I discovered my parents’ secret aged 8 – I kept it until 16

‘That is not your real family,’ one of the boys smirked at me on the playground.

He had seen me playing with my sisters, Anju and Mina, and made a point to taunt me.

I felt the anger rising up in me so – without saying anything – I went up to him and punched him in the face. Then I started walking away.

‘I don’t care how much you hit me,’ he added, through tears in his eyes, ‘that is not your real family.’

I was around five or six years old at the time, living in Uganda, and I was used to these taunts, but they were still bewildering to me.

I could see I looked different to my brothers and sisters. For example, I had curly short hair while their hair was straight. Their skin was lighter in colour while mine was darker, but I never thought for a second that I was adopted – that truth came out when I was eight years old.

At the time, I was an avid reader and so was my father. So, although his study was out of bounds for us kids, I crept in one day to find a new book to read.

Walking past his desk, I saw a file with my name on it and curiosity overcame me. I peered inside to see that there was a letter from Save The Children explaining how I had been found on the roadside as a baby and then placed into the care of my adoptive parents.

I remember my heart pounding as I read the papers. I had to use a dictionary to look up what the words ‘abandoned’ and ‘adopted’ meant, but as soon as I realised the truth, I felt an overwhelming sense of confusion, mixed with sadness.

Dad would’ve been very angry if he knew I had been in his study without permission, so I put everything back just the way I found it and left.

The only person I told was my sister Anju, who was two months younger than me. She simply hugged me and told me that I was still her sister and she didn’t care that I was adopted.

We made a solemn promise not to say anything because we feared Dad’s punishment. Two years later in 1971, he died from cancer aged 47, not knowing I knew.

In 1972, we fled to the UK as refugees after Ugandan President Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of all Asians from the country.

At a checkpoint, a soldier pointed a gun at my mum and ordered her to leave me in Uganda. ‘She is one of ours,’ he kept saying. But Mum held firm and refused.

‘No, she is my child and I will not leave her behind,’ she replied.

For me, this is what love is. But even then, I didn’t reveal that I knew I was adopted.

I was 16 years old when I finally blurted out the secret I’d kept for eight years while in a hospital appointment with my mum.

I had been experiencing joint pains and fever as well as a rash on my face and Mum had taken me for my usual check up at the hospital for my epidermolysis bullosa, a rare genetic condition that causes fragile skin.

During the conversation with the consultant, I was asked if there was a family history of lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease.

That’s when Mum hesitated, looked at me, and asked me to leave the room. But I turned and said to the consultant: ‘No one knows because I was found abandoned on the roadside and I am adopted.’

I will never forget the look of utter shock on my mum’s face.

It wasn’t until around 10 months later before we spoke about it properly – I was diagnosed with lupus, and that took priority.

I told Mum about going into the study when I was eight. She looked devastated. She had not realised what a burdensome secret I had carried all those years.

It was then she told me the story about how I came to be adopted.

The local newspaper reported an abandoned girl had been found and taken to hospital. No one knew who my biological mum or dad was, only that I was half-African and half-Asian.

The police had tried to find my parents with appeals via local radio, but no one came forward to claim me.

Mum said she came to the hospital because she’d had a dream that she was meant to adopt me. And so my parents did.

In the years after Mum told me the full story, I had been curious in finding my birth mother – simply to find out my family medical history.

But besides a teenage fantasy about my birth mother being very rich and taking us all out of poverty, I haven’t really given it much thought for years.

I’ve felt nothing but love and support from my siblings – my elder brother Shakerdas, and my younger sisters Anju, Mina, and Shiv.

But I cannot say the same for people outside of our family.

There have been sexist remarks, like asking why my parents adopted a girl because they’re a ‘burden’. Or colourism, with people claiming that because I’m darker than my siblings no one will want to marry me.

I’ve even heard people call my dual African-Asian heritage an ‘inferior race’ or ‘dirty blood’ and accuse my dad of having an ‘African mistress’.

All of these messages impacted on my sense of worth over the years. But I wasn’t going to let it define me.

Before my mother’s death in 1999, I told her of my plans to become a mother of my own by adoption, too. We were talking about life and marriage in general and I said I would like to be a mum rather than a partner to anyone, and she gave me her blessing to adopt, saying: ‘Just do it. What are you waiting for?’

I am now a very proud, single mother to my daughter, Samaia, who I adopted when she was one. She is now nearly 20 years old and studying at university.