By Winnie Laker
Two weeks before the official lockdown of the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was already sick.
At the beginning of March, I started seeing a temporal defeat of life in my health. Fever, dry cough and general body weakness were the signs and symptoms that I was experiencing. In other words, they were not any different from what we had been hearing about the coronavirus. Could I have contacted COVID-19?
Just as with past times that I had malaria, I didn’t let it hold me down. I continued my internship at The New Vision. My task was registering best performing schools and students after the release of the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) information. I was determined not to let health interfere with my career climb and my passion for writing in communications and journalism.
As time progressed, I was sure my illness wasn’t the virus. Still weak, however, I notified my mother who delivered some bad news about my studies at Uganda Christian University.
“After finalizing with your internship, go and register for a dead year,” she said. “Your father and I have lost all means of paying for you this year.”
On that March 5, 2020, day, the emotion of sadness slipped into my soul, using it as a thorn to prick my heart. I needed a miracle. I wanted my God to rescue me from a full year away from studies. Meanwhile, our return for the Advent semester was pushing closer.
On that day, I vividly remember the high sunlit clouds drifting across a clear blue sky. I sat cross legged, with my head facing the floor. When I stood up to finally get permission from the Editor for my official end of work note, I stumbled on my every footstep. I didn’t have any strength left within me, but I had to talk to the editor on duty, Mrs Hellen Mukibi, about my situation.
Although my decision to end my internship was abrupt, I decided to tell Hellen the whole truth. She provided the around-the-clock emotional support I needed. The friendly exchange of conversation gave me hope.
While at home, I slept more and felt sorry for myself. At that, I began to strategize about what I could do to get back in school. Agriculture, an area I knew little about, emerged as an answer in my country that is rich with crops in many locations. Surely God was somehow involved in keeping my entire class from reporting back to school. I traveled to the village, specifically Gulu (in the North), to work in agriculture production.
When the president announced the official two-week lockdown beginning March 19, 2020, I was in the village doing farming, which I had never done physically my entire life. Farming, particularly small-scale, was a side business I started up in 2018, the year I joined the University. At first, it was due to influence from my siblings, but as time went on I realized it provided for my allowances at school. Nonetheless, I had to expand on the scale this time round, if I really wanted to get back to school.
During the more than seven-month period of lockdown, which included suspension of all classes at UCU, I had an acre of soya beans, one and a half acres of groundnuts and maize and half an acre of simsim. I had clear confirmation that I did not serve a dead God as the education delay was not just on me but on everybody.
The farming life was not easy. It involved weeding and harvesting. I well understood it was easier paying someone to do this job than doing it yourself. But I didn’t have that option. So I would wake up as early as 6:00 a.m. to go to the garden and by the time I am set to rest, I would have forgotten to even switch on my phone for any alerts. My mother and nieces worked hard side by side in the garden. Whether studying or working with my hands, I did not sit and stare. I worked.
At the beginning of October, the soya beans had its market ready for sale after harvesting. My hope was at its peak, being sure of resuming school together with fellows who were also home due to the effect of the pandemic. Moreover, the sale I made from the soya beans was enough to get me started back at school.
Today as I write this article, I am in school (virtually) with my very classmates, with whom I started with in 2018 (in-person studies). And although I have not completed my tuition, I can affirm that the groundnuts, maize and simsim, yet to be harvested by my mother, will be more than enough to pay my tuition. God willing, in October 2021, I will be graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication.
For me, an experience was gained but I also learned a very big lesson. If life lifts a fire of hope and sprinkles water in it, I can always go an extra mile and rekindle it to recover my laughter once more again.