Jajja Flora’s Story as reported by The Observer, Nov 4th, 2015

Jajja Flora’s big heart takes in unwanted kids

Written by Moses Mugalu

In a small, muddy courtyard three kids are playing while a woman washes away a heap of clothes.

In the vicinity, two teenagers - a boy and a girl – are engrossed in the task of preparing firewood to cook beans on the traditional three-stone fireplace.
On a squeezed verandah of the two-roomed house, Florence Nakimbugwe caresses three-year-old John, who is resting soundly on her lap.

Welcome to Jajja Flora Happy Children’s Home in Kiyindi Zone, Kira town council. This modest homestead is home to 18 children, mostly orphans and others abandoned by their parents.

Unlike well established orphanages and babies’ homes elsewhere, Jajja Flora, as Nakimbugwe is fondly known, runs this household just as she would if these were her biological children. The home is without a license although Jajja Flora, who has done this for more than two decades now, is well known in the community, and even by the police in the area, as a Good Samaritan.

“I don’t do it as a business,” she tells me on my first visit here, on October 13. “It’s because of my passion and love for children.”

However, Jajja Flora, who started out in Makindye in the 1980s, is aware that while passion and love are very essential in her work, they are not enough.

She has had to rely on like-minded kind hearts such as Rev Fr John Chrysostom Oduc (popularly known as Fr Tom by his peers), the parish priest of Sipi in Kapchorwa district.

Fr Tom, who accompanied us to this humble children’s home last month, got to know about Jajja Flora and her inspirational work through his friend and old boy, Patrick Okoth, a telecom engineer.

When he visits, Fr Tom often carries along some cash or essentials such as food, clothes, soap and other items for the children. This time, he told Jajja Flora that his goodies were in form of journalists who would transmit her story to a wider audience.

FACEBOOK JOY

Previously, Nakimbugwe has been interviewed by one of the local television stations. After welcoming us warmly, she excitedly told us that we could find her pictures and story on Facebook.

But she added that reading from Facebook would mean missing bits of John’s story, the latest arrival at the home - the boy she was carrying on her lap when we arrived. John was brought here three months ago after his unidentified parents abandoned him in Katanga slum, near Wandegeya.

Jajja Flora's home from where she looks after several children

A Good Samaritan phoned Jajja Flora and she quickly picked him. Jajja Flora recalls John as a malnourished child with swollen cheeks and feet at the time she collected him but he now looks the opposite. 

Another child, seven-year-old Florence, was a toddler when her mother dumped her in a nearby stream in Kira. Florence has since grown into a lively girl. Majority of the children, currently in the home and those who have gone through it, have endured similar experiences; they don’t know who their biological parents are and have never tasted their parental love.

Nevertheless Jajja Flora does her best to ensure that the children are nurtured into good human beings and empowered to fend for themselves. She cannot state the exact number of children who have through her home because she has been doing it informally, but she estimates that she has nurtured more than 100 in the 25 years.

Currently, the home has children from as near as Kampala and surrounding areas and as far as Mbale and Masaka. A few are truant adolescents, who have run away from their parents’ homes. In such cases, Jajja Flora takes the trouble to trace their parents and inform them about the whereabouts of their children.

She ensures that children in her custody acquire basic primary or secondary education and then enroll for vocational training to empower them with practical skills such as mechanical work.

40-year-old Herbert Kasule, an electrical engineer, is one of Jajja Flora’s success stories. Kasule, who hails from Masaka but came to Kampala in 1987 to trace his late sister in Makindye in vain, told us last week that Jajja Flora raised him as her own child.

“She is my mother,” said Kasule, adding that despite knowing that his real parents exist, his attachment to Jajja Flora is not comparable because of the love she gave him while growing up in her care.

To remain in constant touch, Kasule established his home in one of Kira’s neighborhoods and checks on Jajja Flora regularly. Born 60 years ago in a small village in Bamusuta, Kyaggwe (present day Mukono district), Nakimbugwe dropped out of school after Primary Seven after her mother Miriam Nambi passed on. This was after her late father, Asaph Kiwanuka, married another woman.

She didn’t find it easy being raised by her step-mother, who she recalls treated her harshly. Nakimbugwe moved on to Kampala to stay with one of her aunties in Makindye where she met her late husband Matthew Byabazaire, a former employee of the East African Development Bank. Byabazaire, who married Nakimbugwe when she was 19 years old, passed on 13 years ago.

The coupled is blessed five children, all adults now. Jajja Flora says her husband was supportive when she started helping homeless children.

“Whenever he returned home he would find new faces but he never complained because he appreciated my love for children,” she recalls of her late husband.

The late Byabazaire bought the land and built the house in Kira where Jajja Flora lives with her children after shifting from their rented home in Makindye. Her late husband advised her to seek alternative income to supplement whatever he was providing so as to sustain their large household.

UNMATCHED ZEAL

But Byabazaire’s death didn’t deter Jajja Flora’s zeal to help children. Unemployed, Jajja Flora endured difficult times, but she remained steadfast. To meet some of her children’s most basic needs, she encouraged them to engage in random domestic work such washing clothes, slashing compounds and digging gardens in the neighborhood.

The move paid off as her home was able to put food on the table. Today, Jajja Flora’s home continues to grapple with challenges such as food, medical care, school fees and monthly rent after the house built by her late husband started leaking, forcing her to abandon it and rent another house nearby.

Currently, she rents the three-roomed house at Shs 180,000 per month. However, this money will soon be saved after telecom giants Airtel offered to build a bigger house for the home by the end of this year.

Yet housing is just one of Jajja Flora’s headaches. On a daily basis she needs at least Shs 30,000 to provide decent meals for the children. Fortunately, some well-wishers have stepped in with food items, especially after her story came to light on television.

Jajja Flora is thankful to God that her children rarely fall sick, a fact that explains why medical expenses don’t worry her too much. Her trick is to use herbs regularly as a preventive mechanism that works through boosting the children’s immunity.

For school fees, again some Good Samaritans have stepped in, although she needs more help. On the day we visited, three secondary school students – Asuman Bukenya, Nicholas Kisakye and Jona Mwesige, had stayed home because they lacked school fees.

Fr Tom believes if more people can lend a hand, Jajja Flora’s children would live a more decent life.

mugalu@observer.ug

Jajja Flora with one of the kids she looks after

Jajja Flora’s home from where she looks after several children - Note: This house has been renovated since 2015 but as of December 2023, it’s in need multiple repairs