Candid conversations with little women

Taller than the rest, the 25-year-old is wearing a tight red dress, dark red shoes, and a black wig. Purple eyeshadow, pink lipstick and pink nail polish complete the look. She speaks with a loud, confident voice that commands attention. You cannot ignore this woman.

“At 15, I came to terms with my height. My younger brother had grown taller than me. We no longer fought; instead I began fearing him.”

Dorothy Babirye is the shortest in the group. The 34-year-old gospel musician has to be lifted to sit in a chair, on a boda boda, or in a car. As she took her tea, she rested the cup on my chair. Whenever she reached down for the cup, I fought the urge to help her lift it.

“Some men lift me with ill intentions, squeezing me into their chests. It humiliates me, especially when boda boda riders charge extra for carrying me.”

Her peers respond angrily to her dilemma; none of them has been cheated like this before. In fact, you get the feeling that no man would try such a stunt with Aisha Namugwanya, 26, who vends bed sheets, blankets and towels in weekly flea markets all over Kampala.

In a pink dress, with pink braids, and pink eye shadow, Namugwanya is proud of her three years in business. “I restock my secondhand merchandise from Owino (St Balikuddembe Market). My only challenge is carrying the heavy shopping from Owino and climbing the long steps in arcades to look for new merchandise.”

Parents and their ‘different ‘children
When a couple is expecting, they envisage a perfect baby. When God gives them a baby packaged differently, it takes years to accept the ‘gift’. Nakyanzi was lucky her parents welcomed her. The others, though, were not so fortunate.
“My mother loved me, until she gave birth to another child,” Namugwanya says, continuing, “he looked like he would grow tall. And then, one day, he fell ill and died. I was six.

I remember her words, ‘O God, what have you left me with? You have killed my healthy child and left me with this kikulekule (disgusting freak).”
“Was she your real mother!” Nakyanzi asks in shock. Namugwanya nods in affirmation. We are silent for some time. Those words still have power over her. A few months after her brother’s death, their mother died.

“Her death did not deprive me of anything. She did not love me, and I never loved her either.”
Babirye was fortunate in that her mother loved her and today they live together. However, it took her a long time to accept the baby’s condition. “She thought her co-wives had bewitched me. She took me to many witchdoctors, asking them to make me taller. But when nothing changed, she let me be.” The musician’s father rejected her, telling his wife there were no dwarfs in his clan, therefore, he would not educate her. The mother was forced to take her child to school – using her own resources – when she was eight.

“When I was in Primary Two at Naminya RC Primary School in Buikwe District, mother was broke. She sent me to ask for money from my father.
He asked what work I was doing for him, since his other children whom he paid fees for dug in his garden. He told me he did not have money to waste on me. He discriminated against me so much that my mother decided not to have another child with him.”

When Babirye began bringing better school reports than her siblings’, her father began to love her – a little. When he died – two years after she began school – he left her mother property in his will.

Babirye went on to complete O and A- Level (St Mark Secondary School Naminya and Kiira High School Jinja). She has a certificate in computer science and technology. When she became born-again 20 year later, she finally forgave her father.

Bullies at school
Besides being little, Nakyanzi has one eye. “I was born with two eyes but when I was a toddler, my grandfather’s cock run towards me and plucked out my eye. I was on my way to his home just a stone throw away.”

“Mother did not allow the doctors at Mulago Hospital to replace my eye with a glass eye. This did not stop my classmates at Ngeye Primary School and Mpenja Primary School from insulting me. They called me kiso ky’endiga. I really hated that name!”

The bullies only insulted her when her brother was not around. Her brother had once given a bully a vicious kick after he called Nakyanzi names. The bully fell and broke his arm.

Namugwanya and Babirye also express distaste at the memory of what their classmates called them. Sometimes even teachers unwittingly fell into the trap of stereotyping.

Namugwanya’s grandmother took her to Lukabazi Umea Primary School in Busujju to start Primary Two when she was seven-years-old. The teachers thought she was too young. “My grandmother struggled to make them understand I was not underage. They eventually listened to her, and after seeing my work, promoted me to Primary Three.”

Nakyanzi has actedin three movies; in Linda, my daughter; Amadda g’Omumbejja, and Abalangira Munyango.

“To be successful, I have to be able to play any part,” she says, continuing, “My colleagues rate me on my talent, not appearance. I just hate it when people are inquisitive about my age, asking if I have a man or children.”

The challenges
Nakyanzi has a boyfriend, but no children. Babirye, the musician, launched a six-track album Yesu Mufaanana in Jinja last year. “People look down on little people. At the launch, I expected 300 people but only 70 turned up. It is hard when you do not have a sponsor. At least, when I sing, people give me money; when I add this to my mother’s contribution, I buy studio time.”

Babirye used to blame God for her appearance, keeping out of public view, until she got born-again. “I found friends in church. They called me ‘sister’.

After reading Genesis 1:27, I began to feel that God created me in His image. I may not look like other people, but I look like God. That is why I sang Yesu Mufaanana. That song gives me peace.”

However, whenever she went job hunting, prospective employers just stared and laughed at her.

The singer opened a stationery shop in Jinja town after a fruitless job search where prospective employers just stared and laughed at her.

Emotional abuse from spouses
Little women’s relationships always end in heartache. Six years ago, Namugwanya gave birth by C-section after two weeks in labour. Her daughter is a little person too.

“She is five, but her father abandoned us when she was about three-months-old. He never told me he was married; and at first, he seemed to love our child. Maybe his wife bewitched him.” Babirye wonders aloud how little women carry their pregnancies.
“I have never wanted a relationship. Men only want a good time; they leave when you get pregnant. Dwarfs give birth to dwarfs. I do not want a dwarf. I want a tall child who can look after me.”

Babirye cannot wash clothes. When she tries, she cannot reach the cloths wire. She must wait for her mother or a Good Samaritan to hang them.
Nakyanzi, on the other hand, has a boyfriend, but, “I am just hoping he does not abandon me. We suffer more than normal women. A man may feel ashamed to abandon a normal woman, but for a short woman, he feels no remorse. He will even move on with another when you get pregnant.”

According to the women, men feel ashamed to introduce them to their friends. So, the lovers’ trysts happen only after dark.

Within the compound, these women are at ease, laughing and taking selfies. “We fear to walk alone on the outside because people congregate to discuss us,” Babirye says.

Parenting a little person
“In 2002, when my daughter was two months old, I visited a doctor to seek answers for some abnormalities I did not understand. For instance, her head was large and her hands short.

A skeletal x-ray confirmed she had achondroplasia, the commonest form of dwarfism. The doctor asked if I knew Sarah Short (musician), because my daughter was going to be like her. I could not believe it. As he explained the details, I wondered if my daughter would study or work. Out of fear, I read about dwarfism. I questioned God, even as my husband abandoned us.

I reached out to Sarah Short in 2003 and visited parents of little people. I put down a concept note about forming an association to give moral support to dwarfs and their parents. I needed support, counselling and reassurance that my daughter was okay.

I made a decision to love her. I wanted her to be able to choose a profession and she is now a student at Seroma High School. I had to influence society to accept my daughter as well.

We formalised the Little People of Uganda in 2009 and opened an office in Ntinda. Within these gates, little people laugh at their challenges, the jokes people make about them, and how ignorant people are about them. They also cry about the hurtful things they go through.

They are over 1,000 and now people are beginning to understand them. Some private schools have given scholarships to five little children. We have reconciled broken families to break the cycle of paternity denial.

A little person’s father denies paternity and then when she gets her own children, their father also denies paternity. It puts the women at a disadvantage when it comes to fighting poverty.

Annet Nakyeyune, Founder of Little People of Uganda

Mother tried to throw me away
“I was born in Musita, Mayuge District. My mother abandoned me to my father when I was one-year-old. My father left me at my grandparents and refused to educate me.

I cannot read or write. When children surrounded me and insulted me at the village well, I told them we were all created by the same God. When I was six, my mother returned.

She tried to push me down a pit latrine, and for this, people assumed she had run mad. I was rescued by my grandmother and a neighbour who had alerted her to what was happening.
I hate my parents. I was 10 when grandmother was knocked by a bicycle. I nursed her alone until she died. My father did not attend the burial.

I have three children. My first son is tall; the other two are dwarfs. Their fathers denied paternity. The last man, I loved. But, his friends asked how he can take a freak into his home. If another man approaches me, I will kill him.

I work in bars and drunkards approach me for sex. I always point them to the prostitutes, and when they insist, I hit them. Female landlords are a special challenge.

The broker had to live in my house for three days, pretending to be the tenant while I slept at a friend’s home. When I came in, the landlady was shocked that I was the actual tenant. I also hate the insults of idle women in arcades.”

Sylvia Nandutu, 35, a Karaoke dancer/dancer for Gravity Omutujju

What is dwarfism?
Human dwarfism is caused by two disorders, achondroplasia and growth hormone deficiency. Achondroplasia is hereditary while the latter is caused by the body producing insufficient growth hormones.

Caregivers have to manage the complications that come with dwarfism, such as ear infections, hydrocephalus (huge heads), and orthopedic (bone) challenges.