Born third out of an average family of 4 children, I had all I needed for a successful childhood. Before I was 6, I had read all the books in the Topi series with "Topi the rabbit" as my favourite (I still remember it word by word to this day) and was already riding my first bicycle. I didn't know what it meant to be poor and everyone said I was a very intelligent boy and set on the right path for success. Many adults preferred calling me John F Kennedy other than just Kenneth which is my name.
When I was 10 years old, My father who was the sole provider for the family passed on.
My mother, who is a senior two drop out, had been just a house wife and did not have any sources of income. All that my dad had left us was lost through misuse and struggles with my extended family who saw it as an opportunity to improve their standards of living. We were left with nothing. We became a real definition of poverty.
For the first time in my life I was sent away from school for fees. I could no longer get all the basic needs I needed. I lived each day in "survival" mode. The only focus was on getting through the day in the full piece.
My family had to relocate to Gulu where we could afford a basic life. We joined a community that had scars of the LRA war. A community where everybody was going through what we were going through. A community with children that had no dreams at all because they knew their fate. Their fate was to be in school only to grow then later at around 16 years start a family and set a similar trend for your children. This was an infinite cycle of poverty.
Each time we traveled my mum had to carry both me and my younger brother (one year younger than me) so that she could pay for only one seat in the bus or taxi. However, this didn't go well one moment. We were thrown out of a taxi and humiliated. I remember the taxi man's words to my mum, "why produce what you can't take care of?".
We were left stranded in Kampala new taxi park with nothing else to do before a stranger offered to pay for our transport fare. We hadn't asked for his help but he had it within him that we needed his help. I don't even remember how he looked because he was already in the taxi and passed us the money through the taxi window. He was seated in the last seat at the back. All I remember is the look in his eyes, they were full of love. He was an angel in a taxi.
I wanted to be this man. I wanted to be the strange angel in a child's life. A child without the necessary resources for success. A child who is going through what I was going through than with no help to cry out for. To be that stranger, I needed to have the right skills by making it through school. Despite all the challenges in my family and community, everyone believed I was intelligent and I had internalized this. Because of this, I believed that financial constraints or the kind of community I was in couldn't stop me from having my dreams come true. I had a taste of success as a very young boy and I wanted it all back. Education was the only solution.
I passed highly throughout school and got a government sponsorship to study education at Mbarara university of science and technology. I joined Teach for Uganda in 2019 immediately after finishing university because of the conviction to be the stranger in that child's life. Not the stranger that will pay the taxi fare but one that will help the child achieve their dreams by receiving an excellent education because that's what they need just like I needed. I don't need to wait for the situation to get worse because it is already bad enough. I don't need to wait for them to ask for help because help found me before I could ask for it. All I need to know is that they need me to help set them on their right path to success. I made it through a society without necessary resources for success and that puts me in my teach Uganda fellowship today because I have that sense of possibility. At teach for Uganda I believe that with my effort, every Ugandan child will at one moment have access to a quality education.
I owe the taxi stranger, I owe everyone who said I was intelligent and believed in me. I owe every Ugandan child in a rural community with no access to quality education.
Basing on my life, I believe that achieving one's dreams cannot be constrained by their family income or community they come from and this is what every child has to believe.