Alice Nakanyike

Alice Nakanyike lives in Rakai district. She is the subject of a segment on the film I’m doing on children affected by AIDS. To meet her, we had an hour long drive from Masaka in Uganda. Beyond the town, beyond the highway, and though kilometers of dirt track, we pelted in a convoy of three landcruisers.


Eventually, we drove through head high grass to arrive at Alice’s village. She lives with here brothers and a sister in a small home. She is eleven and about a year ago, she lost her parents to AIDS. Since then, she is the head of her family. She is the primary care giver. She has an aunt who lives in the neighbourhood, but the aunt has her own family and her own pressures to give full time care to Alice and her siblings. To start with, Alice hardly smiled. But after a couple of hours we spent with her, she relaxed a little. We got to know the strong little girl who has the tough job of looking after the needs of all her family. The community in the villages are all too familiar with AIDS. So many have been affected by it, that there is hardly any discrimination. And they have pitched in to help the children along. At least, they have their own home and they have been given a pig to supplement their income from their fields nearby.

We went back to film with her the next day. And then moved on to across the equator to another village in Rakai district to film with a grandmother who lives with twenty grandchildren. The drive was through rolling country side. Green and remarkably beautiful.


Of the eleven children she had, only three survive. All three live away from the village. And twenty one grandchildren – twenty one little things, all polite and sweet and all. I tried to imagine the work load that she has!!