In many communities in Uganda, it is common to hear stories about relatives chasing away the widow when the head of the family dies, confiscating the property and leaving the children helpless.

Jerry Sesanga’s African Girl is a 112-page novella set to this scenario. It attempts to shine a light on the vulnerabilities that children, especially girls, are exposed to during social upheavals like death. Often, these risks are fuelled by deep seated biases against women.

Sesanga, 22, has written the book in the form of the diary of a girl, Destiny Mirembe. When her father dies in a motor accident, her uncle quickly inherits their family “as if he was waiting for the death of my father to take his property,” she writes in one of the entries.  

The diary, interspersed with letters, presents freshness in a style that is recognisable by the readers the book targets — the children/young adult genre aged 12 to 18 years.

Mirembe moves into her uncle’s house, which she describes as worse than hell. She works harder than a donkey, serving as her uncle’s punching bag and his wife’s favourite spot for her sputum. She survives rape by one cousin, and has to endure jealousy from another because of her talent and intellect.  

“I am like a rug for all these people to step on. I cannot tell what I did to them. I keep wondering what exactly I did to deserve this kind of treatment, but my heart fails me and I am overwhelmed by my emotions,” Mirembe records.

She finds solace in music, which she has been warned off. It will change her fortunes when a friend urges her to enter a singing competition. The competition takes her to New York where she wins $2 million.

While it runs on a common theme, triumph amidst great adversity, Sesanga makes the case against child abuse in general and of the girl child in particular, without overstating the issue.

A girl going through a similar situation will recognise herself in the book, just as her relatives would since, like a mirror, it reflects their own behaviour. But perhaps it is the dig at gender-biased traditions, so clearly and gently delivered, that best illustrates Sesanga’s efforts.

It is only when he attempts to transform Mirembe into a continental advocate of girl-child rights by infusing her in conflicts in Rwanda, DR Congo and Somalia, that he struggles to convince the reader.

His comprehension of these countries’ situations is so scant that these sections of the book need reworking.

Initially self-published in January 2014, Longhorn Publishers reissued it in March 2015 after signing a five-year contract with Sesanga.

“We took interest in the book because the nature of the story is unique. You may agree with us that it is rare to find a book on the African girl. The style of using a diary and letters is also interesting as it breaks from the monotony of prose,” said Lillian Nakkazi, Longhorn’s operations manager in Uganda.

“The moral of the story is inspiration to school girls that how we begin does not matter, but our vision and determination will take us beyond our imagination,” she added.

The book draws a lot from the author’s life story. As a younger man, Sesanga’s mother’s friend gave him a diary, and an abridged version of the 1864 classic science fiction novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne.

His reason for writing the book came from of a “certain isolated situation” a girl was going through.

“While I could relate with one or two things that were happening, I knew it was a whole lot harder for her mainly because of who she was,” Sesanga explained, keen not to divulge details.

“Then I felt this need to write and tell her story, to say no circumstance was too difficult to overcome simply because one was a girl, or a woman,” he added.