Expecting to be admitted, she hauled a suitcase, a plastic jug holding more than a gallon of water and, because hospitals here do not provide sheets or blankets, an enormous roll of bedding. The pressure of the bedroll against her breast clearly pained her. The activist, Ms. Nakigudde, had put in a word for her, and a surgeon had agreed to see her. Led by a member of the group, Ms. Namata squeezed through the crowded corridors.

The surgeon examined her but did not admit her, telling her instead to return the following Monday for a mastectomy. Drug treatment would come after the operation, he said, giving advice contrary to that offered by the American physicians. She hauled her belongings home.

The next Monday, she was admitted to Mulago Hospital. She waited for a week in constant pain before another surgeon finally examined her, only to tell her, as the American doctors had, that it would be better for her to take drugs to try to shrink the tumors before surgery because they were so large that it would not be possible to close the wound. She left the hospital frustrated and frightened, beginning to doubt that she would survive.

But she made her way to the cancer institute, where she began receiving chemotherapy on Aug. 19.

Her hair, expertly braided by her daughter, is now gone. Her skin has darkened, a common side effect of chemotherapy that African women find particularly distressing, for aesthetic reasons, but also because H.I.V. treatment does the same thing, and people assume they have AIDS.

“I look like a scarecrow,” Ms. Namata said. “I don’t want to eat or drink.”

She calls Ms. Nakigudde just about every night for advice on what to eat, and reassurance that her hair will grow back.

The cancer institute has run out of chemotherapy drugs again, so she must buy them herself, and is struggling to scrape together the cash. Sometimes, rather than asking her daughter for money, she borrows from other people.

But the tumors seem to be shrinking. She no longer needs morphine. In a few months, she hopes to have surgery. And she prays that she will live.