Life stories

“Esther, which is your dream?” -  “My dream is to have a good house” - “And what a good house means?” - “Well... a good house, a house with commodities, which has floor, electricity, a working TV, a gas cook, water...” 

Esther is one of the twenty women part of the group “Ladies with abilities” working in Kikooba, central Uganda. They meet every monday under the mango tree to talk about the week, to support each other, discuss how to organize the next baskets order o how much they are going to save from the sales. 

The most of them are willows or mothers alone. I say mothers alone because it can happen that they are single mothers or married, but whose husbands live somewhere else in Uganda, maybe with other women and families, and they come once or twice per year. When they come, they might bring some presents, but the rest of the year, it's the ladies the responsible ones for feeding and give an education to their children. 

As part of my project here in Uganda, I could interview all of them and they shared with me their life stories. Stories that don't take very much than three or four paragraphs and stories that could be copied from one to the other: I went to the school until primary, then I had to quit because of lack of money for the school fees, or because of the war, or because father decided no more education for girls. I was digging in my parent's garden until I was 16-18, when I gor married. From that, I went to live with my husband, produce children for him and work in our garden. Now we live as peasants from what we can cultiate and the four hens we have. 

Eva is also a member of the group. She is my age, 35 years old. She's got 6 children, but she had 8 pregnancies, she also works in the garden, and in her house she's got two rooms. 

I don't have children neither a house... I have other things... What a diference of lifes in the same time frame... But we both had chosen our lifes... Didn't we?