The auther doesnt know how majority people celebrated, boosed and danced upon the news of Oyite's death. At that time I was in Nairobi and I wish I could show you some of the pictures of celebrants in a big public place. Its not good to celebrating someones death but Oyite's case was very different. It was like the Jews celebrating the death of Hitler. The celebration paid off 2 years later.
J. Ssenyange ---------------------------------------------------
From: "gook makanga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: ugnet_: Oyite-Ojok’s family secrets buried here Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2004 18:27:53 +0000
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--- Begin Message ---Oyite-Ojok’s family secrets buried here
By Badru D. Mulumba
April 18 - 24, 2004
LORO, Apac: - Becca Arach Oyite-Ojok would never let go. She was 18, a career girl with prospects of her own, stalked by a relentless army captain, 24, who she held in her spell.
That is Becca and David Oyite-Ojok’s story.
It started in 1964 in Jinja, before abruptly ending twenty years later in the bushy environs of Loro.
It is a story of aspirations and dreams, love, denial and destiny.
In 1962, Ms Arach was leaving Sacred Hearts and joining Mulago Hospital as David Oyite-Ojok was returning to Uganda from Sandhurst where the British colonial government trained him before he joined the army.
And when Becca moved to Jinja Hospital in 1964, Oyite had fairly risen fast up the ranks to captain; he was in charge of the Quarter Guard at Jinja.
Oyite was born on April 15 in 1940 (he would have made 64 last Thursday); Arach was born much later on August 28, 1946.
The same day that Becca was ferrying her holdings into a hospital hostel room in Jinja hospital, Oyite was visiting the hospital to pick up his girlfriend for the weekend.
“Who is that girl?” he reportedly asked his girlfriend. “Is she a newly qualified nurse?”
The girl friend reportedly gave him the name.
“He kept quiet,” Becca says, remembering the story as told to her by Oyite several years later.
The way she remembers, from then on, whenever Oyite came to pick his girl friend, he would ask her to join them.
Each time, she told him that she would go along ‘next time’; each ‘next time’ she turned him down. Becca won’t name the girlfriend.
But it is publicly known that by the time he died, Oyite had a grown up son, Isaac, who stayed with the mother in Jinja.
Meantime, Oyite relentlessly secretly scoured Jinja, looking for any one who could be Arach’s relative.
He stumbled upon a Major Arach; he asked Major Arach if he had a relative at the hospital. He hit a brick wall.
“Then, one time I went to the barracks to see my cousin,” she says.
The cousin, Janet now in Britain, was married to Major Yowana Omoya (RIP). Oyite, too, happened to be at her cousin’s home.
“He went and told her that, you know, I want your cousin for marriage. I don’t want to spoil her,” Becca recalls.
Oyite would later tell her that every body was discouraging him.
“‘That girl? Forget’. Indeed, I was very tough,” she says.“After sometime, I started going out with him, not for marriage. But he tricked me.”
Oyite would ask her if she had any other relative in Jinja.
An uncle, Mr Alfred Nankooli (RIP) worked in Nile Breweries.
Oyite suggested a visit.She recalls introducing him as a casual friend.
“This is a soldier called David. He is a Langi.”
Unknown to her, she says, “he introduced his interests without even telling me that he wanted to marry me.”
As they left, her uncle requested her to go visit him the next time she was off duty.
“Is it true you are in love with that boy?” she recalls the uncle’s inquiry. “I started crying,” she says.
“He said, ‘No. If you were not in love with him, would you have brought him to me? Why did you bring him?”
Angry, Becca broke off her friendship with Oyite.
But not for long. Time healed the wounds. They moved out together again. Then Oyite blurted: “My father and mother said I should marry and it is you I want to marry.”
Oyite, son of Ojok, was one of four siblings of Mr Serina Ojok Leven (RIP) and Ms Ojok Leven (RIP).
That statement again abruptly ended their closeness. So, why didn’t Becca want to go out with Oyite?
“I didn’t like his tribe,” she recalls.
She was Madi (Acholi mother, Madi father); and, then, Madi and Langi reportedly disliked each other.
It would be two years before she introduced Oyite at her uncle’s home in Adjumani.
Both her parents had died by the time she was nine.
“Even at home, I didn’t show any interest in any boy,” she says. “So, people were shocked when my uncle announced that a visitor was coming.”
On December 12, 1966, came the wedding, catapulting her into a marriage that would forever change her life.
Immediately, Becca turned down a nursing scholarship to Britain; she all together quit that profession two months later.
The couple’s first born, Michael Simba, breathed his first on July 2, 1967. Becca gave birth each subsequent year up to 1970 when the only girl came along.
From Jinja, Captain Oyite-Ojok moved to Mbuya barracks, Kampala.
The bliss was short lived.On January 25 1971, Idi Amin over threw Dr Apollo Milton Obote.
She last saw her husband step out of home that morning.For the next six months she would unsuccessfully scour the country for him.
That is, until a soldier, sent by Oyite came to Kitigum where she hid at a sister’s home with the children, and told her that her husband was in Tanzania.
“That is when I knew that he was alive,” she recalls. “But other Amin soldiers were also looking for me.”
Tracing for Oyite, the soldiers reportedly figured that if they got hold of Becca, they would have him.
The soldiers searched her uncle’s home in Adjumani, put a gun to his head, forcing him to reveal Becca’s whereabouts.
It was 1972.
The soldiers went to Kitigum. Arach was on her way to Gulu. They missed each other.
Luckily, Oyite was publicly sighted at the Organisation of African Unity summit in Addis Ababa – ending the search for him and Becca by Amin’s soldiers.
But for Becca, it would be four years later – 1974 – before she saw Oyite again.
Oyite sent his cousin who was working in Mombasa to fetch them.
“At first, I did not want to go. I said, ‘Amin is not killing us. He knows where we are. He even came to Kitigum hospital’,” Becca recalls.
She was wary of venturing out into the unknown.
“But my friends said: ‘No. No...’,” Becca recalls. “...If this man wants his children, why don’t you take the children to him?”
Thus began a five-day journey to Dar.Curled together with four children of 4,5,6, and 7 years of age, she hoped onto a 2-day train ride from Lira to Nairobi.
Next was a one-day bus ride to Mombasa and a two-day bus ride to Dar.
Oyite’s life started, ended here
To Becca, that trek to Tanzania 30 years ago this year, is a jaded memory; she is now content and has let the past pass her by.
That is, except constantly worrying about the future of a sprawling piece of land measuring 1,000 acres in Oyite’s home village where he built his country-home when he returned to Uganda after the fall of Idi Amin.
Becca calls here home.
The myriad pedestrians on the thin stretch of tarmac running from Lira to Loro in Apac, make driving a nightmare. A car here. A bicycle there. And people allover.
But in this flat, undulating terrain stretching out to the horizons stands David Oyite Ojok’s story: a home he hardly lived in.
Oyite’s home came to life in 1982 – a year to his death.Then, according to Becca, the late army chief of staff contracted what was at the time one of the best construction firms, Mukalazi.
Twenty-two years later, cracks have eaten into the walls and the tiles of his house.
Two rectangular cement slabs standing parallel to each other are signs that a gate once existed.
And a foot path, surrounded by over grown grass, is where a road once existed.
But even in its tattered pose, what remains of David Oyite-Ojok’s home retains signs of a once alluring abode.
It was complete with petroleum refueling pumps that are long rusted, a water tank the size of a trailer oil tanker that shows signs of rust, and aluminum electric poles similar to street lamps that were powered by a generator.
Fifty metres behind the main house, lies an enormous four-bedroom hut – each room is self-contained with a flashing toilet. The inside is not unlike Munyonyo huts; the exterior is much better shaped.
Its floors and ceilings are wood paneled.
Oyite then built Apac Education Centre, near his home, now at the centre of an ownership wrangle between Becca and the district administration.
When President Yoweri Museveni visited Lira last month, Becca asked for it. Museveni reportedly said that he would find out if indeed Oyite built it.
“We are still requesting for it, but they are still refusing,” she said.
The centre reportedly reverted to government when she went to Britain in 1983.
Beside it, rises an unfinished structure, built up to the ring beam, with only roofing to go.
“We are trying to build this church in memory of the late son, Michael, the one who was shot,” Becca says.
Oyite’s body rests in a tiled grave, heavy with a coat of dust, inside an iron roofed grave house at his Loro home.
Next to him is his mother, then father, sister, and the son.
According to Becca, former president Obote brought Koreans to construct the grave house.
But Obote’s government fell too soon in 1985 – the Koreans left.
For Becca, Loro also has some nastier memories.Here, Oyite’s brother was shot dead after a tractor he drove collided with a car carrying a captain’s wife a year before Oyite died.
The brother fell down. The captain’s wife also fell down.On arrival, the captain reportedly asked: “Who was the driver of that?”
The crowd pointed to a man lying, unconscious, amongst the shrubs.
The captain pulled out his pistol and shot Oyite’s brother in the head.It was 1982. The crowd looked on, amazed.
“Eh, you have killed Oyite Ojok’s brother, you have killed Oyite’s brother,” says Becca, trying to mimick the crowd.
The captain fled.
Living a husband’s dreams
Oyite might have died too soon to complete his dreams, but Becca has tried to see them to their end. When she returned in 1990, she put Oyite’s 1,000 acres to good use.
In 1993, she came third countrywide in the medium scale farming category. She won a tractor. In 1994, she came first.
But that seems like eons ago.
A decade after being the best farmer in the country, and almost forty years after taking her marriage vows, Becca’s world looks largely hollow.
In Lira where she leaves in a bangalow that Oyite started – and she completed three years ago – the echoes of her footsteps reverberate off the white walls.
The walls are empty save for pieces of religious and poetic writings and a few framed pictures.
There is Oyite with a light smile, wearing military uniform, behind piles of paper on his desk; a walkie-talkie behind him.
Then, the daughter – black sleeveless dress, gazing into the camera – and a smiling grand daughter.
In Loro again, there is a framed picture of her daughter, looking 15, wearing tight pants, falling just below the knee, each of her palms holding either side of her waist.
Becca says there are no other family pictures; they were left in Arusha.
So, how come she returned with only framed pictures of her husband and daughter?
“You really like you daughter,” I comment.
“I don’t like her – I love her,” she replies.
She pauses and adds: “She is the only daughter I have.”Did Oyite-Ojok love the girl most – the reason she keeps her pictures everywhere?
“He loved all his children,” she says, again pausing before adding: “He loved the girl most. But they were all loved.”
Seemingly, Becca loves her children so much; she won’t let anything upset them.
She would not reveal the names of the children.
“But do you want to put their names in the papers?” she asks. “They will sue me – you know children of these days. I will have to ask them.”
But the children are miles away – in Britain that became home for them.
They were that far when Becca suffered a stroke three years ago; she is yet to fully recover.
She is on full time medication and her farming spirit has apparently taken a knock; the tell tale signs are two broken down tractors.
She is the only person left in a deserted and desolate land, which gives a truism to the statement: ‘a house does not make a home’ hanging on a post card pinned on the wall.
She plans to sell her house in Arusha (‘I can’t manage it from here’) and get one in Kampala.
Her children have reportedly encouraged her to do, if it would reduce her stress.
When she kindly accepted to move from Lira to Loro to show me Oyite’s country home, Becca looked tired; she walks with a slight limp.
“This is where I belong,” she said, almost as soon as the car came to a halt. “Things have fallen apart.”
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED].
The first part of this article ran last Sunday
© 2004 The Monitor Publications
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