Who knew I’d get to celebrate three birthdays in the same class! It’s been such a blast. All this fun has got me feeling light headed. Maybe it’s all the partying…or the fact that I’m losing brain cells by the second. At least I’m alive though, huh? I may be a hollow shell of my former self but hey…it was either that or inevitable doom. It’s not like staggered schooling is a real thing. I mean it’s not like in the space of five months, one or two classes could’ve coexisted in a stable enough environment. Well what do I know? A thousand days in one grade? Pfft! Heck, we can take two.
Schools Closed! What more joy could one ask for. It was a childhood dream, right? So I guess you’re here to make dreams come true; a staggering 5 months of stagnation surely couldn’t do more harm than good. After all, many have graduated and carried all their weight back home. Isn’t that the reasoning, Person Calling The Shots? Yeah, yeah sure, just keep us home. Why worry about our coverage: for we all have televisions, right? We are learning new things everyday on UBC and BBS Terefayina at such an awesome speed. Not to mention, we have two whole full lessons a day.
Do not even get me started on the radios and how great those are. There’s something about seeing the teachers pace around during practicals that is quite distracting. Now, we have the ability to focus on the sound alone as we mix the chemicals in front of us. There’s no doubt we are ready for practical exams.
Maybe an eighty week vacation is just what we needed. While you’re at it, heck let’s make it 100 so it rolls off the tongue easier. That never killed anyone…right. I mean technically thousands of teen pregnancies, tens of thousands of mental health cases and hundreds of thousands of school dropouts don’t count as deaths. But I guess it depends on who’s doing the counting.
This recent spike in teenage pregnancies in Uganda got me thinking of the works of Robert Kiyosaki; more specifically, ‘Rich Dad’s Conspiracy of The Rich.’ And at that moment it hit me, what a great idea closing schools was. What this country needs for sustainable development is drop-outs bearing the burden of motherhood to provide a large semi-skilled labour force in the future for building work, tailoring, weaving and basketry, brick building… As a matter of fact, this would be a huge investment into the cultural sector so we have what to take to future Dubai Expos; culture! And the routine equator line too. It doesn’t matter if they are born into struggle, that’s opportunity cost. Isn’t that right? As a matter of fact, it makes them easy to govern. What else is one supposed to think?
Of course keep probing us into the towns as the jobless youth who hang around idle in the streets, play board games half the time when we aren’t trying to fall asleep or hassle innocent passers-by. Even if over 46% of youth are grappling below the poverty line, that’s just opportunity cost. But hey… we’re still technically ‘alive’ right. How many arbitrary meanings will you draw to that word? Living and staying alive are different. But I guess you’ve got that dialed in too. A thousand days in one grade? We surely can’t be questioning our very choice to stay in school; it’s not like we’re slowly dying on the inside. It’s like I said: it’s all about who’s taking the death toll.
You know what a great idea could be? We could go to these towns and take pictures of these crowded centres and the bustling traffic. They would make amazing cover photos when we present documents to developed nations titled, “Why you should send aid to Uganda!” The beauty is that any description works. One could caption how the youth are idle and need capital injection to kickstart their livelihoods. Or one could even say how the cities are growing uncontrollably and ‘capital injection’ is needed to keep the momentum.
Anyway, what’s the rush? Isn’t it just 2017 when 87% of university graduates couldn’t find jobs? And the economy was better then. We should give time to those to fill up all the jobs then we come in as more jobs become available for us, which at this rate, they certainly will. With the rate at which the economy is plummeting, it is best to keep the students stagnant before churning out more, in the spirit of not chewing more than you can swallow. Imagine trying to fix a failed economy with the extra burden of young ambitious graduates crying for work. Now imagine not trying to fix a failed economy, and still the same burden.
Amidst this multi faceted mess though, cringe is never far. According to the U.N. cultural agency, we hold the record for “longest school closure”. Yeah, this article’s title earned its place. It portrays us as the patient, rational and cautious people that we are. After waiting for Nabbanja money, surely we can wait to get mere academic documents. Who’d prefer long term papers to a solid 100k in the pocket. A bird in hand is worth 2 in the bush. The 100k is safer and it goes a long way in relieving one of having to engineer ways to escape debtors. Even Google in Luganda has run out of good answers.
Let’s not open schools until we have achieved 80% vaccination of adults. Even if we could have finished this a long time ago, we just had to buy pickup trucks using vaccine money. But I do get the logic. Maybe someone would see pickup trucks parked at the vaccination centre and go get the jab in the hope of standing a chance to win one. It doesn’t even matter that covidex has been proven effective against the virus. It is a crime for one to enjoy home food more than food from that restaurant across the street.
Speaking of COVID-19, is that the reason we are still giving for why schools are closed? I just want to make sure when asked we say the same thing. I’m not trying to suggest that there could be some sort of hidden agenda behind keeping schools closed. That would just be too anti-government right? Surely, it can’t be about foreign aid or some power scheme or some sort of natural selection, for you have gained my trust over the years. There’s never a hidden agenda.
Besides, Ugandans are smart. All we’ll need is an intensive bootcamp-style five months and we’ll be good to sit the most important examinations in our lives.
“So let’s count how much study they’ll have gotten. 3 weeks at the start of 2020, 2 months at the start of 2021, we have been sending notes and we served out radios. Between January 2022 and May 2022, I think they’ll be ready. Yeah. They will… yeah.”
POV: conversation within the think tank.
Admittedly, many students have been studying online. At this point, if you haven’t, it looks like it’s going to be survival for the fit. We should also expect a bigger gap between the top and bottom schools’ performances. But that’s just another statistic. Another tally on the death toll.
The only complaint I have is that when some of us are trying to become influencers, you send the police to photobomb our pictures. Won’t you eat and let eat?
ABOUT THE CO-AUTHOR
Amuno John Renato, 18 is an outspoken satirical writer who finds his pen lighter when writing off the top. His employment of sarcasm and irony makes his works greatly readable while still relaying a strong message. His passion for a better Africa has led him to read exhaustively on world issues and give off the urgency of such matters in his writings and daily conversation. He heartily pens this article to whom it may concern.
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