Elderly couple 10-year marriage on rocks as woman’s family rejects ‘husband’

A ten-year marriage of an elderly couple in Jinja City is falling apart after the 64-year-old woman’s family allegedly instructed her not to take her 73-year-old husband to her village.
Mr Dison Mayoga in 1969 left his ancestral home in Buwugu village, Sironko District for present-day Jinja City where he reportedly found work at Nyanza Textile Industries Limited [Nytil] from 1971 to 1980.
In 2011, he met Dorothy Atim, who had also left her ancestral home in Ogur Sub-county, Lira District in 2003 and the two started staying together as husband and wife in Makenke village, Mafubira Ward, Jinja City North Division. They each have children from previous marriages.
Since 1969, however, Mr Mayoga says he has only returned to his village in 1987, while Ms Atim says she has been to her village thrice, since 2003 when she relocated to Jinja.
Ms Atim, who had a thriving retail fish business in Jinja before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, now says that she wants to indefinitely return to her village because she is HIV positive and her husband is no longer in position to look after her.
Mr Mayoga is a casual labourer who earns a living by tilling people’s gardens and sweeping neighbours’ compounds among other petty jobs.
“I want to return to my village for good as early as Thursday this week,” she said on Monday, adding that she will travel alone because her brother has instructed her not to go with Mr Mayoga.
“In Lira, I will be staying at my mother’s house, which he [Mayoga] is culturally barred from sleeping in. All I can advise him to do is to ‘be a man’ and head to Sironko District,” Ms Atim added.
Mr Mayoga is, however, reluctant to head back to Sironko, a place he has only returned to once since he set foot in Jinja City five decades ago.
“Going to Sironko isn’t urgent; I instead want to go to Lira to see my in-laws. My heart doesn’t want me to go to Sironko,” he said.
To understand how resolute Ms Atim is to indefinitely relocate to Lira City, she has already hatched plans to have her pick-up of antiretroviral drugs [ARVs] shifted from Mpumudde Health Centre IV in Jinja City to Ogur Health Centre IV in Lira City.
“If she has decided to leave, let her do so; I have tried in several ways to convince her to stay but have failed. I am healthy but only lack the energy to till people’s gardens from morning to 3pm,” Mr Mayoga said.
He added that he has taken routine HIV tests which have turned out negative, a proclamation this publication wasn’t in position to readily corroborate.
Intervention
Mr Joseph Garssia Ojatum, the founder of Blessing Uganda Foundation, a Community Based Organisation, has visited the couple and donated an assortment of items, including food worth Shs100,000.
“We are of the view that they get counselling services because separation will make them more vulnerable as they will miss one another; I will try to speak to the wife’s family and ask them to accept the man,” Mr Ojatum said.
Blessing Uganda Foundation has since July last year looked after over 50 families in Mpumudde, Mafubira, Budondo and some parts of Walukuba, all in Jinja City, and resettled five families in Kole, Dokolo, Kaberamaido and Tororo Districts.
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