Daily Monitor
Friday January 08 2021
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In the last instalment of this series, we chronicle how bullets prematurely shattered the blooming dreams of dozens during two days of madness last November. In interviews with our reporter, Gillian Nantume, grieving families and friends share the triumphs, travails and final moments of relatives in a way that offers insights into the lives of victims hitherto treated as statistics.
FRED SSENKIMA
The 17-year-old boy was a casual labourer in the tomato farms in Lwanda Sub-county, Rakai District. His mother, Teopista Nansubuga, who works in a stone quarry, says she raised Ssenkima on her own.
Daily Monitor
FRED SSENKIMA
The 17-year-old boy was a casual labourer in the tomato farms in Lwanda Sub-county, Rakai District. His mother, Teopista Nansubuga, who works in a stone quarry, says she raised Ssenkima on her own.
“I separated with the father of my two children 10 years ago.
However, as a single mother, I failed to raise their school fees. Fred dropped out of school in Primary Five and we found a job for him as a herdsman,” the mother said.
Besides working on other people’s farms, Ssenkima had also started growing his own tomatoes for sale.
“Fred was my everything because he looked after me like I was his daughter. He lived in Lwanda Town, but he would check on me after every two days and buy all the basic things I needed at home because he knew I could not afford to care for his young sister single-handedly [since] I earn[ed] Shs40,000 a month.”