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‘Our inheritance blown off with heir’
Ms Ntezi and Ojok miss more than Turyahabwe the person (R), for his death means no more privileges
to the family. PHOTOS BY SARAH TUMWEBAZE.
What you need to know:
In our daily series capturing personal stories of victims of the July 11, 2010 bomb attacks in Kampala, our reporter Sarah Tumwebaze writes about Daniel Turyahabwe whose death at Kyadondo Rugby Club has not only left his widowed mother with bitter memories but also loss of family property of which Turyahabwe was heir.
She saw it coming. Only she was as helpless a dreamer. The premonition was all Florence Ntezi saw the night before July 11. In the dream, Ms Ntezi was putting a corpse in a coffin. Even though she spent a restless day following the dream, it never occurred to Ms Ntezi that two days from then she would realise that dream by seeing her son into a coffin.
On the morning of Sunday July 11, Ms Ntezi told Daniel Turyahabwe about her dream and he discarded it as superstition. All he was thinking about was the Fifa World Cup grand finale later that evening. “My son had always loved football. Right from primary he was a soccer player and whenever there was a match, he would go and watch,” Ms Ntezi said. Although he left home after promising his mother that he would be back to revise for the paper he had the following day, he never did, and with him was blown all the hopes and dreams his mother had for the family.
The 17-year-old third born, who was the heir apparent in a family of four, left his home in Zana at 2pm with his mother’s cell phone. He was supposed to use it to communicate with his friend Dick, who was going to foot the bill at Kyadondo Rugby Club. “Dan had no phone, so he came and asked for mine. I also gave him some money. He left home because his friend had told him to hurry up,” she narrates, wearing a gloomy look like what she was talking about had just happened the day before.
The numbing news
Later in the evening, the family converged in the living room to wait for the match. A restless Ms Ntezi watched the match with her mind elsewhere—at Kyadondo Rugby Club—where her son was following the live telecast from.
When the match ended, she went to bed. She left Dan’s step-brother, Morris Ojok, in the sitting room watching TV but before she could even slip off into sleep, he came rushing to her room and told her to come and see what was showing on TV. “He told me that there had been bomb blasts at Kyadondo and Kabalagala. I didn’t believe what he said but I still came and watched the news and what I saw was not good at all,” she reminisces.
With her head in a whirlwind, she asked for Ojok’s phone and tried to call Dan. The phone was off.
“I did not want to think of the worst but I could not help it because my son’s dad had died when he was still young and I didn’t want him also to leave me too soon,” Ms Ntezi says. She sat in the sitting room all night, hardly drowsing. At 6am, Ms Ntezi says she sent Ojok to Dan’s school (Green Light High School) to get Dick’s number because they had gone together. But at the school, he found when another boy with whom Dick and Dan had gone to Kyadondo had already reported what had happened. It emerged Dick survived the tragedy only because the gods saw him visit the washrooms when the blasts occurred.
The head teacher asked Ojok not to tell Ms Ntezi but instead prepare for a chilling trip to Mulago Hospital mortuary. But since mothers are intuitive, Ms Ntezi had a feeling something was seriously wrong. “At around 4pm, the head teacher called and told me to calm down because things were not fine. As a parent, I just fainted. I could not image that my son had gone. He was the heir and all I could do was cry.”
Ms Ntezi says she has not been herself again. “Somehow, all my strength went with Daniel because I am always weak. I have struggled with my children because Daniel’s father died when he was in primary seven, his elder sister was in senior two and the youngest was in primary five I have struggled with them and Daniel would always encourage and strengthen me.”
Never the same
Although some people who lost relatives during the bomb blasts have managed to move on, Ms Ntezi has failed because she lost a son, her source of courage and the “head of the family”. “I am really badly off. That boy was the heir and after he died, I am no longer considered to be part of the clan.”
The mother says Dan was very active and he wanted to join the army after school. But since he died, everything that belonged to Dan has been taken over by his father’s relatives. “After Dan’s death, his father’s relatives raided a piece of land that he had inherited in the village and put it up for sale. When I tried to defend it, they told me that I had no authority over anything because the heir had died and I was no longer useful to them,” Ms Ntezi says sombrely.
Most of other family property that belonged to the “heir” have also been grabbed and Ms Ntezi is helpless. She cannot even seek justice in the courts because she cannot meet legal fees. “The little money I get, I have to pay for my children’s school fees. When Dan was alive, whenever I needed money, I would call the village and they would sell off some of the crops like coffee then they would send me the money. But nowadays, that’s not possible,” she says.
Ms Ntezi received Shs5 compensation from government but says she took it with a lot of pain. “I took that money with a lot of pain because I needed it for the burial ceremony. But within, I felt like I was selling off my son. I used it for repaying debts I incurred during the burial in Kanungu and the balance for his sibling’s school fees,” she says.
Daniel was also the shoulder her mother used to lean on. Whenever she would fall sick, he would bring her meals to the bedroom. Ojok says his mother still cries whenever Weasel and Lillian’s song, Vitamin plays on radio because Dan liked it a lot.
Public holiday?
July 11 will usher in a lot of bad memories for the nation. There will be huge activities to commemorate the tragedy. For Ms Ntezi and her family, the government should show solidarity by declaring the day a public holiday. She also wants the perpetrators of the twin bombings hanged. “I would kill them with my own hands so that they can feel the pain that our children went through as they were dying,” she says while clutching her fists.
She adds: “At times I wish I had known that he was going to die from Kyadondo, I would have gone with him so that I die with him because ever since I buried him, I am always weak whenever I think of his siblings, I am scared of what might happen to them because Daniel was the kind that would help his siblings even when I die.” Ojok also appeals to those who lost relatives and survivors to form an association where they work hand-in-hand in counselling one another.
