What it Means... Date a sugar daddy

It has been said that cross generational relationships put young women at higher risk of unplanned pregnancies. Amos Ngwomoya caught up with a girl who can testify to that statement.

My name is Annet Kabasomi, a student at Makerere University. I joined in 2008 after I had been admitted on a Bachelor’s degree programme. To me, this was a heaven sent opportunity because I was the first child from my family to pursue a degree.

As a first year student and a teenager, I was fascinated by the flamboyant and free lifestyle at campus given the fact that I was from a rural area. I wondered how I would cope with it.

Soon I made some friends who advised me to engage in a relationship with a sugar daddy, who promised me heaven on earth.

As a weak-minded young lady, I quickly welcomed the offer without envisaging the problems such a relationship could cause. After all, I was a fresher so I took everything for granted. In such a happy mood, I was sure of everything because this new catch of mine had a very big supermarket in a suburb next to the university. Our relationship was characterised by all sorts of merry making.

I started absconding from university programmes. Lectures became of less priority to me, not realising that I was missing the point. I made sure that I appeased this man in each and every way for our relationship to flourish.

However, I realised that I had conceived. I cried to no avail and was terrified. My friends who had lured me into this trap had left since they had already graduated.

When I told my sugar daddy, he ironically descended on me with bitter words and within a couple of minutes, he started slapping me and mockingly asked, “I never knew that university girls are fools. How could you become pregnant as if you never knew where pills are got? You are a fool and go away from me because you can make people doubt my integrity since I have children of your age.”

I was dumbstruck. I tried to convince him to help out but it was fruitless. I started figuring out how to tell my parents.

When my parents learnt of it, they were shocked because they could not believe how I had let them down, tarnishing their reputation in the whole village. I really felt ashamed. They stopped paying my tuition and I realised that my own actions had backfired. It was a terrible moment for me.

Like the Biblical scriptures, which emphasise repentance, I had to accept my mistakes and plead for forgiveness from parents and God. They refused at first but I continuedworking towards pleasing them.

They later pardoned me and told me that I would return to university the following year to complete my course. I had missed one year since I was taking care of my child.

As the saying goes “once bitten, twice shy,” I learnt to be vigilant and not to be influenced by friends. I realised that shortcuts are always slippery because I thought that dating a sugar daddy would make me a happy woman who everyone would admire. I also realised that such men (sugar daddies) just mess up young girls’ lives and frustrate their future plans.

In my village, I now educate young girls not to fall prey to such men, how to maintain their integrity, stressing to them how the future lies in their hands and how a girl’s education can save the nation.

I’m now in my third year and happy because I tested HIV negative. I now turn a deaf ear to all worldly pleasures and I’m a born again Christian. My message is that we should learn from our mistakes.

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