By Gideon Mwanje
Growing up from an injustice society for me wasn’t just an experience, it was witnessing the reality of many injustices that go unnoticed. It clung to my bare feet and settled into the lines of my palms, a constant reminder of how unprecedented norms and stereotypes can impact a society’s ability to transformation.
I am not running away from my culture or condemning the norms that nurtured me, I am calling Uganda back. I am reflecting on the society systems that have always pulled us back, especially by politicians, broken systems and patriarchy beliefs. Growing up, I was expected to serve but never own.
For so many times I wanted to question the status quo but I was never allowed to point a finger at anyone! I watched the elders claim the spaces where I could advise my side of the story. No one was interested in a child’s story. In society’s eyes, a person below 18 years old was not yet intelligent.
In the quiet intensity of a traditional African household, my childhood was defined by a heavy, stifling silence. We were children who were seen but never heard. Accusations of wrongs and we were not given a chance to defend ourselves, beaten severely on many things we never did.
I witnessed bodies meant for labor, hands meant for chores that stretched from the first light of dawn until the stars bled into the night sky. I remember the weight of the jerry cans those children carried in our village, the sting of the smoke in the kitchen our sisters endured, many never even got an opportunity to step into a nursery school, I developed a crushing realization that I did not belong to myself.
We weren’t allowed to lift a finger in protest, nor could we choose the very food that fueled our exhaustion. It was a lonely journey, a solitude that exists only when you are surrounded by family who do not truly see the person flickering behind your eyes. They looked at me as an ordinary poor boy but behind me stood a warrior and a great leader!
I grew up believing that life was an inherently unfair trip, a rigged game where the rules were written by people I would never meet.
For a young person like myself, life is three times harder when you’re born in a system that doesn’t plan for its new born babies.
Education was my only escape, though it often felt like an exile. Leaving Luwero for districts like Wakiso was a culture shock that fractured my identity. In those classrooms, far from the familiar pastures of home, I began to see the world through a lens that wasn’t tinted by Luwero’s dust. Yet, the further I went, the more I felt the gap widening between where I came from and where I was going.
The true epiphany, however, came on the day I stepped into the gates of the university. I looked around at the sea of faces, searching for a familiar accent, a shared history, or a neighbor’s child. But I found no one. Not a single classmate from my home town stood there with me.
That realization hit me like a physical blow. It was a lonely triumph that couldn’t give better results to our people. I stood with a belief that one man could not take back water home. I felt like a survivor who had made it to the lifeboats only to realize the rest of my village was still dry, drowning in the dark. It was then that my perspective shifted from survival to mission. I knew I couldn’t just be a student; I had to be a light. I had to be the proof that the injustices of our upbringing didn’t have to be a permanent destination.
Proof that the Government’s failure to plan for young people didn’t paralyze my thinking and creativity for a better tomorrow.
University was not the academic sanctuary I had imagined; it was a brick kiln. It was there that the “Luwero boy” was dismantled and rebuilt. Studying law was like finally being handed the rulebook to the “unfair trip” I had been walking all my life. Like Christopher Darden: “I chose to go to law school because I thought that someday, somehow I’d make a difference”
Law school gave me the language to name the injustices I had felt as a child. I understood the mythical youth representation structures that are just waiting rooms for patronage. I stepped into roles that forced me to find the voice I had been told to suppress for twenty years. I learned that power isn’t about control, but about the responsibility to speak for those still trapped in silence.
I learnt that leadership is about doing, forgiving those that hurt you in the process. I learnt that people want results not excuses, whether you’re an orphan, no one cares. I navigated the inadequacy of money yet followers expected results. I learned that vulnerability isn’t a weakness, but the highest form of courage.
Life at campus was hard. There were days of hunger, days of profound self-doubt, and nights where the loneliness of my childhood echoed in my hostel room. But I pulled myself back, knowing that no one was to save me but myself, so every lecture, every debate, every moot, every leadership position both national and regional and every heartbreak was peeling away the layers of that silenced, suppressed young man.
When I finally stood in my gown on graduation day, standing tall on top of my law class, I realized I wasn’t the same person who had walked through those gates years prior. The boy from Luwero who thought life was a cruel joke had died somewhere between the library stacks and the leadership forums.
I looked at my hands once calloused from chores I had no say in and realized they were now equipped to write destinies, to defend the weak, and to flip the script for the next generation. Education didn’t just give me a law degree; it gave me back my humanity. It taught me that while we cannot choose where we start the trip, we are the sole architects of the future of Uganda and East Africa.
I am no longer a victim of an unfair journey. I am a navigator, and for every child still waking up to the red dust and the heavy silence of Luwero, I am coming back with a lamp because I am not coming home the way I went! (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
