Blind market vendor with a vision

Hardworking. Florence Adokorach, commonly known as Atiku, sitting next to her merchandise. PHOTOS BY LILIAN NAMAGEMBE/STEPHEN OKELLO

What you need to know:

  • Advice. The UN-Women Country representative to Uganda, Dr Maxime Houinato who attended this year’s third Annual National Market Women Entrepreneurs Symposium in Kampala City last month asked government to make markets safe places, saying they want to ensure that everyone that leaves their place to go to the market does not take any risks.
  • “It’s already hard enough to make money so if on top of that you are going to think about people that are going to attack you for sexual reasons, it is unfair,” Dr Houinato said.
    In order to achieve this, he suggested that KCCA and other local authorities in charge of markets should work together to protect these women so that they are able to be involved in making policies that will add impact.

Florence Adokorach, commonly known to many as Atiku, is a vendor in Lacor Market in Gulu District. She trades in foodstuffs such as maize, beans and millet. She says according to what her relatives told her, out of five children who contracted measles, she became blind and the others died. In our conversation, through an interpreter since she cannot speak English, Atiku can hardly recall some of the timelines of events in her life.

As if being blind was not enough, Atiku dropped out of school in Primary Three in 1986. Despite her dream to continue with her studies, the parents’ financial constraints and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war shattered the dream.

Life has been rough, but not to shake her resilience. She got married and had three children now aged 18, 16, and 12. A few years into her marriage, another tragedy hit: “I was diagnosed with HIV/Aids after the loss of my husband, whom they discovered had succumbed to the same illness in 2008. He started by feeling sick in his leg and I took him for medical attention to the hospital but not much could be done about his health.”

Atiku was a cook at St Mary’s Lacor Hospital, Gulu.

“I got confused and stopped work. Since I had overstayed home, when I returned to work, they had replaced me,” she narrates.

Remarriage
She recounts that the situation forced her to remarry since she needed someone to take care of her. With him, they had two children, now aged eight and five.

“However, I also don’t stay with him because he suffered a mental breakdown and left,” says the 43-year-old and mother of five. She is currently taking antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) which go hand in hand with counselling.

By the time Atiku and her second husband separated, she was privileged to be among the few people living with a disability that a White Catholic priest, one of the parish priests in Layibi Sub-county, Gulu District was taking care of . He gave me a weekly upkeep of Shs 40,000.

“Initially, I would use Shs30,000 and save the balance every week. When the number [of people] with disability increased, the money was reduced to Shs20,000 and I started saving Shs5,000 per week,” Atiku says.

Hatching a survival plan
Unfortunately for Atiku, the parish priest returned to Italy, but she quickly thought of starting a business after realising that dependence on well-wishers was not sustainable. After consulting her elder children, they agreed that she starts selling cereals in one of the markets.

“From my savings, I had Shs170,000 part of which I used to buy a sack of maize and gradually, the capital grew to Shs400,000,” Atiku says.

However, the little success realised has not come without challenges. Atiku says she is overwhelmed by family responsibilities as she has to feed, pay school fees for her children, and other home necessities. This slackens her business.

At the moment, two of her children are not at school because she cannot afford to pay their school fees. Her house is almost collapsing and the roof of their toilet was washed away by the heavy rains.

She sometimes, asks her children to help out with the market work on Saturdays because she believes they will help her in future.

Although she did not get a chance to finish school, Atiku finds it challenging but she can tell the money apart using the feel of her fingers.

Also, she says she faces stigma from customers in the market.

“Sometimes I manage to get customers after my colleagues who are not blind have finished selling their commodities,” she laments, noting that in the process, she depends on the little capital to take care of her family.

“When I ask for a loan, they don’t give it to me because I seem the most disadvantaged. Maybe I look like a defaulter, unlike others,” she says.

Skills
However, all hope is not lost as Atiku has since managed to join market groups where one of the non-government organisations, Institute for Social Transformation (IST) through their market women project has trained them in the different business skills which have helped her to break the barriers.

Through the project, which began in 2016, IST works with young women and girls in the informal sector and mainly markets in more than five districts. The organisation strives to develop capacity of women and youth to champion gender, justice, equality, transformational leadership, and learning through capacity building, innovation and advocacy.

Adokorach during the interview.

“The trainings have equipped me with better skills on how to attract customers because in the past, I would display the commodities and leave my stall, but now I can hear passersby’s footsteps, smile and woo them to buy my merchandise. I believe this has improved my customer skills,” she adds.

Atiku is one of the female vendors from more than 10 key main markets in Arua, Busia, Gulu, Iganga, Mbarara, Fort Portal, Kalerwe, Soroti, Nakawa, Masaka, and Ntinda who attended this year’s third Annual National Market Women Entrepreneurs Symposium in Kampala City last month.

Intervention
The symposium enables the women dialogue, celebrate, share and also learn from each other how to grow their businesses from the current situation.

Maureen Wagubi of IST, says the government should intervene to address the different challenges market women face by joining hands with them and other partners such as considering a fund for them.

“There are many women working in the market to a tune of 50,000 and so we look towards teaching them since 80 per cent of the population of the markets are women,” Wagubi says.

As a fundamental group in the society, IST is taking a lead to support market women.

“We call upon government to consider a fund for the market women to be able to support their families and friends,” she explains.

From the trainings, IST have realised the market women have changed a lot in different business aspects such as sanitation, confidence and leadership.

“When we had just started, the women were shy and could not even walk up to customers to convince them but now we see them stepping out of their stalls to engage their customers,” she adds.

The UN-Women Country representative to Uganda, Dr Maxime Houinato, who attended the symposium also asked government to make markets safe places, saying that they want to ensure that everyone that leaves their place to go to the market does not take any risks.

“It’s already hard enough to make money so if on top of that you are going to think about people who are going to attack you for sexual reasons, it is unfair,” Dr Houinato said.

In order to achieve this, he suggested that KCCA and other local authorities in charge of markets work together to protect these women so that they are able to be involved in making policies that will add impact.

“The second thing is to be able to generate enough resources for their investments. We have seen that these women have many needs in their families, including supporting their households, maintenance, so it means when involved in economic activities, they need to generate income,” Dr Houinato said.

Markets are usually places where commercial dealings take place. In Uganda, there are usually that deal in selling different commodities ranging from fresh and dry foodstuff, new and second hand kitchenware and electronics.

WHAT OTHERS SAY

Beatrice Akello, vendor, “We always help her to buy her produce for sale so that she is not cheated in the course of transaction. We support each other here, when I am away she also supports me a lot well. She has many customers and at times when she does not have a particular product that one wants she refers them to me since I am her immediate neighbour.”

Alice Ayet, Market Chairperson, "Atiku is a role model in this market and her fellow women always get to her to seek for advice whenever there is a problem among the people in the market. We are glad that we have her here and we always advise other women out there to buy a leaf and make a change in their lives.’’

Compiled by STEPHEN OKELLO