MY JOURNEY.

            At the age of one, I was moved to Kenya, Africa where my brother was born. My name is Joella .I was born in Uganda in 1989.My family and I have been on the move all our lives. But unlike Ruth McBride in James’ McBride’s novel, THE COLOURS OF WATER. We have not been running away from our past, we face and keep our pas close to us and now here is my life’s story.

            My mother, Caroline told me that when I was a baby, we moved to Kenya because at that time there was war going on in Uganda. I obviously cannot remember anything but by looking at the pictures of my childhood in Kenya I seemed like a very happy child. After the war was over, we returned to Uganda and a few months later , my father was transferred to Paris, France. He went ahead of us so as to be able to look for a house and schools for my brother and I. This took about six months nad during this time my mother took care of us. She is a strong woman my mother.

           As a child education was not very common in the village where she lived. But her father did everything he could to make sure that my mother and her eight siblings went to school. She worked hard under harsh conditions and very few scholastic materials. At the end of it all , she was accepted in to the best secondary school in the country on a fully funded scholarship. She says these were the best years of her life. Back then, the British governed the secondary schools so they had all the scholastic materials needed. Her motivation to work hard was her mother. She wanted to be able to pass school and take care of her. And indeed she succeeded. After her secondary school, she made it to university on a fully funded scholarship and graduated top of her class. She is now a social worker with three children taking care of her mother.

            At the age of five, my family and I moved to France to join my father. At first I hated it because I did not know the language, the weather was strange and the system os education was completely different from what I was used to. But soon I got used to it and became French! My parents never really knew the language, they could understand it but they could not speak it. So every where we went, when someone was talking to them we had to translate and speak on their behalf.

            After four years of living in France, my father told us that we had to return to Uganda. I was devastated and I did not understand why he would move us. He tried explaining to me that it was because of his job but I was too young to understand. My father always had a way of showing his love for us .He never directly told us that he loved us, instead he did little things like cook our favorite dishes to express his love for us. The only time he actually says ‘I love you,’ is when he is signing your birthday or Christmas card. Some people might find it strange but to us it is perfectly normal.

            However hard it was to move back to Uganda, we eventually did and got used to it all over again. At least over there we had our relatives with us whom we could visit daily. I know more of my mother’s relatives than I do my father’s; this is because my father does not talk much about his family. I always wondered why and kept on asking him questions about his family but he never answered. Until one day my mother told me that my father had not grown up with grandma. He was adopted by my aunt who is more of a mother to him that my grandmother ever was. We don’t hate her for not being able to take care of my father, she is still our grandmother and daddy sends her money when she does not have any. The fact that my mother told me did not change the fact that my father simply could not talk about what it was like for him growing up and I have learned to accept that.

            After four years of living in Uganda, my father was transferred once again. Except this time it was to Canada. Living in Uganda taught me a lot .Especially because I was in a boarding school for a year. Boarding school is not as horrible as people think it is. It is like going away to college except your parents visit you every after three weeks. In Uganda, even if people live in poverty, they are still happy. It has always amazed me. My friend Debbie does not have a very luxurious life, her family is very poor and she has ten siblings. One day I asked her why she was never sad and she said to me “Why be sad? God has given me life, I Have legs to walk with, I have eyes to see and I never sleep hungry. Why wouldn’t I be happy?” Debbie taught me a lot .She taught me that life is not only about material things, which my mother told me daily but I just could not get it until I met Debbie.

            Canada so far has been the best experience of my life. Within one week of starting school, I made enough friends to fit in. I was still considered as the new kind but that did not bother me at all. Everybody was wonderfully nice to my brother and I and it did not take us along time to catch up with the school work. We worked hard and our parents were very proud of us. Everything went on smoothly until my mother told us that we were moving to New York. I was overwhelmed with excitement beacusei thought that we were just goin on vacation.Which turned out to be the wrong assumption. My father had been transferred once more and we had to move. My friends were sad that I was leaving but at the same time they were jealous because we were moving to New York!  Eventually I came round to the idea and got excited about it.

            From Uganda to Kenya back to Uganda to France, back to Uganda to Canada and finally U.S.A. This has been my life’s journey.Through all these places I have carried my all my friends with me in my heart and will never forget them. As for U.S.A, a new part of my life begins.