Suzy Zail - I Am Change

My name is Namukasa Nusula Sarah. I met Suzy Zail in August 2015 in Kampala. Until then I had never told anyone my story, not all of it. Im 24. Im not old but my story is long and sad. Not sadder or longer than the stories of the other girls she met. I wasnt in the room when Suzy talked to them but I know they would have told her the same story about growing up without shoes or schoolbooks. There are thousands of girls like us, chased from school because our mothers cant afford to pay the fees.

Lady Suzy was writing a book about girls like me who dreamed of wearing a school uniform. All the books I opened as a child had girls with light skin who had adventures or married princes. I wanted to read a book about a girl who was hungry to learn. A girl who sold porridge and washed other peoples clothes so she could buy books. A girl scared to become a woman because everything changes once you bleed.

I wanted to read a book like that and I wanted other people to read it too people in faraway places whod never been to Uganda. I finished school because a kind lady doctor from America wanted to help. She set up an organisation called Concern for the Girl Child and paid for my school fees and bought me a uniform; a blue skirt, a short-sleeved cotton shirt, white socks and black shoes. My first pair of leather shoes.

I was lucky. Not everyone who wants to go to school has their prayers answered, so when Lady Suzy asked if I was ready to tell my story I said yes. Because maybe if people read about the challenges we girls face they would help other girls go to school. I know what school can do; how it brings about change. Ive seen it in my own family. Before I finished school, I was just another girl in the village. I didnt exist. Now when I go home to Wantete on break from university, even the men respect me. They give me a warm welcome. They split a goat and cook rice for me. I get a mattress and even sleep well. When I talk, my family listen. Now that I am studying conservation forestry they know I can help. I can take care of my brother in Primary Six when hes chased for school fees and show my grandmother the modern ways of farming.

Two years after I met Suzy in the offices of Concern for the Girl Child, I opened an email to find the chapters of a book. Suzy asked if Id mind reading it. She wanted to be sure she got everything right how we gripped the cassava when pulling it from the ground, the songs we sang around the fire, the things our aunties taught us so we would be good wives. The book was called I am Change and the title made me smile. Just the week before I had convinced the girls in my hostel to advocate for better living conditions. We needed toilets that worked, a roof that didnt leak, a door that locked. Were in a new hostel now because I spoke up. I am change, I thought, starting to read.

I read every line watching for mistakes. I am good at English and love the language, ever since Primary Six when my English teacher, Madam Charity, made me stand on my desk and read my composition to the class. Afterwards, everyone clapped hands for me and the teacher bought me breakfast. I turned the pages of Suzys book, adding a Luganda word here, typing the words of a song there. I added the names of the grasses we used for roofing and the name of the plant we use to clean ourselves after visiting the toilet but after a few pages I was lost in the story, in my story, and I cried, because I was Lilian. Me and my friends and the girls in my village. Everything that happened to Lilian and her friends has happened to one or all of us. Suzy had listened to our stories. It was all there. The lessons and the beatings, the laughter, the drums, the hunger and the fear.

It wasnt easy to move from trash to where I am now. Things are changing in Uganda. In some schools girls are made head prefect, but in the rural schools its worse because girls dont have anybody to encourage them or tell them they are equal with boys. In the villages all sorts of bullying happens. If you go to the well and the well is crowded and here comes a boy who wants to fetch water he can pull you out of the line and take your place. If you go to school and the seats are limited, the girls who are sitting have to stand for the boys. And every year there are less girls in class as they start to bleed and cant afford sanitary towels or are married to a stranger for a goat or a cow.

Things can change. Me and my friends will make them change. We just need some help.

Namukasa Nusula Sarah

Wantete, Kayunga district, Uganda

April 2018

Let us pick up our books and our pens.
They are our most powerful weapons.

Malala Yousafzai

The stars were bright by the time Lilian returned from the well. Sweat pearled down her back. It was more than an hours walk through the bush and an even longer walk back, slowed by the weight of the slopping water.

Where have you been? Lilians mother pulled the jerry can from Lilians head. Dont lie to me. I have better things to do than be lied to.

Lilian knew not to answer, knew that if she waited, her mothers fear would melt away and with it her anger.

The dark is no place for a girl. Men lurk in the shadows

Waiting to pluck children from the bush. I know, Maama. They bury our heads under their houses for good luck, but you told me yourself: they only want the heads of children with pure skin. You marked me, so I am safe. See? Lilian twisted the thorn poking from the hole her mother had pierced in her ear with the tip of a safety pin. Her sisters, Nakato, Goodness and Sunrise, had all been marked by a piercing. Her brother Wekesa was protected by the scar on his left knee.

Go bathe, her mother said, tipping the fresh water into a bucket. And take your brothers uniform. It needs washing.

Lilian swung the bucket onto her head and walked to the bath hut to scrub the days dirt from her skin. She tipped the buckets contents into the plastic basin, dragged her dress over her head and stepped out of her knickers to crouch over the tub. The sponge had grown soft. Tomorrow, after school, shed pluck a new one from the luffa trees that grew wild in the forest. She stood under the thumbnail moon and scooped water onto her body.

You forgot your brothers socks. Lilians mother stood in the slanting moonlight, her mouth hanging open, her eyes snaking from the patch of hair between Lilians legs to her chest. Lilian grasped her dress to her dripping body but it was too late, her mother had seen her, seen how much she had grown.

You havent seen the moon yet?

Lilian shook her head and her mother breathed out.

Good. There is still time to visit Afia before you bleed. She circled Lilian like she circled the chickens before choosing the plumpest. You should have come to me sooner. You are almost a woman and there is a lot for your aunt to teach you. She held out her hand and Lilian surrendered the dress. Boys cant be trusted around a girl in a short dress. I will find you a long one.