by Jessica Yu
He could speak, but he rarely uttered more than two words. He seemed to understand what was said around him, but he often chose to ignore it. He could laugh and play with his classmates, but he might cry in class when told to hold a pen. And then there was the limp. The lame hand. Was he born with these infirmities? Or had he been abused?
What was his story?
AN AVERAGE ISSUE of a New Vision newspaper sold 30,000 copies. Each copy was read by around 10 people. The children Gladys profiled had a chance to be recognized by 300,000 people.
How many people had read Trevor’s story by now? Four hundred thousand? Half a million? Someone out there had to know his mother, his father, a relative, even a neighbor. Someone had seen this little one tottering through the village, maybe in pursuit of a football fashioned out of balled-up kavera, the plastic bags harvested from trash piles. Someone had lived next to the family of the quiet boy with the smile and the limp. Someone out there had to be able to tell Gladys about Trevor’s people and why they had given him up.
And so, risking Dr. Love’s disapproval, Gladys inserted Trevor’s photo into her column again.
WHERE ARE MASEMBE’S PARENTS?
Trevor Masembe, 6, has been missing from his parents since March 2013. He was abandoned at Katalemwa Cheshire Home, where a Good Samaritan picked him up and handed him over to Kawempe Police . . .
And again.
MASEMBE SETTLES
Over a year ago, Trevor Masembe, 7, was abandoned at Katalemwa Cheshire Children’s Home, in Wakiso District. He was taken to Kawempe Police Station, where officers searched for his relatives in vain . . .
And again.
MASEMBE ABANDONED AT CHILDREN’S HOME
A year ago, Trevor Masembe, 7, was abandoned at Katalemwa Cheshire Children’s Home, Wakiso District, by an unknown person . . .
A Tale of Two Georges
Getting to a place was always half the battle. Anywhere in Uganda could be tricky to reach, and usually was. Given Gladys’s travel needs, taxi and boda-boda fares could easily eat up half her earnings. Traffic was terrible. And there were only so many hours in the day; usually she spent four or five of them just getting from Entebbe to Kampala and back.
She had learned to be efficient when she reached a place, whether interviewing a group of orphans or reporting on a medical center or visiting a police contact en route to a story. It was easy to cut to the chase; it was hard to get to the starting line. How much more she could get done if she could just get to wherever she needed to be. But such was life.
The hundreds of children she had assisted over the years had floated off everywhere like the tufted seeds of the desert rose. It was impossible to keep track of them all, but there were those who had taken root in her heart and in the hearts of her readers. When too many months passed without seeing such children, Gladys felt a tickling mix of obligation and curiosity. What was happening in their lives? What were they doing right now, at this moment? She needed to see them, and for them to see her.
Her readers also deserved such updates, but unfortunately the paper did not provide for the expenses of such reporting. As a freelancer, Gladys could not even expect an allowance for airtime for her cell phone.
Occasionally Good Samaritans would offer help with transportation costs, with offers to drive or to pay for a car hire. When Gladys had access to a vehicle, as she did this week, she took full advantage. She called the hired driver, Michael Wawuyo, to find out what kind of vehicle he owned. “Where we will be going, you will need a very strong car,” she explained.
Mike informed her that he had a Volvo station wagon, which, though old, was sturdy and well made.
“See if you can get a bigger vehicle,” she urged. “I don’t think you will want to drive your own car on those roads.”
If Mike’s instinct had been to defend the robustness of his Volvo, something in Gladys’s comment made him reconsider. On the morning of the journey, he pulled up in front of the New Vision offices in a white Toyota van with a chrome bush grille over its nose.
Mike got out of the car to greet her, his lanky figure unfolding to nearly six and a half feet. He was an actor who also worked as an art director and a fixer for visiting film crews, among the many jobs he had held over his fifty-odd years. He was the kind of person one valued in a place like Uganda. Fluent in over a dozen African languages, he had met everyone, been everywhere, and done everything. He could charm a bureaucrat and stare down a thug. His severe breed of handsomeness, which suited the police and military characters he often portrayed, belied a congenial personality and an easy sense of humor. Such factors became especially important when spending a fourteen-hour day in the car together.
Gladys informed Mike that in making two stops, they would be visiting eight children. “We will be checking on my quadruplets,” she said.
“Quadruplets!”
“Two sets,” she added, grinning in anticipation of his double-take.
“Two sets!” Mike repeated. “Not from the same woman, surely.”
“No,” she said. “Different mothers. But both fathers are named George.”
FIRST THEY WOULD make the long journey to the Kakuru family in rural Kiboga, about sixty miles northwest of Kampala.
Gladys had first met Mary and George Kakuru five years before. The couple already had five young children when, at thirty-three, Mary gave birth to the quadruplets. The family was penniless, the four babies sickly, their mother ill and unable to produce sufficient milk. When Gladys took on their case, her readers responded generously, with donations of hospital fees, transportation, clothes, milk, and food.
But Gladys could not stop there. It worried her to send those babies back home. The family of eleven was crammed into an old thatched hut where swarms of flies buzzed in the urine stench. When it rained, the ragged roof provided no more shelter than the fronds of a palm tree. After Mary’s youngest girl got pneumonia, Gladys discovered that the blanket she had given them was being used by the whole family as a kind of damp tent. It simply would not do.
The notion of building a home for the Kakuru family, a true brick-and-mortar structure, sprouted in Gladys’s mind. It took over two years of campaigning and coordinating and hard work, but she did it.
“Nobody in my family has ever lived in an iron-sheet roofed house,” Mary had declared for one of Gladys’s follow-up articles. “I believed the quadruplets were a blessing from God and had a feeling they could even be a turning point for my family! Thanks be to God, for he listened to my prayers.”
While Gladys basked in the glow of the Kakurus’ delight, not everyone admired her efforts. “What is there to boast of, building a house for those quadruplets?” one of Gladys’s friends had sniffed, seeing pictures of Mary’s new home. “You yourself are still living in a rented place.”
Gladys and her friend were baffled by each other’s behavior. It was like discovering that one could perceive colors and the other could not.
Why has Gladys wasted all this effort to help a stranger with too many children? thought Gladys’s friend.
Why can’t my friend see the happiness in providing a house for a needy family? thought Gladys.
Perhaps it was simply how one was created, Gladys surmised. One saw the colors or one did not.
There were others who saw what she saw. Good Samaritans like the Shalitas, the elderly couple who had helped provide supplies for the family, or Anita, the lovely young woman who had elicited support from the Toyota dealership where she worked. Gladys’s first article about Mary and the quadruplets had broken Anita’s heart. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she had just given birth to her third child.
“I have everything, you know?” Anita explained. “And I feel like I should do more.”
On this latter point, Mary felt the same way. She had no shortage of ideas for how others might help her. Even now, on the way to the Kakurus’ home, Gladys’s phone chimed repeatedly with calls from Mary. Gladys sighed, knowing that it was f
utile to try to pick up.
In recent weeks the woman had been “beeping” Gladys—calling and hanging up immediately, so her number would appear on Gladys’s cell without using up any of her own airtime—about a “very urgent matter.”
“The house is falling down,” she declared when Gladys called her back. “The rains have started, and we are worried that the wall will collapse on us!”
The house had stood for three years now, but it seemed that the work would never end.
SINCE THE BEGINNING, Gladys’s roommate, Esther, had assisted with the Kakuru family. Such urgent cases appealed to her charitable nature.
Gladys and Esther had become friends after Gladys reported on some renovations at Entebbe Airport, where Esther worked as an electrician. It made sense for them to save money on rent together: Esther was supporting a young son through boarding school, and Gladys had her many obligations. They held similar values—hard work, self-reliance, charity—but there were complementary differences as well.
Most striking was the contrast in volume. There was Gladys, large and loud. Her size was due not to lack of discipline (in fact she did not overeat, although her meals were usually fried and starchy and hastily consumed) but to a naturally fortified physical structure. Her bones, her frame, even her cheeks—everything was built for heavy cargo. Bolstered by this foundation, her voice emerged a formidable instrument, capable of foghorn blasts, shrill toots, and everything in between. Her belly laugh could shake the walls.
Then there was Esther, a rowboat to Gladys’s steamship. Petite and reticent, she talked far more slowly than her older friend—when she could get a word in. Her abstemious diet—vegetarian, spiceless, teetotal—fed a mild and patient temperament. When accompanying Gladys out in the field, she preferred to sit back and observe. When Gladys’s emotions spurted from her in yelps and bursts, Esther favored the verbal styptic. A ten-minute rant about a parent’s negligence might muster from her a dry “That one is not good.”
If Gladys wore her heart on her sleeve, Esther kept hers tucked in her pocket.
Esther had arranged to take the day off from the airport, not wanting to miss the chance to visit the Kakuru family. She and Gladys made a quick stop at a trading center. Even when her purse was thin, as it frequently was these days, Gladys made an effort to take small gifts when visiting the family. If she arrived empty-handed, everyone would be annoyed.
“Don’t buy her beans this time,” Esther suggested. “Mary doesn’t cultivate.”
Gladys agreed, purchasing a kilo of sugar, a few bars of soap, and a loaf of bread. Not that sugar and soap would satisfy Mary, she knew. The woman beeped her constantly with demands, large and small. The kids need shoes. Someone stole our furniture. Why do you not bring us maize, beans, and soybeans every month as you used to?
Anita of the Toyota dealership also felt harassed by Mary’s demands. “It is her house, not ours,” she stressed to Gladys. “She needs to own it.”
Agreeing heartily, Gladys had recently attempted to advance the tough-love agenda. “Mary, I think I have done all I can do.”
“You are tired of me,” the woman replied, pouting.
“No. But this is something I want to put in your head. Now that you have this home, it’s high time you own it. You own it. It is your concern and your husband’s.”
Mary seemed momentarily chastened. George was another story. He would answer the phone, which Gladys had bought for Mary, but he could never supply the answers to even the simplest of Gladys’s questions.
“Where are the kids?” she would ask him. “Do they have their school uniforms?”
Silence. Perhaps a mumble. It was like talking to a sleeping cat.
En route to Kiboga, the car passed the wall of a school with the painted message POVERTY IS A LION. IF YOU DON’T STRUGGLE IT WILL EAT YOU.
“That’s right,” Gladys said, thinking out loud. “You must struggle to overpower it!”
Maybe struggle was the wrong word. If you were poor, of course you struggled to keep your head above water. But it wasn’t enough just to wiggle your arms and legs. At some point you needed to swim to shore.
THE RAINS HAD indeed come, and the land at Mary and George’s place was muckier than usual. Mike had to park the white van on the road, as the path to the house was a patchwork of grassy spots and brown puddles of indeterminate depth. Maize grew tall on one side of the path; on the other side, longhorn cattle grazed on thick grass. Neither the maize nor the cattle belonged to Mary, who stood in the middle wearing a smile stretched thin by impatience. Like Gladys, she was a large woman, but with a lower center of gravity. It settled below her waist and filled out the folds of her kingfisher-blue dress, giving her the immobile bearing of a concrete road divider.
After boisterous greetings, Gladys and Esther followed Mary toward the house. The visitors lagged behind their barefoot hostess as they tried not to muddy their shoes. Long ruts stretched irregularly across the path, leading to the inevitable wet steps and yelps of dismay.
Mary seemed not to notice her visitors’ awkward dance as she launched into her speech. “The house is coming apart,” she warned. “People who see it agree that the whole wall needs to be demolished and rebuilt. The local workers don’t want to repair it. They say you have to replace it.”
As the litany of faults grew longer, it was impossible not to imagine the worst: a house with bread-crust walls, beams poised to crush children’s heads if one of them should emit a loud sneeze. Gladys was used to Mary’s complaints, but clearly something was wrong. What if the house did need to be rebuilt? What would she tell all the Good Samaritans who had placed their goodwill—and money—in her hands?
“The house is really scaring us,” Mary claimed as they reached the concrete structure with three large rooms and a bathroom. Yes, there were fissures snaking up the corners of the doorframe and the windows, but nothing so severe as to indicate imminent collapse. Gladys and Esther ran tentative hands over the cracks. No cement crumbled under their fingertips.
“See?” Mary accused, perhaps sensing her presentation’s lack of climax. “The doors don’t close. The whole house is slanting.”
Mike walked in and out of the house, peering up and down, tapping the walls and the cracks like a woodpecker searching for grub tunnels. On one wall of the sitting room, a cheerful chalked message from three years before now took on a sarcastic bent: YOUR WELCOME TO THIS HOUSE.
“The ground is wet and soft here,” Esther explained. “The foundation shifts.”
“But still, something can be done,” said Gladys. “What about iron bars to support the cracks?”
“They need to make holes to put a ceiling beam in,” Mike called out from the sitting room. “And then cross some supporting beams inside. An L-shaped beam. That’s it: the house will be held in position.”
Mary dismissed their suggestions. “The whole wall should be brought down.”
“That will cost a lot of money,” Gladys countered. “How much money do you have?”
“I don’t have money!”
“What about the solar business?” Applying her expertise, Esther had installed some wiring to place a solar panel on the roof, providing Mary with a small phone-charging enterprise.
“The battery for the solar stopped working. I already called to tell you,” Mary scolded. “There’s so much I tell you about, I don’t know why you don’t listen.”
This made the women laugh. “You are being abusive now!”
“What about planting?” Gladys continued. “What are you cultivating now?”
“A little cassava. I did some beans. But most of them were killed by the rain.” She peered into the bags that the visitors had brought her, taking measure of the offerings: sugar, soap, bread. She glanced up. “Why didn’t you bring me beans this time?”
“I can’t bring you beans all the way from Kampala. It doesn’t make sense. You have to plant your own beans.”
Mary shook her head, a smile twisting her mou
th.
“Mary,” Gladys chided. “Why do you always ask me to bring you beans?”
“It’s your fault. You’ve gotten me used to getting beans from you. I can’t stop asking, because you’ve gotten me used to asking.”
“But the beans cost two thousand shillings. And you can grow your own.”
“Then bring me more beans so I can plant some!”
The women giggled together, Gladys’s laugh trailing off into an “Ahh . . .” Gladys infused her sigh with as much reproachful dismay as one syllable could carry.
Mary took no notice, let alone offense. “See that crack in the ceiling?” she said, one hand gesturing up, the other fisted on a hip. “It’s because water seeps into the house. You need to fix it before the roof falls in.”
“Can we go by and see the children?” Gladys asked, desperate to change the subject.
“No, they are still in school.”
“Can we see them on their return?”
“No, they are still in school,” Mary said stubbornly.
Gladys peeked in the bedrooms, which were scattered with donated clothes and drooping laundry and soiled sheets. The sting of urine tinged the air. The beds were unmade, the mattresses still wrapped in the plastic that had covered them when Gladys had purchased them. The headboards were of good quality, their gold cloth upholstery as incongruous as a watch on a panhandler’s wrist. Some foreigner, a mzungu, had donated the beds and some chairs.
“What happened to the chairs?”
“Someone stole the chairs,” Mary said. “And the white lady didn’t replace them.”
Esther glanced at the floor space where the chairs had formerly resided. “At least you can make some mats to sit on.”