The below article was recently published in the Ugandan newspaper, The Observer. As a former Invisible Children Legacy Scholarship Program beneficiary, Sunday Okello went from living in an internally displaced people’s (IDP) camp to heading to the United States to attend Franklin College in Indiana, where one international student each year is given a full-tuition scholarship. And you guessed it, that one is Sunday.
PLE failure scales to great heights
Sunday Okello, 23, has, against all odds, attained great heights due to his sheer determination.
After having repeated primary seven thrice, in 2004 at Laparanat primary school , 2005 at Jupa primary school and finally in 2006 at Lacekocot primary school, he has eventually emerged the winner of a scholarship from Franklin College in Indiana-USA where he is going to take up a Bachelor of Medicine degree course.
Okello was born in 1990 and raised in an internally displaced people’s (IDP) camp in Atanga sub-county, Pader district, under arduous conditions characterised by spells of famine, cholera outbreaks and limited schooling. Several times, he was afflicted with malaria and because of poverty at home, he was frequently sent away from school because of school fees arrears.
“I lived a life of fear in the IDP camp because there were several attacks on the camps and most of my friends were abducted, and although some have been reunited with their families, many others have not,” Okello, an orphan, said.
Despite the fact that he was turned away from school now and again, he became adamant and kept going back, sometimes without school uniform because he didn’t have one. To him, education was the limit and he was not ready to give up on it, for he envisioned a bright future ahead of him.
Poor quality education and missing lessons for so many days led him to fail the first two sets of Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). But he still never gave up and re-sat it for the third time with the hope of being admitted on the district quota system.
Despite the fact that he did not get onto the district quota, he managed to enrol for secondary school education at Atanga SS, a USE school, in 2007. His fortunes for joining secondary school turned brighter when he was identified by documentary filmmakers from Invisible Children, an organisation founded in 2004 that focus awareness on the activities of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
“Bobby Bailey, the filmmaker, came to the school and wanted to help a needy student by letting him/her share the story of his/her life, and luckily, the headmaster submitted my name,” he recollects.
Okello features in the 46-minute long documentary dubbed ‘The story of a displaced child’ shot in Atanga IDP camp. It has him as the main character, narrating the journey of his life after losing his father in 1996 and mother in 2001. Okello believes meeting Bailey was the most remarkable moment in his life because he (Bailey) assured him that he would complete his studies.
Unknown to him then, he was later to find out that he had hit a real jackpot. After featuring in the documentary, Okello was listed as a beneficiary of the Invisible Children Legacy Scholarship Programme (LSP) that targets vulnerable children from 18 districts in Acholi, Lango, West Nile, Teso and Karamoja sub-regions.
In 2008, he joined St Michael High School-Ssonde for his senior two and it was here that he completed his ordinary level in 2010, scoring 16 aggregates in eight subjects and emerged the best student in the school.
For ‘A’ level, he joined Naalya SS in 2011 and offered Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics (PCB/M) with a dream of becoming a medical doctor. He scored 17 points in the UACE exams. Okello’s dream of becoming a doctor was triggered off when his mother was shot by the LRA rebels in 2001 while she was digging one day.
However, access to health services was difficult because Atanga Health Centre III had limited medicines, inadequate health workers, yet had long queues of patients. This helpless situation went on for two days until not so long afterwards, Okello’s mother passed on due to excessive loss of blood.
“This is when the thought of becoming a doctor crossed my mind because then, I might have saved my mother’s life,” Okello, the first-born of three children, reminisces.
After his mother’s death, he became the head of their household at only 11 years, struggling to fend for his siblings and ensuring their and his education, at Lacekocot primary school. This state of affairs continued for two years until his uncle stepped in to help, but not for too long.
Winning the scholarship
During his senior four vacation in 2010, he met a team from Franklin College which wanted to see him after watching him in the documentary. He was notified of the scholarships that the college offers annually, and he tried his luck and applied for it this January. It paid off; he was announced winner of this year’s scholarship in June.
“My expectation of the scholarship is more exposure, meeting new people and making new friends while gaining diverse knowledge,” says Okello.
Okello holds the vision of offering medical services to his local community after he finishes his studies.
Michael Mubangizi, the regional public relations and advocacy officer for East and Central Africa at Invisible Children-Uganda, said Okello’s story shows that with focus, determination and perseverance, people can always achieve their goals.
“We hope that other students on our scholarship will be inspired by his story and maybe emulate him,” he said.
For Okello, the sky remains the limit, and if he managed to scale such unimaginable heights, he keeps on reminding himself that determination and perseverance does pay dividends.
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