As the saying goes, “My future, I can change, but for my past I have no say about it.” What came to me as a distant dream, today I see; I am a GHC Fellow, working with people committed to social justice and health equity. As we walk through the journey of life, how I wish we were able to tell the twists and turns ahead; for a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. This is how far I have come, though I am not sure of what tomorrow holds. While in school, particularly upper primary and lower secondary, my attitude towards my academics and examinations was simply to pass them and put myself in a favorable position for a white collar job. One may wonder what a white collar job is. In my simple juvenile mind then, it was to get a job with a huge office, have a personal secretary, drive an expensive SUV car, and be filled with the pomp that I saw several people show; say, the accountants, bankers, government officials, and others. I imagined an office with my name on the door, the comfort of a fan to condition the air, and the respect that came with such a job. This was the dream, the hope and the destiny, but life had its own ideas. The story of my life is quite a long one, I never imagined being a medical personnel, with a stethoscope around my neck and telling people what to do with their health, let alone teach and enlighten people on how to feel healthy.
When I completed high school, about 7 years ago, I joined one of the best Universities in Africa that many only dreamed of attending. I pursued a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing with relative vigor. What I did not envision, however, was that I would never sit in an air conditioned office with my name on the door, nor have a personal secretary and walk with pomp and an aura of being indispensable, as I had once dreamed. After a yearlong internship at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital in western Uganda, I was accorded an opportunity to work with the Ministry of Health Uganda with Kayunga district’s hospital. I was a teaching assistant with one of the Universities in the country at the same time. Not only was I short of a comfortable chair, but I had the worry of two jobs 500km apart. The agony of spending every weekend on the highway criss-crossing the country and the fear of being called upon for an emergency weighed on me all day, no matter where I was. When I heard the good news that I was admitted to the 5th class of Global Health Corps fellows, I took it as an opportunity for me to see the life of the less fortunate with empathy. No longer was my dream to have an air conditioned office with my name on it, but rather to share my life experiences and knowledge to better the lives of others. Today I know that service and fighting for social justice and health equity are opportunities to make a difference in the world that I would otherwise have let pass me by earlier in life. This all started with an e-mail congratulating me for having made it to the GHC fellowship class of 2013-2014. As GHC fellows, we can testify together what went down our spines upon reading that day’s e-mail from the GHC office in New York. ACODEV-Uganda’s staff welcomed me and my co-fellows with a smile at the Yale training institute. I could not wait to reach my placement site and after a few days of orientation, the regional coordinator allocated me my work space, a simple work desk and a seat in the Kasese office.
Working with Global Health Corp at ACODEV-Uganda
The new responsibilities have changed my life from hard work and night shifts at medical facilities to smart work all day. Working from Monday to Friday and having time off over the weekend to proactively reflect on humanity rather than react to emergencies and disease every day have changed me. I have learned to think positively about the health of the community and innovate to improve the existing policies and interventions at my place of work. I am learning how to introduce activities that I believe can benefit the community and the lives of those with whom I work. My perception about life has also changed; from the notion of how I do benefit from the community to focusing on what I can contribute to it, such that I can ensure health equity for all through the use of existing policies especially at my place of work.