Literary Drama · Tragedy 18+

Forgotten Dreams

by Steven

A dream does not die when it is forgotten. It waits.

Nabirye is the cleverest girl in her village. She wants to be a nurse and build a health centre at the foot of the hill, so that no woman in labour has to be carried to a clinic. Her mother sells the family cow to send her to Kampala.

In the city she learns what it is to be poor beside people who are not. A charming man offers her a phone, a house and a good life. Then another man does, and another. Each promises everything, and each leaves.

When she falls ill, she is afraid to say what it might be. She hides, she lies to the one person who would have carried her, and she learns how heavy silence can be.

A story about shame, stigma, love, and a mother who walks a hundred and sixty kilometres with a sack on her head. HIV is treatable, and this book is about what happens when people are too afraid to say so.

Mature themes: sex, HIV and illness, stigma and death. 18+.

22 sections · about 81,000 words · about 6 hours to read