A young immigrant’s success story after being orphaned at age five, and how he found faith through his experiences.
Anthony’s professional headshot, provided by the NACC
By Katie Ryan
Anthony Mugagga started running drugs for prostitutes in Kampala at the age of seven and began using them at the same age. He watched a teenager kill someone in a drug deal gone wrong as a teen and fought daily in order to eat. Anthony immigrated to the U.S. at twenty six, then used the lifting knowledge he gained as a Kampala teen to build a personal training career. This is how I met him, as a new trainer at the New Albany Country Club (NACC).
Becoming an Orphan
Anthony ended up on the Kampala streets when he was orphaned. Anthony’s father died when he was nine months old. Anthony calls the woman who raised him for his first five years Grandma, though they are not related. Grandma was there for his birth; she was the one forced to choose between Anthony’s life and his mother’s. She chose Anthony’s and watched his mother bleed out, unable to afford the hospital bills to save her. Grandma passed when Anthony was five.
At five, “I was sleeping in sewage street pipes and trenches,” Anthony said. It was there that he was first picked up by the prostitutes; the women helped raise the capital’s orphans, sharing food and imparting community lessons. Still, life in the streets was rough. Anthony said, “I grew up fighting and hate conflict now. I saw kids I grew up with die in nightclubs or of drug overdoses. Others are in jail and will never get out,” most of them imprisoned when they were still kids.
Introduction to Drug Use
The children growing up in the streets of Kampala, without resources or guidance, resorted to a number of illegal activities. Fighting for food was common, as was stealing in order to eat. Anthony said, “if someone found you with food, they would beat you and take your food.” This is where his motivation for lifting first developed. “I was always beaten, so I found a small gym, and the more I was beaten, the more I went back,” Anthony said, learning to build his strength as a survival tactic. However, lifting weights wasn’t earning him any money as a child.
Dealing drugs became an easy way for children to ‘earn their keep’ with the prostitutes, and put the prostitutes at lesser risk. “Police wouldn’t check kids back then,” unaware that their backpacks carried enough drugs to support a black market pharmacy everyday. Neither Anthony nor the prostitutes discriminated against the type of drug used; “some cocaine, weed, injection stuff, sniffing stuff,” and more were all frequently traded and used.
The drugs allowed Anthony, the children he grew up with, and the prostitutes an escape from their reality, making life more bearable. “Uganda didn’t give me a proper opportunity to get a job or pay bills, so I was always on the street,” Anthony said. He struggled to develop friendships and relationships, reflecting that he is only in touch with one person from his childhood, Eddie. Eddie killed another boy during their teenage years.
The murder occurred during a drug deal, and Mary, the mother of the deceased boy, insisted on justice for her son. Eddie served a few years of his sentence before Mary softened, swayed by her belief in religion as well as her understanding of the desperation of children on the streets.
Mary campaigned to get Eddie out of jail and took full responsibility for Eddie; she raised him as her own from that point on. They moved to Australia, a decision made in order to remove Eddie from the streets and criminal connections he had in Uganda. There, Eddie enrolled in school and, with Mary’s guidance, carved a new life for himself.
Deciding to Leave
Anthony left Uganda a decade later, at twenty six. He returned a forgotten backpack to a group of American missionaries at eighteen, and the missionaries promised to help him immigrate to the U.S. when he was ready. The promise reminded Anthony that “I was raised with values and did not want to spend my life stealing,” he said, remembering Grandma. It took him a few years, from eighteen to twenty one, to build up the courage and access an internet cafe to reach the missionaries.
Kinks in the System
It took another few years to work through the US immigration system. The system has continually caused him problems; he paid for the process to citizenship by working three jobs and utilized helpers to understand the paperwork. The contracted helpers, though Anthony now has his citizenship and no longer works with them, are still demanding money, insisting he owes them for the rest of his life in the U.S. The helpers even filed an immigration fraud case with the Department of Homeland Security, and Anthony is now at risk of deportation. He had to take two weeks off work in order to sort the urgent paperwork out and is still working to prove that he immigrated legally.
While Anthony feels acclimated now, he admits that adjusting to America was a long process. After the missionaries welcomed him to the U.S. in Mississippi, Anthony settled in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. For the first few years, “I didn’t even know how to count quarters and pennies to make a dollar,” Anthony said, and “I was sleeping in my car and cleaning a Planet Fitness to make ends meet.” He worked his way up from janitor to personal trainer there. Anthony acknowledged that he leaned on his years of training as a child; “I had a skilled body of training,” he said.
Present Day
Now at thirty three, Anthony has a career as a personal trainer; his reliance on his body has been a mainstay throughout his life. In Kampala, he felt pressured to workout in order to defend himself and his food. In Columbus, Anthony works out in order to sustain himself, fight to maintain his citizenship, and continue his studies; he is studying theology now, in hopes of becoming a preacher and inspiring others to “fight with wisdom, not hands,” he said.