Akibui: 'Factory’ employing abandoned wives in Kumi

Employment empowers people, but to single mothers, it provides financial stability and boosts self-esteem. This creates a ripple effect down on their children by giving them good role models in life. In Kumi district, alcoholism has been blamed for the breakup of several marriages. A ‘factory’ is now offering single mothers and abandoned wives a chance to earn a living as Kenneth Odele writes.

The distinctive chatter and banter of several women is unmistakable. It is midmorning and many of them sit on the verandah, shelling and sorting groundnuts. Behind the factory, other women, dressed in blue overalls lift sacks of briquettes. Others spread briquettes on shelves in a greenhouse. The men employed by the factory do the heavy work, sorting through the charcoal dust with hoes. This is Akibui Farmers, a briquette-making factory in Kumi Municipality, Kumi district, which employs several divorced, abandoned, and widowed women in an informal capacity. Janet Clare Acom, is employed as a sorter of groundnuts, a casual job. She is a survivor of gender-based violence, whose husband walked out on the family, leaving her with the responsibility of providing for their children. “My husband never provided for our needs, even when we were living together. I was the one struggling to pay school fees, treat the children, and look for food,” she recalls. 

Acom adds that despite not working to contribute to the family’s upkeep, the father of her children wanted to live in a smooth, luxurious environment. “Sometimes, I would fail to earn enough to cook a decent meal. So, I would cook greens (edible leaves of plants) as our sauce. When he returned from the trading centre, he would kick the saucepan of greens because he did not want to eat them. On such days, the children would sleep on empty stomachs,” she laments. After making the family sleep hungry, Acom says her drunk husband would then want to claim his conjugal rights. “How can I give you sex when you are not supporting the family? Where is the value in it? He felt it was his right, but I cannot submit to a man like that. Eventually, he ran away from home,” Acom states. Today, as a casual labourer at the factory, Acom earns Shs5,000 per day worked.

Through meticulous savings, she has managed to educate her children, one of whom is pursuing a Diploma in Water Engineering and Sanitation, while another is in Senior Three. At 53, Betty Asekenye, also employed as a sorter, has a similar story. Because of her husband’s laissez-faire attitude to life, as his first wife, she had to provide for his children. “My parents married me off when I was 16. Together with my husband, we produced 11 children. Then, he married a second wife and a third wife. A year after marrying the third wife, he acquired a concubine, who is a widow,” she says. Over the years, the family grew to have 24 children, yet her husband never took up his responsibilities as a provider. “I would take care of him – buying him slippers and clothing, including underpants. Then, using loans, I would buy clothes for the children and pay their school fees. Life became unbearable. I had to leave,” she laments. With her Shs5,000 a day salary, Asekenye continues to pay the school fees of her children and stepchildren. Her husband, on the other hand, expends his energy on women in the trading centre.

Growing social concern

The situation of Acom and Asekenye is further complicated by a lack of social support systems for victims of GBV, limited access to land ownership, micro-finance funding opportunities, and low-priced vocational training programs. Akibui Farmers factory employs 22 permanent staff – most of whom are men - and over 200 women casual labourers. The women are employed in various sections of the factory including shelling and sorting groundnuts, making briquettes, and bagging the dry briquettes. Albert Okurut, the director of the factory, says most of the women come to him after their husbands have left the home. “Every day, I receive several people looking for work. Seventy percent of them are women and yet this work of carrying bags of briquettes requires men. But we try to give them small jobs where they can earn Shs5,000 a day,” he says. The strength of the new employees is first evaluated before they are taken on. The factory provides the women with lunch daily. “Even when we do not have orders, and there is no work, these women come here. I think they find it better to sit here among fellow women than to stay at home.

Some of their husbands also follow them here, probably to take their earnings from them” Okurut says. One of the biggest challenges to stable homes in the Kumi district is the alcoholism of husbands and fathers. During a belated Women’s Day celebration, Hellen Adoa, Minister of State for Fisheries and the Woman Member of Parliament for Serere district, called out such men. “You men have handed your responsibilities to women. There are men, who by 6.30 am, are squatting in the centre, playing games like omweso (mancala game) from morning to evening. You do not wonder where your women are getting money to make supper for the children,” she said. Adoa added that this situation had forced women to step up and take on both the wifely and husbandly roles in families. “Women, who used to be in the kitchen, have been abandoned. Now, they have left the kitchen, and their role of nurturing children, and are boarding vehicles to Busia (border) looking for money,” she said.

Catherine Aboyo, the senior probation officer for Kumi district, says every week, her office handles two to three cases of GBV from all walks of life. “An abandoned woman cannot sit at home, yet she has to feed and educate her children. Currently, the habit of men abandoning their wives has portrayed a lot of negativity about marriage that young women are now scared of the institution,” she says. She adds that several young women, who are financially stable, now opt to have children out of wedlock because they feel that only their children have the right to share their possessions and finances. “On the other hand, a man feels that a working woman should support the family. There is a lot to teach communities in the district about co-existing. However, my office is constrained by a lack of resources,” Aboyo explains. Currently, only women in Saccos have access to information about maintaining healthy marriages from the probation office.

A job with meals

Before she found herself working in the factory, Grace Aseku had a fairly successful business selling charcoal. However, the deal breaker May 2023 Executive Order Number Three, the presidential directive that banned the cutting of trees for charcoal burning and the production of and trade in charcoal. “Sometimes, my husband would grab the profits I had made from the sale of charcoal, but I still made money. My husband abandoned us in 2022. However, with the presidential ban, I lost my income,” she says. Nowadays, when Aseku calls her husband to ask for school fees or money to treat a sick child, he hangs up after listening to her plight. “All my capital was gone yet I had taken a loan to expand the business. I am a born-again Christian so I could not walk the streets, selling myself. The only option left to me was to get a job in this factory,” she explains. However, Aseku says the money she earns as a casual labourer is not enough to pay school fees, feed her children, and pay their rent. “When I call their father to pay, at least, the rent, he tells me that he has a hut in the village which we can move into and land where we can plant food.

He never paid the rent when we were still living together,” she laments. Aseku calls on any man looking for a woman to marry to try Akibui Farmers factory where there are a number of abandoned women. The administration of the factory is trying to launch a savings association to enroll all the women casual labourers and help them save some money for a rainy day. “Some of our workers are still married but their husbands have nothing to offer them. At least here, while sorting, they pop some groundnuts into their mouths and eat. They then go to the tap and drink water. You can see that they are not eating food at home,” Okurut observes. Besides being an employer, the director also serves as a sounding board and counselor to the women who are still living with their husbands. “They tell me they cannot manage the situation at home.

They cannot be a man and a woman at the same time. When I try to counsel them to return to their husbands, they reject the advice,” he says. Now, several of these women have abandoned their families and rented rooms in the municipality. Now, it is their children who come to the factory looking for their mothers and food.  Adoa had advice for such women during her speech at the belated Women’s Day celebration. “Sometimes, when we are given power, we mishandle it. We become so big. But even when you are a minister, member of parliament, or businesswoman, you should respect your husband. A man is a man,” she said. She added that women and men can never be equal because each one has a specific role in life. “God gave us different roles in life. We can only be equal in a few things. However, a woman can never impregnate someone. Let us learn to humble ourselves. Even if you are not married, respect the men around you,” she advised.

The way forward

The women Monitor spoke to called for different sub-counties in the district to come up with bylaws that limit the hours a man should spend drinking alcohol. They claim this will instill responsibility into their husbands. “The Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development developed the Uganda National Family Policy with guidance on parenting. We also have other policies, so why aren’t we utilising them?” Aboyo asks. The Uganda National Family Policy recognizes the family as a basic unit of society. The policy also emphasises the primary responsibility of parents in raising children. “We need to get back to our cultural values. What is a man’s role and how is he supposed to take care of his family? Today, though, both the wife and husband are busy. How do we bridge that gap?” Aboyo asks. With a growing number of abandoned women seeking employment daily, Okurut plans to expand the factory to absorb them. Currently, plans are underway to build a factory that manufactures pellets, while increasing the production of briquettes.