Nulu Naluyombya: Succeeding against all odds

At 28, she is already making a name for herself as a mentor, public speaker and young women’s leader. She founded Success Chapter, which reaches out to girls and young women to train them in leadership.

She is also one of the 18 young Ugandans who were picked for the inaugural YALI fellowship( now Mandela Washington Fellowship) in the US last year and one of the only five who managed to scoop internship spots at the White House.

But the calm confidence, poise and quick endearing smile belies the struggle Nulu Naluyombya has endured to get basic education.

She narrowly missed dropping out in high school and almost did not go to university. She failed at her first attempt at her passion for mentorship and empowerment, yet she had just quit her job.

But if there is one thing this 27-year-old learnt to do at an early age, it is not to give up on any of her dreams and goals. She washed and cleaned for money during her university days and her first attempt to strike out on her own flopped, leaving her in debt.

Tough childhood
“My parents weren’t that educated. My father who had a clearing and forwarding business in Kampala never completed high school and my mother did not even complete primary school. But for some reason, they believed in education and enrolled us in the best schools they could afford at the time,” recounts Naluyombya. Her voice is silvery and light, like she will burst into laughter any second.

She was an eager student, but you would not know it looking at her school reports in the later years of primary school. “One day some time in Primary Four, a teacher lashed out at me for failing a math question.

I do not remember her exact words, but she basically questioned my intelligence. That affected me so much that I just stopped trying and became withdrawn,” she shares.

She still passed to go on to secondary school at Kawempe Muslim Secondary School where life was pretty normal until Senior Three. That year, her parents divorced and Naluyombya, who was the firstborn and her two siblings remained with their father.

It was a blow, being separated from their mother. But misfortune was not about to break its rule and come singly. In 2003 when Naluyombya was in Senior Four, her father’s thriving business came crashing down, introducing 16-year-old Naluyombya to something she had not known before- want and lack.

“We came from having everything to barely the basics. Suddenly, my father could not even afford to keep me in school, ” she recounts. The family hit rock bottom when they lost their house later that year.

Subsequently, the children were sent to stay with their mother in Ntinda, something they had craved for all along. But life was still a struggle. “I kept being sent home for school fees. At one point, I stayed home for so long that one relative even told my parents to just marry me off,” Naluyombya shares, saying this especially stung since the said relative also had a daughter her age who was in school.

Thankfully, her mother would not hear of it, and Naluyombya was not about to give up. She says she hawked passion fruit juice around Ntinda and the proceeds went towards her school fees and other family needs.

During the first term of her final year in high school, Naluyombya’s world was again turned upside down when she lost her mother to a short illness. The memory of the sudden death still brings tears in Naluyombya’s eyes.

“Losing mom was traumatising. Yes, we were going through challenges even when she was alive, but having her around was a source of strength. She used to encourage me to be strong,” she recounts.

In the wake of the loss, Naluyombya admits she felt like committing suicide but on reflecting on what her mother always told her about being strong, she decided to forego it.

She finally completed high school even though more often than not, she showed up at school empty-handed and would be helped out by four female teachers who had taken her under their wing. “To date I call them my four moms,” she says of the kind teachers.

She was relieved to have completed high school at Kawempe Muslim, but as it turned out, the struggle was not over. The government scholarship she saw as her only hope to get a university education eluded her.

She applied for private entry at Makerere University Business School (MUBS) anyway. “I really do not know where the courage came from because at that point, I had no idea how I would pay for it,” says Naluyombya.

It is just as well that she took a job at her former primary school’s St Noah Junior School where she ran the canteen. Her former headmaster, also an old friend of her father’s, touched by her plight, paid for her first semester of Bachelors in Procurement.

Again, death took away Naluyombya’s benefactor forcing her to quickly take up another job. “I found work at somebody’s home where I washed clothes and cleaned for a while. I would just leave school and rush to m y job. None of my course mates knew about it. I was paid Ushs150, 000 a month,” explains Naluyombya. The earnings may have been little, but they kept her in school until she later found work as a cashier at a hotel.

The birth of a leader
The experience that was to set Naluyombya on her current path was a guild election campaign in 2008, where she became the single woman candidate. She came in fourth after vote count, but that election had changed her life. “The students’ response to for speeches during the campaign was what made me think of inspiring other girls,” she says.

It took about to four years for her dream to come into fruition. During this time, she had finished her first degree, got a job at Makerere University Business School in the Public Relations Department and began pursuing her masters in Business Administration. But to settle at a comfortable job is not what this girl wanted. “I wanted to impact lives,” she says.

Her future had also come to her, one day during a conference for staff where distinguished motivational speaker and success coach, Phillip Kambe was invited to speak. “I just knew that was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” she says.

In 2012, she quit her job and founded Success Chapter. Her first conference was a flop. Only 50 people attended, most of them nonpaying, yet Naluyombya had planned for 300. “It left me flat out broke, in debt, without a job,” she recounts.

But it taught her that maybe she needed a little more time to lay the groundwork before doing conferences. That is how she sought employment again but found time to continue Success Chapter work, going to schools to speak to girls.

Trying again
Last November, she quit employment again to concentrate on Success Chapter, opening an office at Equatorial Mall. This time, she intends it to be for the long haul.

So far, the organisation with the help of partners has reached girls in Nabisunsa Girls’ School, Entebbe Girls, Kakungulu Memorial and Kibuli High School as well as trained guild representatives in several universities.

Earlier in the year, the Nabagereka Sylvia Nagginda launched the Girls Leadership Academy for Success Chapter at Hotel Africana. The plan is for the programme to roll out to reach school girls in all the regions of the country.

It is all coming together for Naluyombya and for this, she is very grateful. She appreciates that it may still not be a walk in the park. But she sees a need.

“Girls out there need to be affirmed, inspired, told they are beautiful and intelligent,” she says. And she has a goal too; “I want to see the girls of our country growing into women who believe in themselves, empowered women.” And if we use her story life story so far as a reference point, this woman never set a goal she did not achieve!

One-on-one

Describe yourself in one sentence
A go-getter who wants to live life on my own terms.
Three things you have learnt about life so far
It is easier when you have a mentor, do things you love and believe in, and finally, it does not matter where you come from, you can still achieve what you set out to achieve.
What is your definition of success?
Being able to contribute to making the world a better place.
Are you a feminist?
I am not even sure I know what that word means. All I know is that I support the marginalised. I support women and the girl child because I feel society has put them in a corner. If it was men in the same position, I would take up their cause with gusto too. I believe we all should be given a chance to succeed.
Five things you simply must do in the next five years
1. Complete my book on success principles for women.
2. Expand success chapter programmes to reach other countries in Africa.
3. Create a one-stop girls’ support centre.
4. Get married and have two children.
5. Build a house for my father.
What do you want in the future Mr ?
He has to be Muslim, only because I believe he will find it easier to understand my values. He should be able to trust me and not be threatened by my ambition. He will have dreams, be driven, and excited about life. Of course tall, handsome, and with a nice body.
Why do you cover up?
It was my own decision in my S6 vacation. No one pushed me into it. I just chose to and got used to it. It is now part of me.

Fact File
Name:Nulu Naluyombya
Born: January 1987 in Kampala
Age: 28 years
Parents: Mr Sekiwunga Dirisa and the late Aisha Nantale
Education
St Noah Junior School P1-P7, in Zzana Wakiso Kawempe
Muslim Secondary-S1-S6
MUBS-Bachelors in procurement and supply chain management.
Masters in Business Administration.