How anger drove a refugee to help others

At 21 years, Joseph Munyambaza is holding the title of Education Director for DR Congo, Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan International Youth Organisataion.
For the seven years Munyambaza has held that title, he has been able to help at least 150 children in Kyangware Camp in Hoima District access education.
Munyambaza’s inspiration to help the children was not driven or backed by money. It was anger.

He intimates that at the age of four, his family was caught between a rock and a hard place when they found themselves amidst gunshots during the war in DR Congo.
After trying to seek safety in the various camps in Goma and finding they were equally unsafe, Munyambaza and his family had no choice but to flee to Uganda.
In 1995, Munyambaza, the fifth born in a family of six, and his parents settled in Kyangware Camp.

“By the time we joined the camp, it had 23,000 people surrounded by a population of 40,000 people,” Munyambaza says. However, life in Kyangware camp was not any better.

“In the camp, there was lack of food, diseases like malaria were very common, child abuse was a common happening and above all there was lack of education.”
Munyambaza explains that there were only two primary schools and one secondary school that only had O-Level to serve the whole population.

“The challenge in these schools was that the teachers were not qualified. Most of them were student teachers from DR Congo.” With this kind of condition, most of Munyambaza’s elder brothers went back to Congo while his sister got married.
However, Munyambaza had a vision.

“I was filled with a lot of anger by the fact that I could not go back to my country and that our family had to live in a camp. However, I was able to let out my anger in a good way. I felt the only way I could avert my situation and that of my family was through education,” Munyambaza said.

He says his parents were not educated and since his elder siblings were not around, he had no one to guide him. Munyambaza was only left with his instincts to follow.
At seven years old in 1998, Munyambaza enrolled in Primary Two in, Kinakitake Primary School which was two kilometres away from his home.

“I had studied Primary One in Congo, so at Kinakitake Primary School, I went straight to Primary Two. However, teachers in that school were not serious. They used not to teach.”

“When I realised that my efforts were not yielding anything, I decided to join another school, Kasonga Primary School which was six kilometres away from home.”
He explains that he chose this school because it was competitive and although his parents could not help him with school work, they were supportive.

“They would work in people’s shambas to provide me with books and pencils.”
Munyambaza says because his school was far away from home, he would wake up at 5a.m and start the trek to school at 6a.m so that he could be there before 7.30am.
With the extra effort he put in his studies, Munyambaza managed to score Aggregate 10.

“By then, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was offering scholarships to pupils who had passed in first grade and being among those, I got a scholarship. So I joined Duhaga Senior Secondary School in 2004 in Hoima Town.”
That year, five students from the camp were able to get scholarships. In secondary school, the ambitious Munyambaza continued performing well but in senior two, he noticed that most of the students in the camp were performing poorly.

By then, the five students had formed an association, Congo, Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan (COBURWAS) International Youth Organistation with the aim of transforming Africa.

Munyambaza, who was elected the Education Director of the organisation at the age of 14, thought it better to ensure that all students in the camp perform well.
While in Senior Two, Munyambaza started tutoring interested Primary Five, Six and Seven pupils.

“The pupils used to come in shifts to an open space that we had chosen as the best spot for studying. At first, I had a group of 12 pupils and as their performance improved, parents started trusting my intentions. They started sending more children. At some point, I had 52 pupils. They were a big number for me so I called for help from other members of the association.”

Challenges
Munyambaza explains that he and another colleague would conduct the tutoring classes during holidays for free. The association members would work to raise money for scholastic material.

“In order to raise money for material such as chalk, pens, pencils, books and text books. I, and other members of the group, who had by now increased to 150, would dig people’s shambas. From the payment we would get, we bought exercise books, text books, pens and pencils for our students.”

The Education Director says this programme helped improve the grades of the children living in the camp. “However, our major challenge was that the girls were not benefiting as much as the boys. They were dropping out of school because of the long distance and lack of scholastic materials.”

To avert this situation, they encouraged some of the girls that were still in school to continue and the group of 52 students that they taught in the first batch, all passed well in their 2007 Primary Leaving Exams. The worst performer passed in the third grade.
But despite their good performance, the camp had only one secondary school whose standard was not good.

Seeing others through school
Munyambaza along with other members of the association arranged for the renting of a hostel in Hoima Town to accommodate some students so that they could access better education.

He says after working for three weeks in people’s shambas, they raised Shs300,000 and rented a house in Hoima town. “We brought 33 students into this hostel and enrolled them in different secondary schools. By 2011, we had 31 students sitting for Senior Four and Senior Six exams.”

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