Ugandan Student in the Diaspora Experience
By Lubanga Bruhan and Umulkheir Mubarak
She came like lightning with its strikes so piercing that only left tears in my eyes, lost hope due to chaos, panic led to fear, silence brought solo in my heart, with everything being at standstill. For the start, I couldn’t help it but wonder how my education and training sessions came to an end in a blink of an eye. Speaking from experience this is the worst thing ever to happen to my life in a foreign country.
At the start, it begun with the super power countries with lots of deaths and cases, it was the pandemic itself with its name called COVID-19. She was the sad part of life that caused a lot of pain and people wonder if they can live through the next day.
Khartoum city used to be nice, with unique beautiful structures and its amazing people brought in peace and joy that helped in finding you a part time job. This was like a bonus income to me that funded my extra activities and helped in research and projects that I engaged in.
Secondly, we used to go out for sorts of things that benefited us; swimming, sun bathing, dance battles, music, movie nights at Afraa. This seized in seconds as the lockdown was initiated and on top of that, we had limited movements that could bring you trouble when the curfew kicks in.
Unfortunately, the penalty for being outside and un designated time was too much that only the rich could pay and the poor community had only one choice being sent to prison for years.
Thirdly, as a student in final year you can only imagine what is going on in my beautiful mind. For example all that time I put in for my extra academic side projects were shuttered, university closed and the worst part was disconnection of the university Wi-Fi that could have relieved me of boredom through social media.
However, hope started to appear when the minister for education announced the revival of upper education through on line. Honestly I smiled, laughed my heart out with tears of joy thinking that am one step to Uganda the pearl of Africa.