She followed her heart to Uganda

How often do you meet an Asian lady comfortably married to a Ugandan? Not often. In fact for me, that was a first. The first time that Kavitha Sserunkuma came to Uganda, it was out of curiosity, to visit a friend. The second time? She came back as a wife! But that visit was just the icing on the cake, as she had known that friend, who is now her husband, for years.
“My husband and I met as foreign students in India,” she narrates. At 19 years of age, she had gone to India, from Malaysia where she hails, to study medicine. It is in India that she got to meet a horde of young people like herself, among them, Richard Serunkuma, an accounting student then.

A chanced encounter
While lazing around at the university canteen buying sweets with friends one day, the three ‘Kenyan” students as most Africans were referred to, walked towards them. As if earlier planned, two of them busied themselves making small talk with the two friends she was with. Having gotten rid of the ‘destruction’, he was able to say hi to her, and start some bit of conversation.
“I found it funny actually. He asked me ‘how are you?’ That was not how things worked where I come from. It takes someone who knows you personally pretty well, to ask you that!” she reveals. But Kavitha, ever so polite, exchanged pleasantries with him, and like they say, the rest is history. Caught in the heat of things romantic, Kavitha decided to tell someone close to her about the special person in her life. That close person was her dad.

The end of the road?
At the end of her one-year course, Kavitha unfortunately did not pass her entry exams into medical school while Serunkuma excelled in his accounting course. They parted ways, with her heading to Malaysia to face the wrath of her family while he headed to Uganda to start his accounting career. Her father, though disappointed that she had not passed the exams, was quick to point out that she was to blame for her plight. He asked her to identify another course, and this saw her choose to go to the University of London where she studied law. Through that period, however, she remained in touch with Serunkuma through letters, which she says were the only way one could keep in touch at a time. When she finished law school and started working as a young lawyer in Malaysia, talk of her African boyfriend was brought back to her father’s attention. But this time round, she was actually harnessing the thought of getting on the plane to go visit him. Although not really amused about it, he allowed her to go, if only to see what kind of ‘miserable’ life she was putting herself up for.

Taking a leap of faith
“I think, given the terrible images and stories we read in the media about Africa, my dad thought I should come and see for myself, something I bet he hoped would see me rethink my decision,” she narrates. In 2000, she made her debut visit to Uganda and she says, nothing could be further from the truth concerning the light in which Africa had been represented in the news.

When she narrated her story to her family in Malaysia on her return there, her parents knew their daughter’s goose was cooked and that it was a matter of time before she went to Africa. True to it, months from that visit, she got a marriage proposal from Serunkuma- in a letter! He, however, called later and that was when marriage preparations were initiated. He went to visit her family in Malaysia and it is on that visit that they got married. That, also, was when their differences actually played out for the first time; she, a Hindu by then, could not fathom going to a church, while he, a Christian too, could not allow being married in a Hindu temple.
“We reached a compromise and decided to have a civil wedding, after which we hosted a few friends and family to a luncheon,” she narrates. With the marriage done, Kavitha suggested that her husband goes to Uganda ahead of her.

A new life
“My mother refused, she said I was married and a wife belongs with her husband. She made me change my mind and come with him right after in 2002,” she says. Moving to a new country came with its fair share of challenges, but none that she couldn’t handle. The issue of religion, she says was quite sensitive to her initially. However, her husband allowed her to ease into it and never put her on any pressure whatsoever. “I attended a service with him where Pastor Fred Wantaate said that a couple who are not yoked in faith, are not living right before God. He asked the congregation to pronounce that they are for Christ, and that there for me was what I consider the day I became a Christian,” she reveals. Also, while here, her law degree was declared insufficient for her to practice law. She decided to go private and do business, and currently has a catering service preparing and supplying healthier meals called Healthy Bites. She also started a Facebook page, Kampala Food Network to share her vision of a food –enthusiastic society, something which is catching on currently.

First meal
The first meal she prepared for her husband’s family, she narrates, left some coughing, gasping for air while others were reeling from stomach upsets. A recipe of her mum’s, of a dish she greatly enjoyed turned out to be the cause, with a good amount of chillies and spices.

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