Lit@Timelessthemes
My Nine Year Ordeal at KIU
In 2013, I left Buhweju district with a heavy responsibility on my shoulders. I was the first person in my family to reach university level. Scoring 19 points in UACE felt like I had finally broken a cycle of poverty. When I was admitted to Kampala International University under the district bursary scheme, my family celebrated a miracle. We believed the "bursary" was a hand reaching down to pull us up. Instead, it became a weight that nearly drowned me.
The "scheme" covered tuition, but the functional fees carried a hidden, lethal sting. During orientation, no one warned us that a small delay in payment would trigger penalties so aggressive they felt predatory. By my second year, a small balance had mutated into an 800,000 UGX debt. I went from being a brilliant student dreaming of a First Class degree to a beggar, moving from office to office every semester, pleading for an exam card just to sit for papers I had worked so hard to prepare for. Despite paying every semester's functional fees after learning about late payment charges, by the time I finished in 2016, the debt was so huge that there was no way I could clear it in a single swoop.
The financial pressure did not just empty my pockets; it invaded my mind. It is hard to concentrate on Literature and English when you are calculating how many days of food you must skip to pay a "late fee" that grows while you sleep. By 2016, I had finished every course with no retakes, no missed papers but I was a ghost of the man who had entered. I left the gates broken, emaciated in spirit, and carrying a debt that had ballooned.
I spent the next six years in a self imposed exile in Eastern Uganda, teaching for a meager salary. I lived like a hermit, sending every spare coin back to KIU. I was not working for a future; I was working to buy back a past that the university was holding hostage.
In 2022, I finally cleared the last shilling. The relief, however, was short lived. After buying the graduation gown and seeing my name on the notice board, on Tuesday, I did the one thing I had waited nearly a decade to do: I invited my parents. My father is a primary five dropout from the 1960s. For years, he had looked at me with suspicion, wondering if I had truly been studying or if I had wasted the family’s hopes. I wanted that graduation day to be his vindication.
We traveled from the village, slept in Kampala, and walked onto that campus with our heads high.
Then came the horror. When the official graduation book was opened, my name was nowhere to be found. In that moment, the world stopped. I stood there in a gown I had paid for, at a ceremony I had earned, looking at a father who now had "final proof" that his son was a failure. The humiliation was so absolute that the fact I am still alive today is a miracle of God’s grace.
I spent months fighting, sending emails, and knocking on doors that remained closed until I mentioned legal pressure and opportunities abroad. Only then did a "transcript" magically appear. I chose not to attend the later ceremony when my name finally appeared on the list. The joy had been systematically bled out of the experience.
I share this because a "bursary" for the poor should not result in paying more than the rich. A university should be a fountain of knowledge, not a "school for scandal" that exploits the very students it claims to support.
Those nine years left scars that no certificate can cover. This is for every student still trapped in that cycle fighting for a degree they have already earned.
