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Kayita had had two children before he met Nnam. He had left them in
Uganda with their mother but his relationship with their mother had
ended long before he met Nnam. On several occasions Nnam asked him
to bring the children to Britain but he said,
‘Kdt, you don’t know their mother; the children are her cash cow.’
Still Nnam was uneasy about his children being deprived of their father.
She insisted that he rang them every weekend: she even bought the
phone cards. When he visited, she sent them clothes.
Kayita had adapted well to the changing environment of a Western
marriage unlike other Ugandan men, married to women who emigrated
before they did. Many such marriages strained when a groom, fresh
from home, was ‘culture-shocked’ and began to feel emasculated by a
Britain-savvy wife. Kayita had no qualms about assuming a domestic
role when he was not working. They could only afford a small wedding,
they could only afford two children. At the end of the month they
pooled their salaries together: Kayita worked for G4S so his money was
considerably smaller but he tried to offset this by doing a lot of
overtime. After paying the bills and other households, they deducted
monies to send home to his children and sometimes for issues in either
family – someone has died, someone is sick, someone is getting
married.
Nnam had bought a nine-acre tract of land in rural Kalule before she
met Kayita. After decades in Manchester, she dreamt of retiring in rural
Uganda. But when Kayita came along, he suggested that they buy land
in Kampala and build a city house first.
LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE
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