The Silent Strength of “Mukaaka” (Grandmother) Violet
This Mother’s Day, we honor the women whose love doesn’t end with their own children, but stretches across generations. Violet’s story is one of loss, sacrifice, and the quiet, fierce strength of a grandmother who became a mother again.
A Mother Again
At 68 years old, Violet wakes up before dawn.
“I try every day,” she says, “to wake up very early, even with my little energy.”
She prepares breakfast for six grandchildren. Not her own children, those came first, years ago. But life rewrote her story.
Violet once bore eight children of her own, of which she lost four to HIV/AIDS. The two who survived, a boy and a girl, grew up and left. Her daughter married far away. Her son moved to Kampala to work, leaving behind his six children.
Then, in 1995, Violet’s husband died.
Suddenly, she was alone. A single grandmother. A mother again.
A Nation Built by Silent Architects
Violet cannot count how many children have passed through her hands. Her oldest grandchild is in P.6. Another is in P.4. Twin brothers are in P.1. Two more are too young for school.
“There is always a struggle,” she admits. “Food, clothes, medical care… and above all, a lack of funds.”
But struggle, for Violet, is not the end of the sentence. It is the beginning of her testimony.
The Strength That Doesn’t Shout
Violet’s strength is different. It is patient. It is the slow burning of a woman who refused to let six more children become statistics.
“At some moment,” she recalls, nodding slowly, “I felt like I was not going to manage anymore. Being a single mother of all these children triggered me.”
That feeling became her compass. Every morning, the children have breakfast before school. At every break, food is packed in small parcels. Every evening, a bath before bed. And then, her secret weapon, stories. Stories of her own youth. Stories that give courage.
“I tell them stories so they know more about the old days,” she says. “So they know where they come from.”
The Sacrifice Nobody Sees
Love is not always a word. Sometimes it is the absence of something you wanted for yourself.
“There is no day I wake up and buy meat,” Violet says quietly, “yet my children have no uniform, no shoes, no scholastic items.”
Meat is a luxury. Uniforms are a necessity. She has never confused the two.
She prioritizes their needs first. Everything else comes later. That is not poverty speaking. That is a grandmother’s arithmetic, where love subtracts from her own plate and adds to their future.
The Lesson Written on Her Walls
If you ask Violet what single value she has tried to pour into these children, she doesn’t hesitate.
“Kindness,” she says. “Always be kind to one another.”
She points to an example she uses often: Dr. Twesigye Jackson Kaguri, who has supported her tirelessly through the Nyaka Mukaaka Project.
“He helps even people he does not know,” she says. “That is kindness.”
To Violet, kindness is not weakness. It is the theology of her home: when you help your neighbor, God continues to bless you.
And so she teaches her grandchildren to be gentle. Not because people earn it. But because gentleness, she believes, is what will sustain them for the long road ahead.
Hope Rising
When she looks at her grandchildren now, learning at school, wearing shoes she sacrificed meat to buy, she does not speak of hardship. She speaks of pride.
“I am proud that they are acquiring knowledge,” she says. “They will become responsible and important people in the future.”
That is her hope. That they will continue what she started: a chain of care that does not break.
A Mother’s Blessing
On this Mother’s Day, if Violet could speak to all younger mothers in her community and beyond, she would not give a lecture. She would speak a blessing.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Nyaka celebrates more than 23,000 grandmothers like Violet, who build communities not with speeches or monuments, but with breakfast before school, stories before sleep, and a love that refuses to quit.
She is not just raising children.
She is raising the future.
One grandchild. One meal. One act of kindness at a time.
