By Eriah Lule
A full-time job rarely gives space for good grades at school. But that may not be the only challenge. Previous school failure, age and family responsibility are three more.
Bernard Okello, age 38, working, married with two children and a former school dropout defied the odds.
In addition to his full-time teaching job at Global Junior School in Mukono, Okello was able to concentrate on his studies at Uganda Christian University (UCU) and receive a First Class in Bachelor of Arts in Education. He was part of the university’s 22nd graduation ceremony held at the institution’s main campus on October 22, 2021.
Okello says his wife was instrumental in helping him pull off this feat. Jackeline Okello decided that her husband’s salary would pay his tuition and that she would meet the rest of the financial needs of the family.
“I had only one option – to support my husband because any opportunity he chased after was for the wellbeing of our family,” said Jackeline, a nursery school teacher. The two have been married for 13 years.
When Okello got the green light from his wife, he embarked on a journey to upgrade from holding a certificate to a degree in education. Okello had graduated with a Grade Three Certificate in Education in 2004.
Resilience
The challenges Okello faced in his early life, he says, helped to mold him into a resilient man.
He grew up in an impoverished and dysfunctional family in Alebtong district, northern Uganda. At no time did his basic needs come on a silver platter. In fact, at one point, Okello dropped out of school during O’level.
“I lost my mother at a tender age,” he said. “My father rarely had time for us, so we had to struggle, sometimes, to meet our basic needs.”
The third born of four boys of Michael Otim, a primary school teacher, and Rose Otim, says his major challenges as a boy were lack of tuition to keep him in school and knowledge to lobby for available scholarships.
He was hopeless for a while, until a scholarship opportunity came his way, enabling him in 2001, to join Canon Lawrence Primary Teachers College Lira in northern Uganda. It is here where he got a Grade Three Certificate in teaching.
In 2009, Okello joined Unyama National Teachers College in Gulu, northern Uganda, from where he graduated in 2012, with a diploma in teaching. For the next two years, he taught at a school in Gulu.
In 2017, the Okellos relocated to Mukono, after he got a teaching vacancy at Global Junior School. The choice of Mukono was not by mistake. The Okellos looked for a school near a university, so that it would be easy for him to pursue his degree course.
Indeed, Okello soon got admitted to UCU’s undergraduate education program offered via a modular, blended (on-line and in-person) program. He says the modular, blended-learning arrangement gave him the opportunity to concentrate on his work better, since the sessions for face-to-face were during school holidays.
And, it’s not only the transcript that Okello says he walked home with, upon graduation at UCU in 2021. UCU imparted in him strong Christian morals that he had always admired. As a result, he notes that some of his workmates at Global Junior School as well as his family have been beneficiaries of the virtues implanted in him during the three years of his undergraduate study.
