Balyama’s life turns around after Friends with Benefits competition

Ms Harriet Balyama, winner of National Social Security Fund Friends with Benefits shows off her four-unit housing project in Namugongo recently. Photos by Eronie Kamukama

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Harriet Balyama emerged winner in last year’s Friends with Benefits competition by NSSF, bagging Shs30 million. Eronie Kamukama writes about what prompted her to participate and how she used her savings to build a housing estate.

Almost a year ago, Ms Harriet Balyama saw an advert in the newspapers by National Social Security Fund (NSSF) announcing its Friends with Benefits competition. The competition’s idea was to showcase people who had received their NSSF benefits and used it to transform their lives. On the other hand, its main objective was to inspire millions of Ugandans to save while equipping them with financial literacy skills.
Ms Balyama thought she could give it a shot. “My siblings and friends saw it, they knew I had received my benefits from NSSF so they encouraged me to write my story which I did,” she recalls.

Calls followed later. Her story had been selected among the top 30 and then came another call that she was among the top 20 contestants. Her story was documented; she met the judges and got a chance to tell her story to the world on television. Weeks later, she emerged the winner of the Friends with Benefits show, victory that saw her walk away with Shs30m from NSSF.
“As people got to know my story, they voted for me. “It was a good feeling, a bonus. I did not expect to win but i had a lot of support especially from my siblings, friends and former students,” she says.

Balyama’s story
In the early 1990s, Ms Balyama taught in Nabisunsa Girls’ School. While there, she enrolled for a course in accountancy. “I enrolled for ACCA which I completed in the last four years. On completion, I joined an audit firm to practice accountancy,” she says.
Her accountant career took off and at times, the former teacher was head hunted, moving back and forth between organisations such as RTI International and EngenderHealth.

One day, towards the end of her five-year project with EngenderHealth, Ms Balyama was contacted by her first audit firm for a job in Nigeria, an offer she gladly took on. However, that contract ended prematurely as some problems cropped up and she returned to Uganda in 2008.

She decided to open up a hardware shop to keep some money flowing into her pockets.
“I opened up a hardware shop as I looked for another job. I stayed there for close to three years. EngenderHealth then contacted me for a job where I worked as a consultant for two months,” she narrates.

Then she fell sick. She left the job not only because the project was ending in 2014 but also because she could hardly cope with work.
“I was in great pain because besides bad headaches, it affected my eyes, my ears were thumping. I visited the dentist many times, my back was aching and I could not sit upright or walk on my own. It affected my appetite. My sleeping pattern changed. I could not feed or bathe myself,” Ms Balyama remembers her gloomy days.

She returned home, sought treatment and towards the end of 2015, a scan revealed she had a brain tumor that needed urgent operation.
However, due to her inability to work, the medical bills shot up as investigations were expensive. To cope with the bills, she sold off plots of land bought with personal savings.

She sold off two plots and retained a plot she was developing. That was still insufficient to cover the surgery costs. She turned to her invalidity benefits from NSSF. These are benefits paid to a contributing member who has lost his/ her earning capacity due to physical or mental incapacitation as will be certified by a medical doctor and Ms Balyama got Shs90m as benefits.

“By the time they were paid, I was already admitted in International Hospital of Kampala. The operation had been done on borrowed funds. So when I got payment from NSSF, I cleared the debts, the little balance I had, I asked my brother to handle my housing project,” she says.
With Shs40m, a balance of the benefits, she made more developments on the housing project.
Life after Friends with benefits
Today, Ms Balyama looks vibrant as she is back on her feet, operating running her business.

During the competition, Ms Balyama promised to use the money to improve her hardware shop and finish her housing project. She admits the prize money was a very big boost to her NSSF benefits.
“I have completed two of the units. What is outstanding is doing external painting and final finishing,” she explains.
Her challenge has been the fluctuating prices of construction materials. The same challenge has trickled down to the housing project, constraining the construction budget. She wants to earn Shs500,000 from each house for the start.

As a patient, she had discovered that the biggest challenge was the effects of the surgery. While recovering, she visited hospital twice after developing a blood clot in her lungs.
More so, she never anticipated the expensive treatment and continuous investigations after the surgery. She has written a proposal that will bring neurosurgeons into the support group she pitched during the competition. The idea is to help victims of brain tumour operations because they suffer short-term memory loss and take long to return to work.

“I have applied for jobs but I believe they would be a challenge because I was a financier and preparing reports is quite stressful,” she says adding that she wants to pick on survivors’ families and help them create income-generating activities.

Advice
Ms Balyama urges whoever has NSSF savings and has something enterprising as a result, to join the competition and look for support while at it.
“They are competing for something, so the money is there. There is satisfaction in winning besides getting the money,” she says.
“I have made many friends as people see me and say they have seen me somewhere. So I encourage whoever is working to have their benefits.”