By Agatha N. Biira
In 2012, when Grace Amoit was in senior three, her father, a police officer attached to Mbale Police Station at the time, was arrested over allegations of robbery. What was meant to be a night shift at work landed him in prison.
On that fateful evening, he received a call that needed immediate police attention. Prior to that, he had been working on a case of a company that had lost quite a huge amount of money, and the suspect had been cited in Mbale. So, he was assigned the file.
“When he and a colleague went to pick up the suspect, they recovered part of the money and arrested the suspect. But, some of the money was on the suspect’s phone. He wired it to his phone as an exhibit, but this was misunderstood by his top bosses, who thought he just wanted to have the money to himself. “He ended up being charged with robbery,” Amoit narrates.
Having been the breadwinner of the family, life took a turn for them. “My father had businesses in Malaba but they all collapsed within a year. My mother was a police officer attached to Katwe police station in Kampala at the time. She couldn’t keep moving back and forth to supervise the businesses and also work, “Amoit continues.
These businesses were the source of income for the family. Her mother’s salary alone could not sustain them, but luckily enough, they had a house in Nsambya that her mother rented out. Unfortunately, things took a turn and she had to sell the house and relocate to the village. “We had no relatives in Kampala by then. I had nowhere to stay; I had to change schools. It was so hard. I cried on several occasions, “she added.
As a teenager and the first born of four, it was mentally challenging for her. On top of sitting for her senior four exams with no assurance of her father’s being released, her mother’s health deteriorated. She was diagnosed with hypertension and was always in and out of hospitals at the time, yet they had no support, not even from relatives.
This was when thoughts of dropping out of school started creeping on her. All she wanted was to find a way to help her mother with the bills. She had no hope.
During her senior six holiday, she decided to get a job to help her mother. Her father was released around the same time. He discouraged her from taking it up, telling her to be patient as he figured things out. “I know he did that to give me courage, but I would definitely see that there was no way out. I just had to accept it and live life as it was, “she recalled.
After his release from jail, he lived in a car he had parked at a guest house for about three weeks as his mother looked for money for his rent. He then rented a single-room house in Malaba, where Amoit joined him. With an old photocopier and a laptop, she and her father started out in business. From photocopying, printing, selling water and offering mobile money services, they were able to get rent money and also expand their business.
2016 was the year she was supposed to attend the university, but she was unsure of where the money would come from. Her father had begun to hope that she would attend school.Her father persuaded her to study law instead of journalism.
Having been late on application, she instead applied for a diploma in law at the Law Development Centre (LDC), where she finished with a first class before joining Uganda Christian University (UCU) for her Bachelor’s degree.
She recalls that while she was at LDC, she stayed with her aunt, a beneficiary of her parents, who threw her out of the house in her last term and had to stay with her friend till she completed. She described the experience as traumatizing.
She was skeptical about joining UCU because it was costly and four years is a long time. But her father said to her, “As long as I am still alive, you are going to study at UCU.”
“I tried to convince him to try other universities, but all in vain. I had to brace myself. I knew that if I was to do another course, he wouldn’t be happy, and yet I knew he was sacrificing a lot,” she said. “My father is my cheerleader. He started calling me a lawyer when I started doing law. I would tell him I am not yet a lawyer and he would, in return, say, the title is yours already. You are just going to school to affirm it. And I made it.”
Amoit graduated 12th in her class of over 300 students with a CGPA of 3.97. She says she is now awaiting a post-graduate at LDC, and she says she would have loved to do an internship just like her friends, but she has to work for her tuition.
While still at school, Amoit says she did a lot of reading. “I had to work hard. I knew if I had messed up at one point or failed in school, it would break my parents’ hearts and I didn’t want that, “she said.
I understand that many of us may be going through the same situation, but like Amoit, you can also make it.
