Stories of Hope: Nasolo Dorothy

Nasolo Dorothy is one of Hope Alive!’s success stories. Orphaned at a young age and passed from family member to family member, Dorothy has struggled all her life with having a place to call home and people to call her “real” family. However, this amazing young woman has risen from the ashes of her former life to achieve much more than she ever thought possible. Dorothy recently graduated from the project after successfully completing Senior 6 (the final year of secondary school), a major achievement by Ugandan standards. Now she has been appointed a mentor for the project and she watches over the younger students in the project as if they were her own brothers and sisters. She understands all too well the need for children to have someone caring and stable in their lives.

Like many young orphans in Uganda, Dorothy’s childhood story is incomplete. What she shares during the interview are the few details she remembers plus the little information that has been told to her by relatives over the years. Dorothy grew up in Lira Town with her mother, a woman from the Langi tribe. Dorothy does not know much about her father, only that he was of the Musoga tribe from Eastern Uganda. She has few memories of ever being with him. It would appear that her mother and father were either never married, or that they separated shortly after Dorothy’s birth in 1986. Dorothy thinks that she has older half-siblings from both her mother and her father, but she believes she is the only child of both parents.

According to relatives, her father died around 1990. When he died, not only did Dorothy miss out on knowing him, she also missed out on internalizing her tribal identity. In Uganda, children take the tribal identity of their fathers. Although Dorothy is technically half Langi and half Musoga, her official tribe is the Musoga because that was the tribe of her father. But growing up with her mother, Dorothy only learned the language and customs of the Langi. Visits to her paternal relatives were too far and few between for her to grasp what it meant to be a Musoga. Consequently, Dorothy grew up largely deprived of knowing her father’s, and her own, true tribal roots and traditions.

Thus Dorothy was raised in north-central Uganda with her mother and her maternal grandparents. When she was six years old, she was sent to study at a boarding school in Jinja, a large town about 100 km south of Lira. Over the holidays, she would stay with her maternal aunt and uncle in Kampala, or she would return home to be with her mother. In 1997, Dorothy’s mother became very sick and spent several months at the hospital in Lira. Dorothy stayed at her mother’s side, caring for her and comforting her. After her mother’s release from the hospital, Dorothy went to live with her aunt and uncle in Kampala. The details surrounding her mother’s sickness and the decision to send Dorothy to Kampala are unclear. Perhaps Dorothy’s mother knew that she was dying and did not want to put her daughter through such torment. After several months living in Kampala, Dorothy’s eldest cousin, Robina, informed her that her mother had died. For some reason, however, the family did not tell her of her mother’s death until several days after it occurred. Consequently, Dorothy was never given the opportunity to attend the burial. She was 11 years old and alone in the world. She believed, as she said, that it was “the end of everything.” Not only did she not have her mother, but she also knew her uncle could never afford to send her to school. She believed she would never finish her education.

Dorothy sat out of school for an entire year. Around this time, her uncle also passed away, throwing the family into a further state of desperation. Then, in 1998, cousins from her father’s side came and took her to live with them at their home in another area of Kampala. They paid her school fees for the next few years until she was able to complete primary school. By passing Primary 7 (final year of primary school), Dorothy had already achieved more than she had thought possible. However, she still dreamed of completing her education by attending secondary school. Because secondary school is considerably more expensive than primary school, orphaned children often have a much more difficult time finding a relative who will pay their fees. Dorothy sank into despair, believing that she would never be able to continue her education. Luckily, another relative from her father’s side shouldered the obligation of providing for his young relative. He offered to send Dorothy to a boarding school in Mbale, a town in eastern Uganda where her father’s family lived. It was here that Dorothy began her secondary education. Although this was her true ancestral home, Dorothy found school challenging in Mbale since she did not speak the tribal language and was, in many ways, an outsider. She struggled through her first year of secondary school.

Meanwhile, her maternal aunt in Kampala heard of a new project which wanted to sponsor children, especially orphans, in their studies. A widow herself, her aunt hoped that she could enroll some of her own children and perhaps Dorothy as well. After completing S.1 in Mbale, Dorothy returned to Kampala and was enrolled into Children of Hope along with one of her younger cousins. She found school much easier now that she no longer was placing a financial burden on her family members to pay for her studies. She was also back in a familiar environment where she had friends and family close by. She studied hard, hoping to please her new sponsors, the people who had given her the opportunity for an education and also for a stable life. Now that she no longer had to move from relative to relative to find financial support for her education, Dorothy could simply concentrate on her studies and even become involved in extracurricular activities centered around the church and the project.

For the past six years, Dorothy has been one of the most diligent and caring students in the project. She was asked to be on the student leadership team. She also directed the students in a “Beading for Business” initiative in which the students make jewelry and then sell it to Hope Alive! for a small profit. At 21 years old, Dorothy loves to read and to spend time with her friends at church or in the project. She is a member of the church worship team and sometime helps to teach children’s Sunday school. In addition, she has a new job with Hope Alive!: she was asked to be a mentor. When asked about making the leap from student to mentor, Dorothy admits that it means a lot to her to be a mentor. “To mentor children,” she says, “You must know what they are going through.” As a former student in the project and an orphan herself, Dorothy has the unique understanding of what it means to struggle through a life without parents or provision. She can empathize with the students and offer advice gained through her own experiences. She also acknowledges that she learned much from the mentors who were assigned to watch over her when she was a student. She learned respect from the caring way that they treated her, and she always appreciated the wise counsel they offered to her in times of despair. Now Dorothy wants to do the same for other struggling children.


Though life is better now, Dorothy still finds that her situation is rife with challenges. She yearns to attend the university and study nursing, but such an opportunity could only occur if someone offers to pay her way. (The project does not have the means to support students through a university education.) She still lives with her aunt and five cousins in a slum-area of Kampala. Like most families, they struggle considerably to pay the rent and provide for their basic needs. Dorothy’s two older cousins, Robina and Peter, both attempt to provide an income for the family. Robina will sometimes sell goods on the streets. Peter works as a contractor tiling people’s homes. Dorothy tells me that he began working from a young age, after his father died, in order to support the family. He provides most of the family’s meager income. Dorothy’s aunt sells hand-crafted jewelry while Dorothy and her younger cousins contribute what they can whenever possible. But in Kampala, housing is expensive and having to feed seven people each day can quickly diminish any family’s funds.

Dorothy also struggles being the “outsider” in the family. Although her aunt has provided Dorothy with a place to stay for many years, she has not always been treated as a full member of the family. Oftentimes, families who must take care of a young relative will simply use the child for labor. Although Dorothy was lucky that her aunt supported her in her desire to complete her education, it is likely that Dorothy has always been the one to carry most of the load when it comes to housework and other responsibilities. Dorothy sometimes she feels like she doesn’t belong. Although she speaks the same language as her aunt and cousins, who are Langi, and knows the same customs, Dorothy has the light-skinned appearance of her father’s tribe from the East. However, to this day, she feels no pride and little connection with the tribal identity she inherited from her father. Her inability to speak the language of her own tribe stirs feelings of regret and shame as well as a deep well of confusion concerning her identity.

Fortunately, she has learned that her identity does not come from her past, but from Jesus Christ, and that her family extends beyond blood ties to include her brothers and sisters in Christ. Although Dorothy loves her aunt and her cousins, her family has now largely become the students and staff of Hope Alive! and she considers herself a daughter to her sponsor from America. Her entire life, she has constantly been in a position of not fitting in. But in Hope Alive!, she is not only accepted for who she is, but she is loved by all for who she is. Indeed, it would seem that Hope Alive! is the first real family where she has felt a sense of belonging, acceptance, and respect. Dorothy has finally found a place where she belongs.