Burying baby dolls (article)

I found the following article online. I found this quite interesting. i really want a family but feel i am too young for one at the moment and want to study and go to university first. Get everything ready for a family. But what if i cant have children. I dont know how i would feel to be honest. I know I would feel depressed and sad. But to what extremes would i go to? Adoption? I dont know, but this article shows what a lady and other ladies have done. I didnt really think that when we play as children with dolls, we are preparing for our role as a mother and to have that taken away from you?

So here is the article...

Baby dolls:Women need understanding not punishment
By Atuki Turner (email the author)

Posted Saturday, July 3 2010 at 00:00 on http://www.monitor.co.ug

Another woman has buried a baby doll! Lillian Apio was detained by Police and has now been released on bond while everyone waits with bated breath to see what the Resident State Attorney will charge her with? Following two miscarriages, and under pressure to deliver, Apio pretended she had had a miscarriage and got her people to mourn the loss of her ‘baby’.

This is another classic case at attempting to seek social inclusion and a place in society in very personal and emotional circumstances. Are these women - who are obviously psychologically tortured – to be treated as criminals or to be helped to deal with their emotional problems?

The number of women who are exhibiting this baby doll problem is growing. Take the case of Nuru Namatovu who was on January 8 charged at Nsangi Police Station with Giving False Information To A Person Employed in the Public Service contrary to section 115(c) of the Penal Code Act. She was sentenced by a magistrate to a fine of Shs300,000 or 12 months imprisonment. The question is whether this was just treatment?

Little girls love dolls and they grow up playing with dolls made out of grass and banana fibres. The dolls become like babies to us whether they are made of plastic of banana fibres. We wash them, feed them and dress them up. We sing them to sleep. They fall sick and we worry and get our sisters to act as nurse and give them medicine.

All this play is preparation for the real thing. We are little women waiting to become mothers. We grow up, get married and wait for the baby. But sadly, for one out of every six women, that baby never comes and that’s when one’s world begins to shatter. The road that leads to acceptance that you can’t have children is a long one. And perhaps one can never know the anguish and longing of the woman who cannot have children, except that woman herself.

The people closest to you are hardest to deal with - your family, aunts, friends and in-laws. They see your pain but they cannot help for the subject of fertility is a difficult one to discuss. Then your friends start having babies and you have to go through visits, baptisms, birthday parties which you attend with a brave face. The person who can most feel your pain and help you is your husband and if that happens then the pain is reduced because a problem shared is a problem halved.

If your husband turns against you when society points its fingers of stigma and shame at you, then it can be very stressful. If he starts seeing other women or brings another wife, then it’s like rubbing salt in your wound.

Now there is one thing that we “little women” never did to our dolls. We never ever let them die and therefore we never had to bury them. For instance when Namatovu buried those dolls, she carried our childhood fantasy into the world of reality. She went beyond our loving and cuddling of the dolls, to the sad reality that sometimes the babies die and we have to bury them. Namatovu went to that extent because of the pressure society places on women who cannot bear children. The sentence imposed on her was unjust because society which is part and parcel of the problem was not put to account.