Word to university students

This year 2019 is almost ending. Since I began writing, I have never dedicated any essay of mine to these young boys and girls who will tomorrow be the true leaders or dictators of our country. Where you are is the right place for you to do everything that you need.

These men and women in leadership are ageing, very rapidly, and are on their way leaving. You will replace them one day, whether they like it or not. Some of us grew up during eras when a young boy or girl was not allowed to talk when a man or woman of fifty years was talking.

This world is very different from the one we grew up seeing.  You could beat someone whom you wanted to teach a lesson and no one would knock you to take you for questioning. Today such a thing cannot be done.

You must talk because, it is a right given to you by God. Listen attentively. We are few in the room. Most of your parents are not reading what I today want to share with you. Unlike some of you, so many Ugandans are only interested in looking for money.

They have never discovered that most Americans read books to get the ideas that finally made them millionaires. These People do not need to hit you with clubs to make you understand.

Forgive them. Most of them are unaware of the amount of suffering you went through to get to where you are today. I feel very bad whenever I see a man or woman in uniform, whose duty is to keep law and order, caning a university student.

Dear authorities, these children you undress and beat and treat very inhumanly have seen a lot. I remember during my secondary school days, the only day I always eagerly waited for was the day I would leave school. Never hit a university student with a stick again.

These are intelligent young boys and girls. Some of them have read books you didn’t get chance and time to read during the days you wore rags. I was brainwashed at Makerere University by the books I introduced to myself while there. Today let me tell you.

I am less than thirty five of age. I am not sixty as the other admirer of my well-produced sentences thought.  I gathered all the courage that helped me fight the very big battles I have fought in this world because I read at Makerere. Dear police man, beat that child knowing that he understands the meaning of what you are doing to him.

He is kneeling before you and begs you to forgive him but he is just pretending. He knows he suffers throughout the semester. He goes to lectures hungry. He foots from Kabowa to Nakulabye. He knows his family is very poor and he is there to gather knowledge and confidence to help him step on the neck of poverty that is busy thrashing them in their wide family.

He is the first person in the family to study up to that level. You are caning him but he knows his mother cannot raise the money your rich bosses are pestering him to pay. You probably don’t know what you are doing but let me inform you, again.

The moment you step a single foot in any university anywhere in the world, you immediately begin spending.  For us, for example, had no gainful employment while there but we spent. These children you are beating are about to steal to get the money to spend on a daily basis at those universities. Think about our sisters there please.

Boys can hustle but what about those nice-looking young ladies there?  Please! Most of the students in all universities in this country cannot afford to pay tuition in time. I know because I was there.  Listen to them.

If you silence them, they will endure and complete studies, while suffering, but what will be next? These are the boys and girls that today quarrel and give you all the reasons why you should lead this country well.  When you suffer a lot, you begin to think.

How many students have ever got access to the vice chancellor of Makerere University to talk to him? More than eighty percent of students in public universities in Uganda cannot direct one to the offices of the men and women who sit and make decisions that anger students at those universities if one asked them.

You chain our ankles and shackle parts of our bodies that people see there but our brains are left thinking and unless killed and we leave the earth, we cannot stop talking.  We go out and freely talk.

We write and people’s brains take proper directions. You cannot silence a sane young man or woman who knows he or she is ill-treated. Amicably talk to them. Sorry Makerere University students.

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