other hand, will still be mourning with her siblings, hungry, helpless, loveless and neglected.

You see what i did there? you felt it? Did you get emotional? Did you feel it hurt a little? I’m sorry. This is fictional and as i sit by at the back of my laptop to jot this down, I too, i’m remorseful. This here could be placing of imaginary characters to drive my message home but all this is happening right under our noses and all we are doing is folding our arms and looking on anguish.

We need to go beyond screaming about the murdered women in Entebbe to finding out how their dependants are living. These are not prominent women. These are poor farmers, single mothers, labourers with families entirely dependant on only them. They need help. They don’t deserve to be ignored, not by the government, not by the media, not by us. We can always do something to help out people. So how about we all meet each-other Halfway

End Of Time

The first time I met Jolly was at a cafe in Ntinda at the celebration of Rita’s birthday. Ritah was the common denominator. Jolly and I were part of the few friends that had been invited to turn up at this birthday party.

We went on to become friends though at an arm’s stretch. Our meet up with Jolly was mainly at girls’ nights like this when we met in a group. This went on for quite some time until Jolly’s vibrancy and participation in all our group activities dwindled. First, we thought it was mood swings that would soon swing out of her, but how wrong! It went on and on.

Her distance lengthened each day that passed by and with time we completely ignored her. After days that turned into months of no say from Jolly, we recently had an engagement as the usual group and jolly showed face something that left all of us flabbergasted but also delighted in some sort of way.

However, what struck all of us was the fact that she looked so emotionally drained with barely any speech. Again, much as we wanted to sympathize with her, we thought it was one of her antics and we somewhat all ended up ignoring her. Even when I stood with her in the cold on the balcony, I watched her drink herself out of sanity, and I said nothing. She was literally emotionless.

“Maybe my worst mistake was ignoring Jolly that night”, I said to myself over a cup of coffee the next morning. Maybe I could’ve had her speaking about her problem. Maybe I’d help find help for her, maybe we’d help, maybe – just maybe. But all that never came to pass. We moved on with our lives, we chose to act like everything was absolutely normal.
Again, moons passed by, the sun went to sleep and it woke up as a planned routine and we grew apart in connection to Jolly. A few weeks later, darkness struck! My heart sunk when I heard about Jolly’s death. Like a plague spreads, the news of her death spread so fast and it swept us off our feet with the most surprise leaving both in shock and in heartbreak. Jolly was gone! Why? We didn’t know nor did we see it coming.

Apparently, Jolly had been battling depression for almost half a year. All this while, she was trying to fit herself in society and we didn’t help her as much and we didn’t give her a place among us. We all froze at the news. She committed suicide. She cruelly took her own life and I think it’s something we could’ve avoided. We never gave her a place among us. We never gave her an ear, a shoulder, the love she desired.

Jolly was buried last week. I struggle to forgive myself for having taken her for granted. I should have done something, maybe called her or hugged her. I wonder how many other people around me are going through the same.

It’s not just Jolly. It’s so many people we’re ignoring right now. It’s your workmate that’s always late and you have no idea why. It’s the sad teenage boy seated next to you in that taxi. It’s the unhappy waitress at your favorite bar. It’s even your wife that you never give attention.

Let’s listen to people, let’s share love, let’s be nice. Life is very unpredictable. You never know what people are going through. You never know the plans they have for their own lives. Death is a sad thing to befall any of us, especially if it’s something we could avoid. So hug that person and be there for them.
You just never know when you see them last, and that’s the really sad irony of life.