Surviving at all costs while at school

Life at university can be quite a hustle! So you have got to learn how to survive – but survival assumes a number of faces.

It may be through working harder, being careful about your expenditure and all the good things the Economics teacher used to talk about. But if there is anything true about survival – it is only for the fittest.

So, to make it at university, some ‘survivors’ employ other tactics of seizing all opportunities steadily, but surely surviving at other people’s cost – mooching.

Working class advantage
“Usually, typical opportunists do not mooch on one person,” confessed a source that preferred anonymity. “In second year, I had a bunch of friends who drained me empty. I paid all the bills when we went drinking, and after I was broke, they moved on to someone else, and that taught me a lesson,” he says. In a bid to retaliate, he craftily set up a circle of people to ‘hang out’ with.

“All my new friends at campus were working class, older guys who had money. When they sent me to buy hand-outs, they would buy me a copy.

Every evening after classes, they would invite me to have drinks with them, and they footed the bill,” he adds. During the day, he had a friend who used to reside in the hall. “That’s where I had my lunch and supper – on resident’s food. Then my hostel roommate would share simple things such as toiletries, sugar, snacks, and movies,” the source confessed.

The food friend
Hajjarah Namuli, a student of Kyambogo University, confirms that such ways of surviving are often employed at university. “It is a big and real thing – that probably starts in high school, but usually hard to find at campus,” Namuli says.

“There is a babe from our village who went to Makerere University the same year as my sisters. They were her acquaintances. However, she would come to my sister’s hostel for her daily meals without contributing a penny,” Sharon Atukunda recalls.

But her sisters could not do anything because she was someone they knew from the village.
“She mooched off them for three years. Can you believe it!” Atukunda says.

The hostel crusher
But that’s not all. Remmy Katumba, a student of Makerere University Business School, shares how a friend asked to stay for a week and ended up staying for a semester at his hostel. “He asked if he could crush at my place for a week because he was not doing financially well to commute from home, which was okay with me until he stayed for the semester,” Katumba recalls.

So here he was, with another person to take care of. “We later found out that he had used his hostel fees when his parents came looking for him,” he adds.

Sharing handouts
Come to think of it, Gloria Blessing Kulabako, a student of Ndejje University, thinks she has ever mooched off her friend for some time, on handouts.

“There is a time I never bought any handouts. I was commuting so I had those expenses, and at the same time, my parents were not doing well financially – so I could not ask for more than they were giving already. Those were hard times,” she says.

Hitchhiker
On the other hand, Mumin Mayanja, a student of Islamic University In Uganda feels when you are doing it, you are simply grabbing an opportunity presented to you. “For example, I had one of those rich men’s son as a friend. By Second Year, he already had a car. We both lived on Entebbe Road and a couple of times, he would give me a lift when he met me,” Muyanja says.

“Why waste money on transport when there is a car? So I strategised, learnt what time he leaves home, and when he normally went back, and jumped onto being the other wheel and he did not complain about it,” he continues.

Counsellor’s take

Risky. Catherine Amia, a youth counsellor at Kawempe Youth Centre, says taking advantage of others – at their cost, is a vice identifiable even in mature people circles. “It, however, isn’t a positive attitude or character because it portrays one as needy and overly dependent on others – which may expose one to being used or abused in return,” Amia says. On the other hand, it burdens your peers because they now have to take care of themselves and you.

Open up. She adds that for one who is mooching off others because they are going through difficulties, “It is better to open up to those friends/ people about your situation because they might be able to help in one way or another, or better still help you without feeling you are taking advantage of them,” she concludes.