GIVING CREDIT WHERE ITS DUE
Published on Apr 4, 2022
Katumba Jonathan Paul
paul@katumbapaul.com
I’m super grateful for my life and how good I am at whatever I do. Some people think I am extremely blessed and lucky and for the most part, they are right. They attribute my success to my hard work, the right people around me and a good support system. While all this is true, sometimes we tend to forget the smallest pieces of the puzzle. We tend to thank God, parents, work mates, partners, teachers, or mentors but then forget that the environment too needs credit. If it were not for the environment I had, a tough hard to navigate environment, I do not think I would become who I am today. And allow me present the environment I intend to give credit, my former school, Namilyango College.
I did attend Namilyango College for all my six years of secondary school in Uganda. For those that do not know Namilyango College, it’s the oldest secondary school founder by the Mill Hill fathers in 1902. Anyway, when I joined Namilyango, I thought I was finally free to build all those futurist projects, have a personal lab, unlimited access to high-speed internet and all that, (I do remember developing a reusable rocket and I called is Karse, a combination of Katumba and Ssenkumba, one close friend of mine from primary school). Anyway, to my disappointment, I discovered the system here was the same old, theoretical reading and cram work.
You can imagine how hard and disappointing it can be for a young person's dream to be killed simply because the education system does not regard innovation as a channel to success. Life at the college was about you either read and pass your books, or you get discontinued. Well, since I was a bright boy, I decided to read my books until one of our computer teachers in senior one, Mr. Ssejuko, who was a patron of the ICT club, called us who were interested in building cool projects. Its from there I knew that Namilyango was not that bad.
I remember Mr. Ssejuko introduced us to electronics, Arduino, and programming and my oh my ! I was excited. He organized a program for us to train over the weekends, program and build circuits. Unfortunately, he was transferred to some other school and no other computer teacher followed up on that program. That is where my dream almost died.
Well, for all of senior two, I tried to chase computer teachers and club patrons around in a bid to persue my dream of building of cool projects, all in vain. Being that ambitious young man 😎😎 , I refused to give up. Despite my best efforts, I did not achieve much progress. Little did I know, I was establishing myself as the tech person in the school. Somehow teachers knew what I was up to, but because of how the system is structured, they could not help much, understandably so.
Senior three comes, I convince my dad to buy me a laptop for my school projects and to improve. (At the time I only knew HTML, which is like the alphabet in writing web applications.) Well, now there was an issue. Posession of a laptop outside the school computer lab were illegal and if found with one, you could get suspended or even expelled given what you used the laptop for and yet most of the time to work was in the night after preps. Having a laptop didn't guarantee success. I needed regular and unlimited access to the computer labaratory and internet connection. These were priviledges reserved for school prefects and executive members of school clubs. Getting a spot on the executive table required a student to pay a hefty amount of money which I couldn't afford to do at the time and the highest bidders took it all.
Interestingly, thats how clubs worked in my school. Regardless, I realised I needed to get myself recognition to grant me more access to labs and internet to draw me closer to my dream. This is exactly what I did! I ran for the post of the Head prefect to have my voice heard, and I remember vividly., as part of my manifesto, I intended to push for more engagement of students in ICT. (My ambition at work again👨💻👨💻) and I did have the popular vote.
However, I lost the election to my now, good friend Kimuli Mark, who at the time I did not like. I was so convinced that I won the election that I appealled to the electoral commission, and I for the first time in the history of Namilyango, became the Junior Deputy Head prefect, a position they only created for me. This was a post only held by me and scrapped from the cabinet after my regime. Anyway, being a deputy head prefect allowed me privileges I used to improve my skillsets but also help more students in my capacity in that regard. On acquisition of this position, I was in charge of organizing the first ever science fair at Namilyango, where we had to get students to showcase science projects and even compete with other schools that we invited and what a succes it was!
This made me more credible to teachers and that way, they turned a blind eye to me keeping my laptop in a dorm room. It was still in senior three I got more recognized in the science club and was part of the team that put together a project that won 2015 MUK Innovex Tech Challenge organised by Makerere University.
I cannot fully express how much I massively improved my tech skills in senior three alone. I spent almost most of my time in the Technical Drawing room and the Centenary lab that was given to me as a workspace for developing projects. The internet at Namilyango was painfully slow but it worked and served its purpose. I spent so much time in these labs instead of paying attention to my academics, contrary to everyone else.
The suspension wasn’t a punishment but rather a form of control to get me to focus on my finals and pass.
I make it to senior four and I needed to concentrate on my finals because I mean, I had to get good grades that qualify me to come back and attend my A level and utilise this environment, the environment that was helping me get this far. I was still being called upon to support different science clubs to develop their projects for their competitions. One major project that stood out was the water filtration project for the SWAS (Water club) and this transpired at a time close to the mock exams, the most dreaded period of a Ugandan candidate.
I did pass with flying colors and returned for my A level. For those that were with me know that in my senior five, I hardly read books. I again stood for head prefect and still lost this one too. However, this time round I automatically became the Senior deputy head prefect. I was part of the debating team that represented the country in Yale university under World Scholars, and still, I had tech projects running. Prior to becoming the deputy head prefect, I developed an online voting system, with Ssenkumba again and I tried to table it directly to the headmaster such that we can implement it. Unfortunately, he dismissed me right away, I don’t recall what the reasons were, but we kept developing it. Why was I developing an online voting system you ask? Well, I wanted to try out a solution on a bigger scale plus, this time round, I needed to know the actual stats of the elections and get contented with them in real time.
Senior five was fun, I got to develop the ultra-swamp, the artificial swamp that won the SWAS Tech challenge in 2017. I built a health management system where I wanted to switch the paper based medical records at the dispensary to digital card based, but still, that did not get implemented. I however did push for faster internet connection in the school which was addressed and was happy about. I travelled in a team of three to South Africa and United States for debates and so much more. But all this happened because the school presented us with the opportunity.
Senior five ended without me doing a significant number of exams. Upon our return from the US, my team mates and I had to go back to school in December and sit for our compulsory promotional exams. Well, I cannot speak to how I performed. Despite my performance, the school supported us and set up remedial classes to get us up to speed considering we had less than half a year left to prepare for A level final exams. Well, I did my best, though overall, it was overwhelming.
I kept on developing projects on the side though, but eventually my luck ran out and I got suspended from school for possession of illegal devices (Laptop, programmable boards) and this was wake up call. This suspension got me reading so hard cause I was woken up to the reality of what lay ahead, my final exams. Irrefutable, Namilyango surely created for the perfect environment for me to become who I am today; the events worked in my favour. As I was being suspended, the administrator at the time said to me, “Katumba, time is over now. You have made so many projects. First pause your projects and finish your finals. After that, you can continue with your science and technology, and no one will touch you.”
It is just now, when I remember this statement, understand that this suspension wasn’t a punishment but rather a form of control to get me to focus on my finals and pass. So bad I did not finish my term as the deputy head prefect and that is what hurts most but hey, at least it made me who I am today.
This is really to appreciate the environment that Namilyango College created for me. Usually it doesn’t happen for everyone but when it does, it makes produces the problem solvers that the world needs and my promise is to put in the work to solve problems our society faces.
Special appreciation goes to the following.
- Mr Kirungi Augustine
- Mr. Ssejuko (transferred teacher in 2013)
- Madam Malunda (She put me in charge of the science fair)
- Madam Marion (She put me in charge of the SWAS club and all its activites)
- Lab attendants Richard and Oryem (Helped me a lot in setting up projects and giving me access to the lab)
- Mr Lubega Enos(Helped me access the computer lab and freely use it)
- Mr Emtai
- Mr Cula Jonathan
- Madam Kirabo
- The administration and all those that helped paved the way for me to become who I am.