Footprints Podcast | Season 1 | Episode 20 Part 2 |Unbreakable

This is where the story gets complicated and compelling.

Mary didn’t just study the law. She fought it, fled it, then came back to fix it. After blazing through a male-dominated development course, she crossed continents to study law in the UK, fueled by injustice and ambition. She returned home, newly married, hopeful, and completely unprepared for the storm named Idi Amin.

One false accusation later, her husband was dragged off to Gulu. His freedom? Granted because the dictator was “in a good mood.” No, that’s not fiction. That’s Uganda’s reality. They fled to Nairobi, surviving on meager salaries and maximum grace.

If this part of her story sounds like a political thriller with too much plot, it is. But nestled in the chaos is a battered love story marked by war, five miscarriages, mysterious women calling her home to claim her husband, and the kind of resilience that makes the rest of us look soft.

Then came the miracles, Samuel and Richard. Then came the storms, tumors, surgery, loss of sight, and a pain that could’ve unmade anyone. But not Mary. She clung to her faith. And her husband? She calls him her anchor, her miracle, her person.

This isn’t just a survival tale. It’s a masterclass in how not to break when everything else does. By the time she returned to Uganda, Mary didn’t need to prove anything. So she started building.

She taught at the Law Development Centre. Served at the Electoral Commission. Became a High Court Judge in Gulu during the LRA war. Yes, that's Gulu. And while rebels roamed and fear hung like smoke, Mary presided with wisdom, honesty, and three padlocks on her door.

Her court wasn’t cold; it was conscious. She judged not just by evidence but by empathy. She understood the soil crimes grew from. And that scared people more than any sentence ever could.

Then came another revolution: money. Specifically, putting it in the hands of women. She co-founded the Women’s Finance Trust Bank when banks still treated wives like invisible extensions of their husbands. Men complained. Mary smiled and built anyway.

She led FIDA. Launched the Women’s Situation Room. Held elections to account. And when the curtain finally dropped? She walked into retirement, not to rest, but to give. Today, she counsels couples with more empathy than most marriage manuals ever muster.

This is her legacy chapter. The part where she stops fighting for space and starts giving it away.

Because when you’ve survived regimes, rapists, tumors, and tax codes, you don’t just talk about leadership. You become it.

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©Blurb written by Divine Karungi

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