Nishan juices

This morning, my bestestestest friend, Alex Edith Busingye Amooti Nyakabwa, left this world for the next. She was only 74 years young. I feel a deep sense of loss and relief: loss for the passing of an amazing friend and human being; relief because Amooti has rested after a long and exhausting battle and knowing that wherever she has gone, it’s a better place. Amooti has been in a coma for almost seven months. The pain of seeing her in that state was, to me, unbearable. I felt she needed to rest. Yet I always loved seeing her breathing. Even when it was clear there was no hope of her regaining consciousness, I still hoped that against all the odds, she would bounce back to life. In her very rich and fruitful life, Amooti triumphed over many things. This singular illness was not the worst, or so I wanted to believe. I met Amooti when I was only 13 or 14 years because she was the mother of my closest friends at Nyakasura School, Walter and Wesley. People like her are the ones who, through the way they treated me, helped me cultivate confidence because they showed faith in me. I want to give this testimony because if I have been able to be anything, it is because of the love people like her have extended to me. And for Amooti, her role in my life was exceptional and unprecedented. There was, deep inside Amooti’s personality, a welcoming loveliness that was so beautiful. Amooti and I became the bestestestest friends in the world on the first day of our meeting; it was love at first sight. From our first meeting, I would always visit her and we have marathon conversations lasting hours on end: me a teenager, her a mother to my friends. I would confide in her my deepest fears and anxieties, share with her secrets I would not even share with Walter and Wesley or my own mother. As I grew in age so did the love, affection and respect between us grow and blossom. Her children: Walter, Wesley, Ingrid, Edgar, Pearl and Beverly became my siblings. Whenever someone dies, the question that comes to my mind is: of what value have they been: to family, to friends, to community? On that score, Amooti lived a very satisfactory, meaningful, purposeful and productive life. She has left a legacy that inspires, humbles and awes everyone who knew her. I will write about this in a lengthy eulogy. And for now, I would like to say that Amooti represented the nobility of the human spirit. She had, in great abundance, three great qualities: largeness of mind, kindness of heart and boundless generosity. She made everyone, young and old, rich or poor, male or female, literate or illiterate, of high or low rank feel recognized, appreciated, seen, heard, felt, loved, care for. When her husband, Vincent William Kwebiiha Akiiki Nyakabwa, died in 1991 leaving her six young children, Amooti rose to the occasion. She took on the responsibility with the energy, enthusiasm and passion only her could assemble. She took all of them through the best schools and set them on the road to professional and career success. Few women left alone with such a esponsibility have been half as successful. Amooti triumphed because where others see problems, she saw opportunities; because where most people in difficult situations lose hope and become despondent, Amooti found inspiration and motivation to work hard and to overcome even when all the odds were against her. Amooti was great because she saw possibilities in everything, because she was forever an optimist, and most critically because he believed in the goodness of others. She saw herself in other people, and because of that, she made those who met and interacted with her, develop goodness in their hearts.