{UAH} Child care assistance

Afuwa kasule/ Mayimuna/Gwokto.

I have just got back home to have a relaxing Sunday evening preparing for the treadmill tomorrow. To my surprise, I found my daughter in with a 7 month old child. I was not expecting her or the child as she lives at university.

It turns out the baby is actually that of her friend, a Somali, who was her former classmate. Unfortunately she got pregnant by an Egyptian Muslim boy, so her family threw her out. She has since been living in the care of local authority social services dept.

Today, she got sick and has been 

admitted to hospital, ironically to the same hospital my daughter is studying medicine, so that's how they met again.

This young girl is estranged from her family. My daughter says she tried to phone the Somali grand father, but he put the phone down, claiming he does not know his own daughter and that he had a child by that name, but she died.

The Egyptian boy meanwhile is in immigration detention as a failed asylum seeker, waiting deportation.

I am in a quandary what I will do with this mother and kid. I don't even want to get involved in a family dispute. For the past three weeks, I have been caring for a convalescing former girlfriend who had chemotherapy for cancer, so I am a bit tired. So I hope the girl is not in hospital for long, because my daughter has to go back to study. I will try to try to sort out some interim arrangement tomorrow.

But my main point of writing about the plight of this young girl is why Muslim families, fathers particularly, should have such a primitive and barbaric attitude towards their own child? I can never disown my own child, whatever wrong she has done. It is so cruel to abandon a 21 year old girl in her greatest hour of need. And the girl's mother is totally powerless to do anything to help her daughter and grandchild for fear of violence from her husband and even her own Somali community.

In the 1960s, my own elder sister got pregnant at Namagunga Secondary school, but rather than throw her out, my parents brought her back home, and after birth of her child, my father took the extraordinary step of sending her to the UK to continue with her studies. This had never been heard of before, as some families even murdered their daughters for so called honour or bringing shame on the family.

This Somali girl is bright as she was in primary school where I was the Chair of Governors and could easily go back to college to continue with her studies, but only if the parents and her Muslim community will stand by her.

Thanks