"Recently, a friend asked if she could share my number with someone who wanted to add me to a WhatsApp group of my undergraduate classmates. My response was an emphatic 'no.' I've long moved on from that chapter of my life and can barely recall half of my classmates.

That moment transported me back to the day my advanced level results were released during my S.6 vacation. I was devastated by not getting the grades I wanted and cried uncontrollably, as if mourning a loved one. My family left me alone, and I was inconsolable, eventually crying myself to sleep. The next morning, my swollen eyes met my dad's concerned gaze as he entered my room. I expressed my disbelief, especially with my physics results. He promised to have my papers remarked, and true to his word, he followed through. However, the results remained unchanged. On the day he shared the news, he sat with me and encouraged me to pursue the course I was given, emphasizing that it would be a stepping stone to greater things. I reluctantly went to university, hated the course, but worked hard to pass and earn my degree. It ultimately opened doors for me, and the rest is history.

As I reflect on this journey on this 23rd day of May 2024, I still deeply miss you, dear Baaba. There's so much I wish we could discuss, soooo much! I love you, continue resting in peace our dearest."

Checking In

 

Dearest Baaba,

It’s been a while! Lately, I have been thinking a lot about you. Whenever I am praying, you are one of the things I thank God for! Having a father such as you were impacted me so much and I do not take it for granted. Even though you are not here...I still feel your presence. You are such a huge part of my life. One thing I beat myself so much about is that I have not achieved an ounce of what you were able to achieve! I have even failed to find time to research ideas as much as you used to. You just seemed to have way more hours in a day than I do!! For as long as I have breath though...I am still committed to doing some of the things that I learnt from you. One of the questions you always asked...'When are you leaving formal employment?' ...is one I still struggle with...5 years down the road. It is so scary out there! I respect those who have managed to jump ship and are able not to only sustain themselves but their employees and all the people that depend on them. I certainly look forward to jumping ship and adding a new dimension to my life. I do not want to live a one-track kind of life. I want to explore other things! I want to create, to employ, to lead...the list is endless. I know as long as I put one foot in front of the other, I will get there. I learnt from you that I can and will achieve whatever I set my mind too. I love the farming side of things. The days I spend in Nwoya are so refreshing! The air is so fresh and the stress levels though high are certainly different from the office pressures! Oh, the lessons we've learnt on the Nwoya journey are priceless. I'd have loved to share every bit of that journey with you and I am so sure you’d have enjoyed it and been our greatest cheerleader too. I know if we don’t give up, keep pushing on and get the breakthrough we have been yearning for...we will have made you proud. I will have exercised the resilience and faith that I admired in you.

Love you my Baaba,

Rest in peace

Sue

Missing you my Baaba...my rock!

 

Dearest Baaba,

It’s been a while! My heart is heavy and I miss you so much today. Back then when you were here, all I needed to do was give you a call. The phone calls we shared were one of the highlights of my life. They always lifted me up and no matter how sad I was…I always left the phone feeling re-energized to move on from whatever it was that was bothering me. I wish you were only a phone-call away today…! I miss you my Baaba...my rock. I miss your positive energy, you believed that nothing was impossible. I needed that reassurance today. Since you are not here, I will share my heaviness of heart with God, my heavenly Father, I know He will lift me up and help me to carry on.

Miss you my Baaba

Thinking about you today!

 Dearest Baaba,

It is the 23rd of May once again! We would have been celebrating your 74th birthday! We still miss you and think about you a lot.

I still  remember my last visit to Jinja exactly a month before you left us when I decided to ask you how you managed to make it in life given your childhood circumstances. Your answer was simply...'God picked me.' You told me of how your cousin came and asked your Father for a child to educate and he chose you.  How you were one of eight boys who were selected from your Junior school to go to Busoga College Mwiri. How you ended up in Nairobi University where all of your lot were clamoring for mechanical  engineering but one of your lecturers who had taken keen interest in you, convinced you to do Civil Engineering!  Of course, we all know where this degree led you... Each time I remember that story, I agree with you that God indeed picked you and you were a truly blessed person. You were an outlier and everything you committed to do...succeeded!

Today we thank God for the many sacrifices you made for us. For going over and beyond for not only us your immediate family but for those who God placed under your care. We are grateful for the opportunities we still enjoy simply because we are your children.  We thank you for the stable home you gave us and for loving Maama and giving her a life that she still looks back on with nostalgia.

We thank God for holding us together since you left us in 2017 and trust Him for the many more years to come. We love you and miss you. Continue resting in peace our dearest Baaba!

On this 23rd day of May 2020!

My dearest Baaba, on this 23^rd day of May 2020 when we would be celebrating your 73^rd birthday…I celebrate you and thank God for the gift that you were and still are to me. I thank God for all

that you were to me and the things that I was able to learn from you!

2020 started off on a high note for me. I made great strides...I achieved some of the things that we talked about several times with you. I wished you were here for me to share them with you because you would have felt the same sense of achievement!  Some of  these have been interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic but …I choose to push on and will not give up for you never gave up on anything.

Over the past few months of this pandemic and the lockdown, I have often wondered how you would have gone about it. I think, you would have read a lot of literature about the disease and probably learnt about the prevention strategies which you would have shared with us. I am sure you would
have followed the guidelines of the Ministry of Health and the Presidential directives to the letter. You would have stayed home for the entire duration of the lockdown…J.  Maama has tried to do the same…even before the first case was identified in Uganda, she told me to tell all my siblings that we should all stay in our homes. She asked that I assure them that she would be okay and that we should not even plan to go home for Easter…never mind that Easter was still many weeks away. I remember Anthony responding…, ‘but Easter is still very far…when we get there we will decide.’ She was actually right…by the time we got to Easter, we could not even get out of our homes given the Presidential directives that were in place at the time.

Over the Easter weekend though, Maama started feeling that the house was too empty for the season! Thanks to technology, we were able to all get together for at least two hours! It was nice seeing each other and just talk without structure! Becca…said it overwhelmed her but I felt it was okay to
just talk…which made it a lot different from the structured work meetings!

Almost 3 years on…I still miss you so much. I have failed to let go of your picture, I feel like taking you off my profile will make me push you to the back of my mind. My nephew Tom…has begged me to remove the picture saying that it makes him sad but…I am not there yet!

I cannot forget to thank God for bringing us this far, for sustaining all of us especially Maama, for making her stronger every single day, for giving her a strong will to live and the strong support system which He has provided her.

Today in your memory, I will sing your favorite hymn and call to mind the many pleasant memories that I have of you. Continue resting in peace our dearest! We love you and always will.

A letter from my Dad

My family had a new year's tradition...every 31st of December, we gathered in the seating room to eagerly wait for the new year! At the stroke of midnight, we would bid the old year farewell led by Maama who always composed a short song which we sang along with her! We then welcomed the new year with a  prayer often led by Baaba & Maama and then reviewed our resolutions for the past year and congratulated those who had achieved theirs. We would each mention our resolutions and these would be recorded in our resolution book. Baaba's resolutions always included finding more time for us. This meant among other things being available to visit us on our school visiting days. He tried to make it and whenever he couldn't, he would write a letter. Recently, I found one such letter .....hand written in a very beautiful handwriting. Unedited, it reads:

Hullo Susan,
It is quite long since I last saw and talked to you. All the same, I hope that you are alright and that you are pushing on with your studies.
I thought I would have a chance of visiting you before the exams start but unfortunately this has not been possible. I am therefore dropping this line to you to re-assure you that success is yours as long as you observe the rules of the game.
The first golden rule is to keep calm. Don't panic. Take it easy and keep relaxed throughout the exam. 
The second one is that, read through the whole paper once and make sure that you understand what they want you to do. As you read through, keep on ticking the numbers that you think you can do.
The third rule  is that read through the paper a second time - this time selecting the numbers that you can do by section as per requirements of the paper. After selecting the numbers you will attempt, now choose and start with the simplest of them all. You now proceed by attempting the next simplest - ending up with the hardest one. If you cannot get the numbers required in the paper - that is if they want you to answer six questions but you can only pick five - don't worry. Answer the five very well - you will pass. Remember, you don't need 100% to get a good pass!
The fourth rule is that if  a paper has a compulsory number and you don't fully understand it, you simply ignore it. First answer the others that you know very well and then if there is still time, you can attempt the compulsory number right at the end.
The fifth rule, is that don't leave the exam room before the allotted time is over. If you feel you have answered all the questions required of you and there is still more time, please  now read through your answers checking for spelling mistakes, addition mistakes, calculation errors plus any other things that you may have done wrongly.
The sixth rule is that always show your workings properly explaining from step one to the last step. During your checking after finishing, don't rush to cross out a number  you have done because of a small calculation error before you have corrected it as you may run short of time and fail to complete the correction and then miss the marks for the working. Remember the answer itself carries very little marks - as far as calculations are concerned.
Finally, the seventh rule is the first one. It is a must. One must not panic. Avoid discussing papers you have finished as some false alarms may cause you problems during the subsequent papers.
Let me conclude  by assuring you that we are all praying for you. I have my hopes in you and with God's help, I hope you will certainly make it. I wish you the best of luck that God can give. Stay well and take good care of yourself.
Your loving father,
James
28/10/92

Even though it was written 27 years ago, its content is still so relevant. I will share it with my Atamba after tailoring the content to her current P.7 class. I believe, I will use it for Marky too. Its truly timeless advice.

Dear Baaba, on this day when we'd have been celebrating your 72nd birthday...I celebrate and treasure you! Thank you for being such a loving father. I am grateful for all the beautiful memories.
Rest in peace our dearest!

Nostalgic memories!

Dearest Baaba, Two weeks ago, I attended a wedding and the love between the Father of the bride and his daughter took me back to my own marriage season. I started missing you ....tears welled up in my eyes but did not want to be seen crying on someone else's happy day! I remembered you driving me to my counseling sessions at the Ssenyonyi's home in Mukono. Sometimes...you'd return before the sessions ended and you'd patiently wait for me at your late friend Dr. Bulamu's clinic. On our drive home, I always shared what I had learnt and the other things I had heard about marriage and you always took time to share with me your very own experience. You always told me that if I involved God in my marriage everything would go well. I recall at my farewell lunch at home when you gave everyone an opportunity to say something to me and you interrupted someone who had started telling me how difficult marriage was for you believed that there was nothing difficult with God. I am so glad that your own marriage was a good example for me and made me look forward to my own. I knew then and I still know now that with God's help I am here till that day that we talked about in our wedding vows. Maama's memory of you is of that excellent husband who loved her unconditionally! She speaks of your early morning prayers and the many things that you shared. She speaks of your love for your children and how on that fateful day you demanded that she calls us because you wanted to see us before you left. I am eternally grateful to God for allowing each one of us to see you in that final week. He revived you and allowed you to speak with us one more time. My last day with you in that intensive care unit is one I will never forget. God allowed me to see your jovial and strong self... cracking your usual jokes. I remember asking the nurse how you were doing and he told me that they were ready to discharge you to the wards but you'd refused. When I asked why you'd refused...you told me that you did not feel ready but also the number of people checking on you would not allow you to rest! Even though..you were not well yourself.....you asked me about Claire's baby Aaron (RIP) who had passed on that morning but I told you he was well. I did not want that to put you down for you understood how far God had brought Aaron. You went on to tell Babirye my cousin that you'd almost gone without saying your goodbyes to her. At that time, I did not read anything into it but God was certainly telling us something! A year on...I still miss you terribly! I have not come to terms with the fact that I will never ever see you again. At your memorial service, Rev. Suubi gave a very good sermon and the reading from the book of revelation really gave me hope that I will see you again some day. I want to keep your memory alive...I want to be as hardworking as you were and I certainly want to focus on the things that you held dear. Rest in peace my dearest Baaba, you'll forever hold a very special place in my heart.