Serendipity. Noun. The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
Phoebe Mulinde’s search for one of the new students to add to African Girls Can this year is a remarkable story. It is suspenseful and truly one of serendipity. We’ll let Phoebe herself explain what happened when she recruited Alum Ketty in January, 2018.
After hours of riding through tall grasses, bushes and shea trees , bumping along a dirt road in the remote countryside on the back of a boda boda,* I finally came to Atangwata Primary School. This is where Ketty completed her Primary Seven examinations. At the school we talked to the headmaster, who gave us vague directions to her grandfather’s home.
We proceeded to Alum Ketty’s home, but when we arrived we didn’t find her there. It was very quiet with just two grass thatched houses and a little girl cooking under a tree. The small girl, a cousin of Ketty, told us she had gone to attend the clan’s** annual meeting. My heart skipped a beat as I imagined what could be taking place at this clan meeting where a teenager was also involved. I could only think of an arrangement for Ketty to get married. We decided to speed over to the clan meeting and I remember I asked Lakana, my trusted boda driver when I am in Otuke, to hurry so that we could save her. I am so glad that my intuition was wrong!
When I got to the clan meeting, I asked one of the women who was cooking if I could be allowed to see Alum Ketty. She left and returned with a gentleman. I told him “I need to meet with Ketty relating to her education.” He called Ketty aside and I asked her a few questions to verify who she was. I also quickly asked “is this a marriage arrangement meeting?” She assured me that it was not related to that.
Before I could take Ketty to her house for further interviewing, I was summoned to the meeting to address the entire clan. They were happy to learn that the 3rd best student in the entire Otuke District was from their clan. The clan leader told the gathering, many of who were small children “ if you work hard, opportunities will look for you. Look how your sister is going to be sponsored!”
I was shocked to learn that Ketty had actually retaken her PLE three times. At her first and second attempts, Ketty scored 17 and 16 aggregates, respectively, and on the third attempt she scored an aggregate of 13. (Kids are tested in four subjects upon finishing primary school: English, Science, Social Studies and Math. The lower the number, the better the score. 12 or less represents the very top performers in the country.)
I asked Ketty why she had been retaking the exams, and she said that her family did not have money for her to continue to secondary school so she just kept trying to improve. Her father died several years ago and left her mother, a peasant farmer, with 9 children, though only 7 still survive. Ketty’s older sisters were not able to continue with their education past primary school and were married as teenagers. Ketty wants to become a doctor one day because she performed particularly strongly in science.
Ketty is essentially the last chance for a girl in this family to attend secondary school and her mother, Lilly, was as surprised and thrilled as anyone in the village that day.
This sort of story makes you think “what if?” What if:
- The boda boda had broken down that day or the roads were muddy and impassible?
- Phoebe had not been able to find Ketty’s home (after all, there are no addresses or GPS)?
- Ketty’s marriage had actually been arranged at the clan meeting (as is likely to happen for 16 year old girls in villages all over rural Uganda)?
The stars aligned that day, and Ketty is now getting oriented to school life at St. Katherine in Lira, several hours from her home. It was wonderful that Phoebe was able to award Ketty her scholarship in this very exciting and dramatic way. We won’t forget how this gift of an education came about, we’re sure Ketty won’t and now you won’t either!
*motorcycle taxi **a large group of extended families
