title: Grandmothering: Real Life in Real Families
author: Becky Sarah
description: Becky Sarah has worked with women, children, and families for decades. After receiving a B. S. in Child Development from the University of Wisconsin, she began her career teaching in parent cooperative free schools, and in day care centers. Later, as a midwife and childbirth educator, she attended births both at home and in the hospital. She received a Masters in Public Health from Boston University, served as the Public Health Director for the city of Chelsea, Massachusetts and has worked as a program evaluator, program developer, and parent educator at Boston area hospitals, Planned Parenthood, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. She has two children and three grandchildren and lives with her husband in Cambridge Massachusetts.
zlib_text: **A GIRL**  
   **IS A**  
   **BODY**  
   **OF**  
   **WATER**
  
  JENNIFER  
  NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI
  
  ![](Images/image00223.jpeg)
  
   **To my grandmothers**
  
  > > >  _Rakeli, Yeeko, Abisaagi, and Milly on Father’s side, and on Mother’s
  > side, Batanda and Kaamida, all of them sisters to my “real” grandmothers.
  > For that thick traditional love, which would not allow me to see that my
  > “real” grandmothers had passed when my parents were very young. Not until
  > all of you had passed._
  
  •
  
  > > >  _To Catherine Makumbi Kulubya whose fierce independence, sheer
  > tenacity, and quiet intelligence first inspired me._
  
  THE WITCH
  
   **1**
  
   _Nattetta, Bugerere, Uganda_
  
  May 1975
  
  Until that night, Kirabo had not cared about her. She was curious on occasion
  ( _Where is she? What does she look like? How does it feel to have a mother?_
  , that sort of thing), but whenever she asked about her and family said, “No
  one knows about her,” in that never-mind way of large families, she dropped
  it. After all, she was with 