MAMA JANET MUSEVENI MADE MY WEEK

By Alan Kasujja

Genuinely, it was good to see her. She has been in my prayers and I trust that He who is doing a good work in her life will bring it to completion. I have had a profound love and respect for Mama Janet Museveni for a long time. I count myself among the many sons who have chosen her.

Let me explain.

I first saw her, with my own eyes, at Lugogo Indoor Stadium, in 1991. I was a teenager in secondary school and we had gathered for a conference she had convened to answer one of the most urgent questions of that era: How does Uganda keep AIDS from wiping out an entire generation of young people?

In those days, HIV/AIDS was a death sentence. The disease was raging, tearing through communities. President Museveni and church leaders like the late Bishop Misaeri Kauma were doing their best to spread awareness, but no one was speaking to young people directly. Our parents were too mortified to talk to us about sex. Our teachers confined the subject to biology class, happy to answer the odd question about reproduction, but only enough to get us through our exams.

Meanwhile, our hormones were raging. I spent my time between Scripture Union fellowship, Bible study and outreach ministry at what was then Kampala Pentecostal Church and I was still reading the most salacious novels I could find, surrounded by friends who were just as conflicted as I was.

At Lugogo, Mama convened us, young, restless and anxious, drawn mostly from secondary schools, for an honest conversation about our struggles. Her own children were our peers, so she understood our anxieties better than most adults did. Professor Dick Day and a host of experienced Christian teachers, among them John and Ruth Senyonyi and the late Edrida Bampata, spoke to us with a candour we had never encountered. It was a relief to learn I was not the only one wrestling with ungovernable hormones.

We spoke freely, learned from each other and from our teachers, and many of my friendships today trace back to those youth conferences.

At the end of that conference, we signed a small card titled True Love Waits, committing ourselves to abstain from sex before marriage. It was a very difficult undertaking. I have heard people say they honoured that commitment and I admire them. Those who did not held on for as long as they could and when they stumbled, at least they were not as unprepared as they would have been without the lessons we learned.

Like many young people at the time, I looked forward to those conferences every year. In later years, they moved to what is now the conference centre at Serena, and Mama, our patron, was present at every gathering. I remember speaking at one of them, on behalf of all the young people gathered that year. She listened graciously, nodded, and clapped; the kind of attention that gives a young man wings.

In the years since, I have watched her serve Uganda with unwavering commitment. She has sat in Parliament, served as a Minister and stood beside the President as he carried out his demanding mandate.

A recent photograph of Mama hugging her grandson Ruhamya, who has just graduated from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, stopped me in my tracks. I had also come across an old picture of her and Ruhamya’s father, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, sitting together in camouflage T-shirt and trousers, not much older than Ruhamya is today.

The President has openly credited Mama for raising their children while he led the liberation struggle. A friend told me that at the President’s swearing-in, Mama’s absence was loud. We had grown used to seeing her beside him through it all, celebrations and solemn occasions alike — and not seeing her at Kololo, my friend said, left her saddened.

Mama has stood behind the three most important men in her life as each answered the call to serve the fatherland, fully aware of the dangers that calling carried. She has written candidly about the hardships she endured through the long years Mzee spent in the bush and through it all, she remained steadfast.

Frankly, I do not think Mama Janet gets the flowers she deserves. For me, seeing her back in public view, after the health challenges Mzee spoke about, feels like an answered prayer. I wish her a complete recovery and a long, healthy life because if anyone deserves it, Mama Janet does.