School Politics; A Change of leaders or a Leadership change?

The past few days have been rather eventful, many of those interested in offering themselves for leadership positions at my School have been up and about, helter-skelter if you like, making their declarations, official or unofficial I know less of the difference. But true to the fact, many are telling us of what we already know but of course others are just announcing themselves to the political stage. Not so long from today we shall gladly (or otherwise) sit back and watch them play out as protagonists in their own plot, with majority acting as supporting cast and like every show we shall have victors and villains.

The declarations that have been filtering through got me trudging back down memory lane about the far we have come, the number of past declarations I have heard and of course the countless manifestos that have been recycled to fit the purpose. The most visible change through the years is the timing for start of campaigns. Those who have walked the journey with me will remember that in our year one, it wasn't until the positions were advertised that majority of us got to know of those standing. It has changed over the years and today before even the first Christmas gift has arrived, half of those offering themselves have already given express notice to the entire world about their intentions. The remaining half, either having given constructive notice of their aspirations or hoping to do so before we have our end of year prayers. It speaks to many things, perhaps it is the level of competition that we ought to appreciate.  Or just maybe the Equity and Trusts classes are being given a more practical approach these days. Maxims in our days were just another lecture but for many today their application especially the long held equity maxim that 'for two competing equities, the first in time prevails' is being effectively applied. Whatever reason it is, I know that a time shall come when campaigns will be opened at the Finalists Dinner.

As the declarations of individuals kept flocking in, I noticed one of my colleague's status that stopped anyone from bothering him with manifestos after all he had lost faith in young leaders and would not be voting in our forthcoming Society elections. It intrigued me because this was an opinion of someone I held in high regard and it caused me to reflect on the nature of leadership those who have served us before have offered. Had they served to our satisfaction, did they do their best in the positions they held, what more would they have done, were the pledges fulfilled? All these questions came flooding in a torrent. He told me that with the exception of a few, many of those who had taken up leadership positions before had been a huge joke. I understand why he gave a few exceptions particularly because he has served in his position for three years now and for every year his mandate has been renewed with unanimous approval. But on a personal basis I feel at school level we don’t speak of as much disappointment as compared with university level. My own conviction is that service to others is the rent you pay for your room on earth and many of our leaders have done their best.

However why many may disagree with me and why my colleague above disagrees is that politics is not attracting as many good people as it should be. That is not to say that those in the fray are bad people but many choose to stay away majorly because of the rigours that come with running a campaign. It shouldn’t be an excuse that it is more difficult to convince intending lawyers but it should bother us if they demand for perks and perquisites. A retired local politician once asked me as between a university student that gets sweets and an elder in the village that gets soap and sugar for votes, who is the greedier one? My answer was that both were greedy but he insisted and said the one who gets a sweet is the one most greedy and this was his reason. He claimed that on the test of ‘necessity and luxury’, the sweets were something that one could easily do away with as opposed to the sugar and salt. But I feel we can create an environment that begins to attract the leaders that we want around.

I wish all the candidates the best political environment there is, to make their voices heard. There are races I will certainly keep my eyes glued on and two of such races is the race for the English Premier League title and the race for the top four.

Good luck!

Soccer Gala: Its Wars and Battles

Not many events are looked up to at Law School like the annual sports gala and this is for diverse reasons. For starters this is the event that caps off the year in terms of events organized by the Makerere Law Society; the Society’s top brass therefore take it upon themselves to give us a worthy Christmas send-off. Secondly, in a gala we have more of a social and fun-filled event that involves nothing to do with the law that we read and study, it is definitely bound to attract all and sundry. The gala is much more concerned about the talent that you possess and less about your ability to memorize cases, nothing to do with the number of times you have been in class or even your frequency to the library. For those with no talent to showcase, at least it gives licence to exhibit attire and outfits. Talking of outfits, each of the classes had through a private arrangement purchased soccer jerseys for them to be identified with. The little ones had been attracted to the beautiful Nigeria jersey that lit the world cup, second year preferred the Bayern Munich home kit, the third years favored the “noisy neighbors” home kit (wasn’t that enough to explain the noise) and of course the elders choiced the opulent PSG home kit. We could argue about the smartest until the cows come home but at the end of the day everyone has their taste and preference.

The day was event laden, many games of different kinds kicking off at the same time. Each class (from year one to four)  had the opportunity to field a player for the games being played, male or female it didn't matter, what was most important was that they played. From board games to those on the field, the only missing ones were the track games but again how fast do you expect intending lawyers to be?

Football was the most exciting of them all; it is a beautiful game there are no questions about that. But the momentum had been building for days, words were being thrown from either camp, the most pronounced of course being the battle between the elders (read third and fourth year). The trainings had been done prior and it was just the day that everyone was waiting for to prove and disapprove the other.

The football games being the center of attraction had the most intensity, the emotions ran high, at a point punches were thrown about but this wasn't all. Off the pitch, the words accompanied every tackle won, every pass made, every air duel, it was just crazy. In moments like these, you forget yourself, you forget about how you think you should behave (it is no excuse for fighting though), every part of you is wholly immersed in the game. The nervy moments were many, for my team (fourth year) we had to endure a penalty shootout in our first game, it was nervy but we got through. The second year team had many glimpses of glory but they squandered them just as we did with ours and in the end they bowed out albeit with their heads high because of the quality of their game.

The final perhaps was the most entertaining, say what you may but a final anywhere in the world is worth your every minute, never mind the words at pre-match. This was between the third year class and the fourth year class. The statistics before the game were in no one's favor. We had never won a final even when we have been there on two separate occasions before and the third years had scored their first goal in the previous game in as many years of attempt. It was game on for everyone, no history or pedigree to bank on; it was simply how best you performed there. Johan Cruyff the famous Dutch football who was behind the revolution of football to what we today call the “tick-tack” is quoted to have once said that, football is played by the brain and the legs are just a bonus. The third year team defied all the above but somehow they emerged victorious after a penalty shootout. Could it have been luck? Maybe or maybe not. My felicitations to the entire class, you expended lots of energy on much more than playing the game itself.

The consolation from some of the fourth year boys was that third year boys could have won the battle on pitch but not anywhere near to winning the war (off the pitch). From that statement I could gather that there was much more than just a game of sport that was being fought for. Well, I am not one of those boys; maybe one of them will offer an extension to this blog and tell us exactly what he meant.

Thank you Makerere Law Society!

Of Turf Football, Pork and Catching up with the boys

Days in school can bring with them so much stress. There are times when you don't want to leave your bed but resilience demands that you turn up even on your worst of days. It is for that reason that we always have to try and create our happy moments where you drown away the tiredness and hope that you stay in that state forever. But these unfortunately are the lesser of days.

The nature of the course that we do has its tough days, just like any other course you will come across. The beauty about ours though is that it doesn't spread the bad days all through the semester but rather finds a way of "huddling them in one corner" and that is what many refer to as the famous or infamous (depending on where you stand) coursework week. We have a trail of other such days but this leads that pack. After those days where we had committed to burning midnight candles for our coursework, I sold an idea to a group of friends, many with whom I share a history, to go playing football and catch up.

It has been four years now at University, we had joined together in year one and given that we had shared our high school, it was such a brilliant idea to go somewhere and look back on how far we have come. We had in recent times converged but many of these were purely academic visits and for those that were not, it was always one reason or another that didn't give the fun its full and natural flow. Many years had gone by since we had come together to pass time as we relived the good moments, where we laughed so hard, shouted obscenities, told famous tales and thrown barbs at each other. We badly needed this time!

The general consensus was to go out playing football; after all it was the only sport I was convinced we all could comfortably play. I was wrong on this! The revelation we were to later get was beyond our anticipation. When it was time to play, the most minutes many could play were five and moreover in the small 5 aside pitch. Too much weight was holding down some, others were having the after effects of numerous nights out and some were genuinely unfit after burying themselves in books for the years gone by. All these hindered our playing time and people who thought that our earlier pre-booked two hours was short, were soon were asking for incessant cooling breaks.

Everyone could claim to be tired on the pitch but certainly not off when it came to eating. When that big tray of pork was laid out in front of us, we forgot that we were once tired. We all seemed alive once more and it felt like no activity had been going on before. The eating took a very short time, the stories that were flowing minutes ago suddenly came to a grinding halt. Of course they were to be resumed later after the job at hand had been fully accomplished.

A friend of mine likes to tell me that the reason why adults should have fun and enjoy themselves is to simply give kids the reason to want to grow up. As we sauntered away from the place that had given us so  much fun in just a day I couldn’t help but think about what lay ahead of us, shall we ever get back together again for an event like this? That time if it should come again should be very soon otherwise in the future, most will require the permission of their spouses but most worryingly many may not be able to kick a ball at all, but I refuse to be bound by any of the above.

Privacy and why you should have no business with someone’s phone

Throughout my academic life and journey, there was that particular statement that at one time each one pulled out like a magic wand; they used it time and again depending on how convenient it was. I remember as a little boy whenever you would try to show someone the right thing to do (or what you thought was right) they would tell you off, emphasizing that it is only right that you do mind your business, with all the lordliness written over their face. That was a life lesson that I learnt at a beardless stage, that wherever you have no stake then it was only prudent that you don't indulge. I learnt many life lessons as an infantile but perhaps this one stands head and shoulders above the rest, and probably one that surfaces each day we are under the sun. 

Privacy is now understood as a right and the denial of this right is a violation through and through. That is for the state but today I come to discuss individuals and how w come face to face with this right. A few days ago a dear friend of mine paid me a courtesy visit and like all such visits, we shared the pleasantries and talked and laughed. The conversation was diverse, from academics to life in general, to career to the changing patterns of the world. Midway our discussion, I excused myself and stepped out to straighten up something, my phone remained behind. On my return, I picked up it up and like the nature of all smart phones you are able to see what someone last checked for. I noticed that my visitor had picked up my phone and conveniently without my permission scrolled through my chats and checked for whatever she wanted. Her motive to this day is still shrouded in mystery but that is not the point for discussion today. The point really is why people can still have such improper, inappropriate and imprudent behavior.

Many thoughts of course came to mind but the most pronounced and the thread of this writing is why people have difficulty in respecting private spaces. But much more than that I also asked myself the obvious, why did she do what she did, was she successful in what she sought for and much more than that. I may have been wrong, probably she was bored when I moved out and decided to be passing through my personal messages, or probably she didn't even notice what she was doing. Be the above as it may, there are fundamentals that we can't afford to violate and personal space for me tops that list. I always like to say that there is a reason why a mobile phone is personal, unlike a land-line. That whatever is there is for the individual, and can only be used with their express permission. I personally was not angry or hurt or betrayed but because there was an option of asking for it from me, I felt what she did was rather uncouth. True to the fact, there was nothing to hide, the absence of a password being the first indicator.

David Sedaris once said that when you read someone else’s diary, you get what you deserve. The trend for many of us millennials unfortunately has been to “live in other people’s lives.” The desire to know who is dating who, where so and so has taken their girlfriend or boyfriend and much more of such trivialities. It can be one’s desire to check on their friends and know what they are up to in their lives but that too has a line that you dare not cross. We must try and balance the two otherwise we may find ourselves spending much more time in chasing what is in other people’s lives and forget that we have our own to live.

Debate & the Diminishing Voices of Our Youth Today

For the past three weeks, I have had the privilege of moving across all regions of this country courtesy of the leading debating society in Uganda (the Uganda Debate Society). While in the various regions that we went to, we held debate tournaments that attracted the higher institutions of learning within the area. I know for a fact that for every region, all universities there were covered and some of the other tertiary institutions. The assumption for purposes of this article is that those institutions brought their best or close to their best students and the other assumption is that given the nature and caliber of the tournament, those institutions put in a given level of effort that would warrant any serious tournament. I must say with all honesty that the level of engagement exhibited by the students was far below standard. The measure or yardstick that I employ in this judgment is basic command of the English language, basic argumentation, knowledge of basic information by any student of higher learning and ability to make a consistent argument for averagely five minutes. This is a fair bar of assessment in my opinion and one expected especially for students in institutions of higher learning.

Two causes of the problem in my opinion, either our institutions are not doing enough or probably as students we are also not doing enough to make ourselves better. I will not call into question the accreditation of some of our institutions but allow me examine the second limb of the problem cause and that is with the students. As a little boy in my primary five, I remember vividly the very first debate I engaged in, it was such a disaster. I couldn’t put together two sentences during the debate and yet I had no history of stammering, I was a relatively fine English speaker considering my age then. However, I noticed that perhaps out of fright or even being the first time, I needed to better myself. And for that reason alone, I went to work, I wanted to be a fine speaker, one who the result of the debate would depend on, but I knew for that to happen I needed to find a way of improving. I was better in my next engagement and I kept working, I am certainly much better now than I was 12 years ago.

With time, I noticed that for one to be able to speak, the most fundamental thing is that they must have read because it is very difficult to sustain an argument for more than a minute if you have no knowledge of the subject and you only get this knowledge through reading. I know that many arguments are made without reading and they are sustained with little knowledge but for an argument to be properly constructed, given good grounding and perfectly premised you must have read and have knowledge on the same. The greater part of me thinks (and I stand to be corrected) that the reason why the level of engagement/debate in our community is not improving is because we don’t give it time. I am a great admirer of fine speakers and for that reason alone I pay so much attention to the US Senators. Aside from articulation and language, they have so much knowledge on the subject which often guides their discussion. Perhaps we could say that many of our members of Parliament are not giving us an example but as a matter of fact, there are those who take time off to acquaint themselves with certain subjects and whenever they rise to speak, everyone settles to listen.

Debate just like any sport is supposed to be rewarding and like any sport it should be practiced and perfected overtime. I can tell without any fear of contradiction that when you stop training, like any sport you decline. I see athletes go the gym every day; they are trying to perfect their art and just like them, debate should be a daily practice. The only difference is that debating, if done well, will shape your personality, your intellect and your beliefs. Perhaps I can cut the students I saw some slack because many confessed to have only made their debut appearances during those tournaments. However, this can’t be an excuse for failing on every basic there is.

Our greatest misgiving as a generation is the failure to learn from our mistakes and the failure to desire to learn. We are without a doubt the majority but we stand a risk of not being heard if we can’t express ourselves even in the most basic of ways.

Victims of Rape & their Endless search for Justice

Time check. 9.00 am. The venue is an unfamiliar one, I am at the Chief Magistrates Court in Mpigi. This is a small court outside the heart of Mpigi town, at the tail end of a fairly modern winding road that has recently been tarmacked. As I sat in the small patio adjacent to the two courtrooms, many things became apparent and couldn’t go unnoticed. The glow of the rising sun, the helter-skelter movement of the court officers and the distraught look on the faces of the clients as they stood each absorbed in their own worries. For a moment I wondered where their imaginations were. They were definitely knee-deep in the mire of thought.

The rays that pierced through the small openings in the courtroom wall reminded me of my own days as a little boy, when I would stand in the doorway on mornings like these to play with the intermittent rays that came down in slants to form silhouettes. I sat and watched as the large glowing sphere rose slowly into the dull morning sky, it illuminated everyone around, young and old, male or female, and it did so without discrimination. I stared at the radiant sky as the big ball of fire climbed higher and higher into the sky, the morning was beautiful but it did little to reflect on the contorted faces of those that towered over me.

In that small little corridor where we struggled to fit, the court rooms were conspicuously visible but the Chief Magistrates Office need extra attention to notice. A few metres away, there lay a barely noticeable room which as I was to later learn housed suspects as they waited to be arraigned in court. There was nothing attractive about it and it could ideally go unnoticed on any normal day.

Tick…tock…tick…tock my small watch was counting down every minute, there was a growing urgency in me, a kind of eagerness that kept me expectant. All eyes were riveted towards the gate, as the vehicle carrying suspects was expected in any time. It is after they arrive at court that it will begin. An old lady was sitted next to me, her face slackened, her brow furrowed, her eyes darting with concern, searching from one place to another as if expecting something. I couldn’t guess with precision what she was expecting, but whatever it was, it caused her concern! I was to later learn that her daughter had been defiled and for a year plus she had been on a long, winding and treacherous road, one that leads to justice. She was nowhere close!

My concentration shifted to our client, Mary. Her story is also one of those painful ones that mothers in this nation have gone on to endure day in day out. One evening, an unfortunate occurrence happened to Mary’s daughter and it was for that single reason that we were sharing a seat that morning. As she returned home from a party, Mary’s daughter was defiled by a boda-boda man, one she had trusted to take her home. She was abandoned in a thicket in the dead of the night and left to figure out her way home. The girl was only 17. She was only lucky that a civil society organization (Center for Health, Human Rights & Development Center for Health, Human Rights & Development) was implementing some of its activities in the district of Gomba and that is how they learnt of the case. The accused’s family had employed all tactics, trying to box the complainant into a corner to accept being paid off but she had a bigger force behind her and she could therefore not succumb.

I shudder to imagine how many more girls are made to go through similar excruciating and harrowing experiences, and because the accused can afford to pay them off they simply have no option. The court process is (deliberately) long and tiring, adjournment after another and the hope of getting justice always vanishes with each passing day. The undertaking of having to recount the experience to ‘strangers’ in a court room is to say the least, traumatizing. Majority of those who suffer sexual and gender based violence are from the lowest strata in the community and because their voices are not heard, they let those with power dictate proceedings. Those wielding power use it to the disadvantage of the poor and in the end it is a chain of avoidable suffering.

Luc Huyse in his book All Things Pass, Except the Past famously said, “Justice is for the rich and forgiveness for the poor”. As a society, we ought to reject what is not right, stand for truth and let justice prevail.

Let us have the Conversation on Abortion

Ester Nagudi is a 13 years old girl from Manafwa District; she is tricked into having unprotected sex and ends up getting pregnant. Ester has no option but to try out an abortion since she cannot imagine herself facing her parents. A friend she trusted recommended an elderly woman who asked her to find a cassava stick. The woman peeled off the outer layer of the stick and told Ester to lie on her back and raise her legs. She pushed the stick inside and pulled it out, only blood spurted out but nothing else came with it. Ester’s life has never been the same again from that day! This is a story of a girl whose life is taken on a garden path, takes a complete turn for the worst and is made to pay for just one mistake that she made (or was made to make).  There are many more horrendous stories that talk about cases of insertion of objects into the uterus, dilation and curettage performed incorrectly, ingestion of harmful circumstances, application of external form and various other methods of unsafe abortion.

I didn’t think that abortion was a conversation we needed to have until my eyes stumbled on that harrowing story, I was taken aback by the facts and figures. For a long time I had always thought that the feminists and their great movement were simply advancing an agenda that only they knew about, I actually thought they were acting up but for the past few days and weeks reality has stared me in the face. It simply never occurred to me that such horrors exist, I had it all wrong!

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity of starting my internship program. This was with a prestigious organisation called Center for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), one that has for a long time championed the realisation of health rights in our country. Its impeccable record in litigating health related cases is second to none. Sometime last year CEHURD brought a case before the Constitutional Court, asking them to interpret Article 22 (2) of the Ugandan Constitution on whether there is a violation in the failure by the legislature to enact a law that regulates the termination of pregnancies. The fact is that we have no law in place on abortion but is our society ready to have the law? It is this abortion file that I have been poring over for the past fortnight and reality is beginning to check in.

There is a very critical question we need to start by answering. As a country, do we need to follow in the footsteps of our next door neighbors Kenya and Rwanda to enact a law on abortion? If that is answered in the affirmative then we also need to know whether we are ready to accept it. I have been a keen follower of the debate on abortion albeit making little contribution and for every single person who has claimed that it is not a law that we need, religion has been their basis. They have argued that God doesn’t allow killing. They have also argued that in case abortion is made ‘legal’ then there will be an upsurge in promiscuity. I don’t intend to delve into the spiritual realm because it is one that is complicated to fathom but let us look at the argument of promiscuity because that is what we all understand. The law that should be in place first of all is not one of legalizing abortion; it is one of regulating the termination of pregnancies. The two are not the same, in fact they are completely distinct. The English meaning of regulation is “controlling a conduct.” That in and of itself defeats the promiscuity argument form the onset because if you think women will become loose simply because abortion has been legalized, you have it wrong. The law will be seeking to put down the various conditions under which one can undertake a safe abortion. So their being loose will not be because the law has been enacted. If anything, it will make them more responsible! The Ministry of Health has itself realised that abortions ought to be carried out, they are something that you cannot dispense with and this is why they have come up with guidelines on the carrying out of abortions. The question then should be, if guidelines can be issued then why not a concrete law?

Many have also attempted to argue that a child (born and unborn) is a gift from God and therefore no one should take their life. That is a given and it is not in dispute. But if a child is a gift from God, then should we also presume that one that is as a result of rape is also from God? Doesn’t the argument become self defeating because then it would mean that rape is no longer a sin itself because a product of a sin cannot be a gift. I have also heard others argue that you could probably be killing a future leader or someone very important. I find this argument very shallow for these reasons. If one is a victim of incest, would you rather have the shame and embarrassment of an abomination in a family live with you for generations than do away with? Secondly, would you rather save the life of a baby that you are unsure of than ensure the safety of the mother you are very sure of, one who is giving the life and is expected to sustain it until a certain age? These are all choices that we need to have a conversation about because they are about the lives of our people; they are about the lives of our children and the children of our children and for a fact they matter.

At the end of the day, one disturbing fact remains, there is no regulation on abortion and the unsafe abortions will continue. Another Ester will become wasted and the chain will go on. I think it is about time we had this conversation on abortion.

My Love-Love Affair with Clinical Legal Education (CLE)

Officially, it is over. The ending we all feared for is benignly staring in our faces. From the start we knew it was never going to last forever but for some reason we allowed ourselves to be carried away. It’s hard to know what is real and what is nostalgia. Each story is a brick in a monument, built slowly overtime. At some point, it doesn’t matter what is real and what is imagined. An idea can be immortal, as many of us who have had this experience will testify but we also knew so well that one day we had to walk out and close the (boardroom) door behind us.

For beginners, Clinical Legal Education is a module one offers in their second semester of third year at Makerere Law School. It is a cocktail of activities and events that combines theoretical approach to legal education with a practical and hands on approach. There are numerous activities that the student can engage in under direct supervision or in self-directed activity. This might include; legal research, fact-finding inquiry, assisting qualified lawyers, interviewing clients and witnesses, drafting letters and other documents and depending on applicable rules, engaging in negotiations and even advocacy before courts and tribunals. The advantage of this is that the student gets to acquire a vast number of skills while still at university and would therefore have a smooth run in practice and at the bar. Much more than this is the closeness and proximity you develop with the lecturers. A rapport with one or two that you interface with on a daily, a camaraderie that you strike up with those that you regularly bump into as you criss-cross the corridor trying to beat a deadline all make this a worthwhile venture.

CLE offers a practical approach that comes with learning through experimenting. It is a notorious fact that students who participate in CLE receive basic training on legal drafting, research, negotiating and oral advocacy from law teachers and practitioners who volunteer to work on a part-time basis at the clinic. In our university and many other law schools across the region, there is an obsession and student enthusiasm for live cases. CLE gets to offer the student an opportunity to interact with live cases which is a win-win situation for both the student and the client who is helped. The client is in most cases a member of the community that cannot afford the services of a practicing lawyer but can benefit from the well of knowledge of the law student. From its inception, CLE has targeted a variety of people ranging from the student community to the entire legal regime and this is what has made it head and shoulders above the rest of the teaching models. Legal clinics which were essentially put up to conduct CLE were established by law students and law lecturers principally to bridge the gap between imparting practical legal skills and theory. They were established also in response to the growing need for basic legal service by indigent populations in the region. The above shows that the benefits accruing from CLE were not limited to students but would spread to the community too.

The module has also created a difference in the employment world. A number of law students, even those with high marks on graduation, far exceed the number of job opportunities, meaning that academic success is no longer enough. Students are expected to apply for jobs during the academic stage, yet employers are increasingly looking for candidates who have life experience, preferably in lawyering and people, skills together with a sense of commercial awareness-when they apply for positions. CLE has been crucial in improving our student employability. I can tell you for a fact that at the bar, students are frequently tested on opinion-writing skills. In practice, these are very similar to the letters which students draft to the clients. Having already done the vast majority of the work, this would be a simple way for us to develop an additional skill.

Also very important is the fact that CLE grants the opportunities for connections between organisations and the students. The difference between the successful and the less successful in our world today are the connections that one strings together. Among the many programs a CLE student interfaces with, internships and externships top the pile. These involve students being attached to organisations and getting involved in the work that they do. This is normally organised such that the students are attached to a particular organisation of their choice where they would be able to enjoy their stay and also benefit in terms of knowledge and experience. This is highly advantageous, as employers cite experience as a very important factor in modern day employment. Many more benefits accrue from this because I for one and a few of my colleagues had the benefit of doing externship at TASO-Mulago and the experience opened our eyes to the reality of the deep rooted suffering, discrimination and marginalization that our people constantly live with. I noticed that there is an embedded stigma that is associated with people living with HIV. On our first day, because none of us knew with precision the exact location of the TASO centre at Mulago, we often stopped on the way to ask kind strangers for directions. However, we were often greeted with grins and chuckles that were punctuated with soft sarcastic laughs. The fact that we were two boys and two girls added spice to the mix. When we finally got to the TASO centre, the stories were more painful. Patients lamented about rejection by their families, property grabbed from them, women chased by their husbands and so much untold suffering. Many of them also confessed of how they were born with HIV and only grew up to discover the ugly truth. Every Tuesday afternoon as we would be returning to University, we often patted ourselves on the back for the contribution we had made, but deep down the truth was biting, very little had been done to change the multitude of lives that we had left behind us.

Like all others, the CLE class of 2018 had its moments, it had its highs and lows, we had our hall of fame and we had that of shame too. We sometimes laughed so hard that we often forgot ourselves but we were also never short of mind-blowing moments when deadlines were looming. There are not many bittersweet memories in one’s lifetime that you sit back and reflect on with deep fondness, nostalgia and gladness, ones that you wished should never have ended so soon.  Mario Puzo in his thriller ‘The God Father’ said that the beauty about life is that it ends. The thread from this book is that everything good will one day come to an end, and knowing that there is an end date to anything is what makes it more beautiful.

CLE was worth my every single minute!