Elijah Kisembo

This is how I survived all these harrowing years. I survived by stripping my life down to its barest essentials. To stay in a system that was designed to bleed me dry, I had to be more than a student. I had to be a survivalist. I could not afford to live alone, so I rented a tiny single room and brought in two roommates. We were a survival unit. We pooled every small coin we had to buy food in bulk and cooked together. It was the only way to avoid starving. There were nights when the pool was empty. On those nights, we simply slept to forget the hunger. I had friends who were better off, like Nicholas. I will be honest: sometimes I visited them not just for the company, but because I knew there might be a meal. Every shilling I received from home was a choice between a plate of food and a university penalty. Usually, the penalty won. I tried everything to bridge the gap. I took on small side hustles, working whenever and wherever I could. But I quickly learned the cruelty of late payment charges. The small money I made would disappear into the university’s accounts like a drop of water in the ocean. No matter how hard I worked, the debt grew faster than my income. It felt like running up a descending escalator. By the time I finished in 2016, with no retakes and a clean academic record, I was a ghost of the man who had entered. Emaciated and my spirit torn to shreds I left carrying a debt in millions. I briefly worked at Everlight College in Kansanga, but I soon realized that city life would never let me clear that debt. I could not risk going back home to Western Uganda empty handed. The shame was too much to carry. I wanted to get as far from home as possible, to a place where no one knew my name or my expectations. I moved to the Eastern region, specifically to Mbale district, because I had heard from friends that there were many schools there. Considering my academic record, I hoped to find a school that would employ me using my provisional results and a recommendation letter. I left Kampala in December 2016. Early in 2017, I found a school willing to pay me 250,000 UGX. My net pay was 200,000 UGX. I had to balance this to pay rent and somehow pay the university. I rented a room near the school, but I hardly lived in it. My entire existence was anchored at the school because that was my only source of food. People at home never wanted anything to do with me. I was a disappointment to everyone. I would go to school for morning preps and stay there for every single meal. Breakfast, lunch, and supper were all provided by the school. This was the only way I could survive. With my meals sorted at the workplace, I could divide my 200,000 UGX strictly between my rent and the university fees. I would only return to my room late at night, after prep and supper, just to sleep and wait for another haunting day to begin. You can imagine how hard life was. I taught in that school until 2022. Shortly before COVID-19, I was lucky to find three more schools, making a total of four. I was working around the clock, exhausted but hopeful. I had barely earned my first salaries from the additional schools when the pandemic struck. I had wanted to clear the debt in 2020, but with the lockdowns and the schools closed, my source of food and income vanished. I was once again barely surviving. When schools finally resumed after COVID-19, I worked with a desperation I cannot describe. I quickly made the remaining amount and paid. Only then did I peacefully return from my self-imposed exile back to Buhweju district. The darkest moment of that exile happened in 2017. My mother, my stepmother who had raised me since I was four years old, died. I almost missed burying her for the fear of going to the village. I was the university star of the family; how would I explain to my relatives what had actually happened? Who would understand me? I was a man with a clean academic record, yet I was a fugitive from my own success, hiding in Mbale...