She defied her friends’ advice to give our baby to another man

Cathy Zawedde and her boyfriend William Bawakana hold the cake from Dembe FM. Courtesy photo

What you need to know:

  • Dembe FM has this year decided to reward couples who have the most touching love stories as voted by the listeners of the Mubeezi show, a programme that runs from Monday to Friday at midday.
  • Bina Babie the host of the show has been surprising couples with cakes which she delivered personally.

Cathy Zawedde, is a young light-skinned good looking lady in her mid-20s. Unlike most pregnant women with several mood swings, she is soft spoken and smiles most of the time.
She works with Brittam group of companies and she says, she loves her job because it has sustained her.
Zawedde says she used to live with her mother however, when she got a job early last year, she asked her mother to allow her live with a friend so that she could experiment a life away from home, which her mother granted.
It is then that she started living with a friend who later on introduced her to other friends.

The group initiated Zawedde into late night hangouts. In fact, it was during one of those hangouts that she got to meet William Bawakana. She says he was everything she could wish for in a man and was happy that her friends had connected her to such a man. While the romance blossomed, Zawedde discovered that she was pregnant.
“I got along with the man well and after a short time with him, I conceived. I was a bit skeptical to open up to the man about the pregnancy but before I could tell him about my state, friends advised me to use my pregnancy to dupe other guys and make a lot of money out of it.” Although her new found friends made it seem lucrative, she declined to take up the offer.
When Zawedde declined to use her pregnancy as a bait to make money from unsuspecting men, her friends threatened to beat her up.

“I told them that I was not ready to use my pregnancy to obtain money by false pretence because I have a job. But my friends threatened to attack me while at my workplace. They said they would shame me. I was scared so I decided to let the man responsible for the pregnancy know about it,” she narrates.
To Zawedde’s surprise, Bawakana, the father of her child was very supportive. “He was happy about the pregnancy and promised to protect me from my hostile friends. We are now in a happy relationship, I’m at his place during most weekends,” she shares.
Asked what happened to her nasty friends, Zawedde says she decided to separate from them completely when she found out that they were sex workers.
“A certain friend introduced me to this group; I didn’t know what they were doing at first, but we used to go to ‘happening’ places where my friends would hook up with guys. Those men would finance all their expenditures,” she says.

But all that has not scared Bawakana who says he is happy he found his rib. He says on his part he was pleased by how Zawedde stood by the truth and did not fall for her friends’ idea of lying to other men.
“I truly love Cathy for who she is, I don’t care what others think about her; to me, and she is quite exceptional because it is only a few girls in Kampala these days that can desist from such a temptation. I am happy that she did not give away my pregnancy and I am ready to take care of it,” he said.
Bawakana is a mechanic who runs a garage in Kalerwe, on the outskirts of Kampala.
“Though she had a company of sex workers as her colleagues, I discovered that she is a different woman with good character, especially when she opened up to me about the pregnancy,” he said.
He said he is planning to have a lasting relationship with her. Bawakana thanked Dembe FM for surprising them with a cake on Valentine’s Day and also for appreciating their love.

Married people have lower levels of stress

Married people are healthier than those who are single, divorced or widowed, research has found. Now a new study provides the first biological evidence to explain how marriage impacts health. Published in Psychoneuroendocrinology, the researchers found that married individuals had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol than those who never married or were previously married. These findings support the belief that unmarried people face more psychological stress than married individuals. Prolonged stress is associated with increased levels of cortisol which can interfere with the body’s ability to regulate inflammation, which in turn promotes the development and progression of many diseases.