Wednesday/June/3rd/2025.
Hy diary. Long time.
Anyway,as always,here I am again. What would bring me to write today? Here I am,at home still. As you know things have been going fairly foul lately. I mean with my mother's occasional negative remarks on me and most of the time not so endearing actions but somehow I still manage to stay positive. Still standing. Still patient. Most of the time and even now, I can't help wondering,am I the bad child,a pushover? What exactly could have gone wrong? Why am I the one who is always wrong? Looked down on and forced into corners? Maybe am indeed that bad after all but exactly how bad? I can't help wondering.
Anyway, today here is the reason I hold my pen and start writing once again and to cut slightly from the usual, it's not so much about my mom. So, last Monday, Fatuma,my sister came home. She doesn't come often anymore which is quite worth mentioning considering she just got out of school last year. But yet again, it's quite imaginable especially since she had been staying with her boyfriend even before she had gotten out of school. She chose to stay with him while she was still in s3 and with time mom grew accustomed to it and let her be since she could still attend school on a regular basis plus her boyfriend some times have her money for fees if she were sent back and she chose to go to him instead of coming back. There had been a lot of rumours swirling around my sister and her boyfriend since they got together some years back. Like how her boyfriend is so much older than her yet she was still so young, she had been around sixteen when she had started seeing him and she says he was about twenty four at the time. People said he smoked marijuana,had red bloodshot eyes and was more involved with older women than girls his age or to be more specific,my sister's age. There was a 'feigned' wide spread of fear for her future health. While she was still less entangled with this one, two younger guys fought over her at the centre one night and 'concerned' and speculative citizens started approaching our mom demanding what she was doing sitting home quietly while her daughter made a fool of herself. During those times,we seldom saw my sister since she had run away from home and she was randomly staying at different people's houses. People we even had no relation to! We are from a Muslim family yet she often doned flashy trousers and even crop tops!! All the wrong kinds of clothes were found in her closet ranging from very short jean skirts and dresses to revealing tops and damage trousers. Once she even left someone's house saying it was because the older woman wanted her to lend her clothes and she couldn't bear with it.
So, mom started looking for my sister while I stayed home with her and the others but she just couldn't catch up with her. Some times they even met at the centre and my sister would bypass right by our mom or right infront of her without bothering to kneel down and greet her. Simply,she didn't recognize her anymore as her mother and that's taboo here in Africa not to mention our Uganda and my mom's Baganda tribe! Mom would end up bursting into tears and wailing like someone dear to her had died while my sister would act like nothing happened at all.
Later,mom would come back home looking so Haggard and worn out while my sister wouldn't even show up to explain herself or apologize and mom would continue to wail in her bedroom deriving our whole humble home of any home while she cursed my sister continuously to never find peace in this world and even told me to work multiple times harder because I would have to support my sister later in her life after she had gotten so many killer diseases and her men nolonger wanted her and she would be having completely nothing while our mom claimed that she would be already dead by then and as the one who is older,I would have to take care of my sisters. I have two biological sisters and am the oldest. While the youngest Mastula was just about six or seven years back then and I was probably nineteen. I was so terrified of such strong cursed even when they were not directed at me but at my sister! I told my mom I wouldn't be able to work that hard and knelt down and started begging her to forgive my sister while she started calling upon her long lost brothers and sisters alongside dead ancestors to come and take her life just so she could rest from my sister's torment and to this,I would try to reason with her that my youngest sister her last born was still so young to lose her mother but our mom wouldn't listen to any of it. Instead, she would continue wailing and cursing my sister amidst calling for her dead relatives and ancestors and at some point, Mastula would join her in crying, terrified at the thought of losing her dear mother while I didn't dare get up from my kneeling position lest our mother was just about to say her forgiveness to my sister and I annoyed her or even missed it but it never came even when I knelt and started shaking from too much kneeling in one position. She swore she would never forgive my sister and would take her grievances to the grave with her 'soon' leaving Fatuma to suffer from her cursed! During those days, our already slender mom lost a lot of weight becoming completely thin and Haggard. She would often complain that she didn't feel any pride anymore while moving around the village. She felt completely exposed and worn, shameful without any secrets of her own all because of a daughter she had given birth to herself. And still all through this all,my sister never showed up and even if she did, she never apologized!