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Mabel Akiiki: American Kasese girl with a big heart
Author: Asuman Bisiika. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- ...her big heart is manifest of some other kind of rich: reach. She is rich because she is reaching out to other people.
In June 2020, Ms Mable Kabatalya Akiiki called me from the US. She said my friend (fellow columnist) Dr Moses Khisa, had given her my number. She said she had read a disturbing story in Daily Monitor.
The story: Mr Joseph Mukasa’s wife died in childbirth at a medical facility in Kayunga. The child survived. The death was blamed on the negligence of the facility staff (and the proprietor offered to support the orphan).
But in a typical Ugandan way, when the promised support was not forthcoming, Mr Joseph Mukasa dumped his motherless child at the premises of the facility in protest. Daily Monitor’s Fred Muzaale captured and reported the incident. Ms Kabatalya read the story online and wanted to help the orphan.
She asked me to deliver ‘the little help she would send to the child.’ I went to Buyobe Village in Kayunga District and delivered what Mabel said was ‘the little I can afford…’ Ms Kabatalya was already funding Super Mothers, a personal effort to support women ‘parenting’ orphans in Kahedero, Hamukungu, Kasenyi, Katunguru and Katwe.
She supported these ‘mothers’ with regular monthly packages composed of food, soap, sugar, powder milk etc. “These are merely consumable gifts to support the orphans nutritional and hygiene requirements. But I would like to support these super mothers with some skills and income generating projects. With some money in their pockets, these mothers would be able to sustainably support the orphans under their ‘parenthood’,” she told me then.
I was impressed. Here was a young Ugandan lady living her dream in the US but still retained a room in her big heart to support vulnerable people (she didn’t even know)!
Mabel’s grandfather, Ezra Ntaro (popularly known as Korutaro), was the richest Musongora native in the 1970s in Muhokya. And I knew her late father Robert Karamagi (popularly known as Independence or Pendesi). Did I say I was impressed?
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When Mabel learnt that I was ‘loafing’ in Kiburara, she asked me to visit her projects in Kahendero Fishing Village (in Muhokya Town Council). I obliged. I visited this Monday (December 11, 2023). Mabel has created Benna T Mukaka Community Centre at Kahendero and brought the management of all her funded projects under one roof. Mr Asiimwe Kamuhanda, the coordinator of Benna T Mukaka was on hand to receive me.
And I was in the good company of my friend Mr Muzamir Bisangwa Kigeli, the district councillor for the area. At the centre, Mabel is funding the training of a cultural troupe composed of young persons, training of women in tailoring (and knitting) and photography. The centre also acts as the co-ordination point of activities related to Super Mothers.
The tailoring school started with six brand new tailoring machines. But at graduation, the best two students were given two of the machines so they could start off using them for income generation. So, now the second intake is trained using four sewing machines. Those who graduated from photography training hire a not-so-sophisticated Canon digital camera to capture memories of Kahendero (and elsewhere).
Benna T Mukaka Community Centre though faces challenges. These projects cannot be sustained by a single-source funding from Mabel’s personal income. The centre really needs support from other funders. If only the centre could get sewing machines…
I was personally impressed with the knitting of the women. I saw the kind of quality that could attract fashonistas in Kampala.
I am sure Ms Kabatalya is not a very rich person. But her big heart is manifest of some other kind of rich: reach. She is rich because she is reaching out to other people.
Asuman Bisiika is the executive editor of the East African Flagpost. [email protected]
