Juliet Mbabazi met Travis Preston while he was serving his mission as a U.S. servicemember in Mbarara, Uganda.
They got married, had two children—now 3 and 7 years old—and formed a family for two years. Until Preston’s mission ended.
According to Mbabazi’s account, as soon as he returned to the United States, Preston stopped responding and stopped providing any kind of financial support.
She was left alone, raising the two children, with no address, no contact, and no answers. No one around her knew how to locate him.
The story reached Ugandan singer Bruno K, who launched a public campaign to find Preston’s whereabouts: he asked Ugandans serving in the U.S. military for help, demanded that the U.S. Embassy in Kampala intervene, and organized a livestream that has already raised 5 million Ugandan shillings to support the family.
One more question remains unresolved: whether Mbabazi’s children could access the U.S. citizenship that their father never documented for them.