Who Could Love A Bastard?

How I lost the only person in the world who loved me.

Author: Gordon Menhya

As I write today, I am drowning in regrets. This is because I am a mistake and I made mistakes too due to peer pressure and failure to listen to advice from my beloveds.

My name is Amutuhairwe Mistake. Yes Mistake is my English name! Am a male Ugandan aged twenty three from the western part of the country. Martha conceived me out of rape.

One unfortunate day when this “goddess of beauty” was from the borehole fetching water, she was raped by a gang of boys one of whom is my father. I hope he is alive.

Who would marry a girl with a past history of raped in Africa traditional Society? Guess what! Ronald, one of the village carpenters couldn’t resist his love for Martha the “Village goddess of beauty”.

Her eyes as white as snow, her body like a Fanta Soda bottle must have swept this carpenter off his feet. And he decided to marry her off.

However he seemed not fine with the idea of my mother coming along with her “bustard” young one into the marriage.

He wasn’t willing to father me, Mum had to hand me over to her mother, my grandmother who was a staunch catholic to save her new miraculous marriage.

My granny natured me in a Christian catholic manner with constant reminders “that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Sooner than later, my grandmother died of age and I was left alone. As it is said in the Luganda proverb that “ elephant can never fail to carry its tusks”, My mother picked me up and she took me to stay with my stepfather who didn’t like me.

He decided to take me to a boarding school since he wasn’t fine with the idea of me staying around him.

My siblings kept in day school. When holidays came, he always advised my mum to take me to one of her relatives for holidays.

At the age of sixteen after my senior Four, “Martha’s” elder brother invited me to spend the vacation with him in Kampala.

I was really excited! I had never been to the capital before. Now this was a turning point of my life.

During my stay in Kampala I met new friends which friends I never knew would lead to my downfall. These new friends looked cool since they were street dancers. Which village boy would never want to fit in cool town boys?

Poor sido joined this click of peers who exposed me to all sorts of drugs in all forms be it weed in its raw form, cookies, powders, injections think of it all.

All this seemed interesting after them teaching me all the modern dance strokes that with time I even became better than most of them. Spinning was my best dance stroke. Nobody could ever beat me at it.

With time I actually featured in numerous Ugandan Music videos. I really made a name! I even escaped from my uncle’s home to stay with one of the boys in the gang, now this gave me a chance to spoil myself the more.

One fateful day, I met a friend who called me to visit his church.so I responded to the invite and this is how I got saved. And became a Christian again because I saw fellow dancers rocking the following but in a church setting.

Since I had a Christian background in me, it was easy for me to engage back in church. I therefore decided to serve the church with my talent.

However this made my life the worst since I no longer feature in secular music videos and therefore I had no cash that I ended up living in a slummy area known as “katoogo” literally meaning a swampy area.

When it rained, of course water entered my “corridor” like room and to make matters worse, I had no bed so I had to keep standing whenever it rained.

My church always partnered with various foreign western churches to make crusades in different parts of the country. It was on this fateful crusade that I found this white English man with grey hair that decided to take care of me.

He rented me an apartment; he also took me back to school. He always sent me upkeep from the states and he really expected a lot from me since I had proved to be a real Christian.

While I was serving at church, I was still struggling with drug addiction. I don’t know how my foster father got to know about my habits but all in all news got to him that I was still doing drugs.

This old man was really disappointed in me however he talked to me to change and he even took me to a rehabilitation center.

Despite all his endless efforts to help me break off the addictions, I failed to let go of the drugs and he dropped me! That’s how I lost Carlos as my foster father. He blocked me from all his communication channels.

I lost touch with Him! I have tried various means to talk to Carlos but all efforts have yielded nothing and are in vein.

I wish I had listened; I wouldn’t have lost such a golden opportunity! Am now back to the slums. If life could give me a fresh new start, I would have utilized it. I think I'm too late however for the fresh new start.