French opened doors for him

Kenneth Roger Katumba (second right) during the roundtable discussions on the professional and academic opportunities associated with learning French in Uganda and beyond at Makerere University Main Hall recently. Courtesy Photos

While in Senior One at Ndejje Senior Secondary School, there were a number of language subject options to choose from for Kenneth Roger Katumba as the Ugandan education system dictates.

“At first, I liked French but wasn’t interested in studying it. I had a friend who had studied the language and always challenged me that I would never speak French as well as he did,” Katumba says.

Being a person who takes on challenges, Katumba picked up the challenge to learn French in 2001. After two months, he was attracted by the fact that it was foreign and fancy. “Along the way, I discovered that the French reading culture was quite different from that of Uganda. I started to want to learn the language, not for school and not to beat my friend’s challenge, but for myself.

That is when I started speaking to students who were ahead of my class asking them how they managed to speak French around the school. They told me to just love the language and that is when I started putting my mind to learning it,” Katumba recalls.

The stone that was rejected
By the time he completed his O-Level, he was among the four students who could chat with the French teacher in French. When he went to Kings College, Budo in 2005, his father was hesitant on the choice of French because he had been offered Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Economics yet he wanted to offer French as his option to Economics.

“I had the vision of becoming an economist but again, I knew that becoming an economist required one to be international and to have a commanding weight. I realised I needed another language and I had to opt for French,” he says.

Luckily, a friend of his father convinced him to let Katumba offer French. Later at university, he couldn’t continue studying it as a course unit with his Quantitative Economic’s course.

“I looked for places where I could study French and the closest I came to was with students who were studying Tourism. I did home schooling and would go to different homes to teach children French. That is what I did during my time at university alongside my studies,” he recalls.

At university, Katumba, 28, also discovered he wanted to be a health economist but this course in Africa was only offered in South African universities.

He ended up pursuing masters of Public Health at the French School of Public Health, his knowledge of French being a major factor.

Finding his feet in France
In France, he heard so many people speak at the same time and so fast that he couldn’t understand anything, including some conversations with his lecturer. Gladly, the more times he spoke to her, the easier it became for him to understand. Besides, French was a prerequisite for him to continue his course and it was the mode of communication.

As an international student pursuing a master’s course in France, he was entitled to work on a part time basis. There were jobs such as cleaning, babysitting and working in bars available, however, he got one as a research assistant in one of the projects at the French School of Public Health.

“The project was in collaboration with the school and the European Union. It was not because I had studied Economics but because I could speak French as well,” Katumba says.

He worked four similar jobs with four projects before taking up an opportunity in Sierra Leone as a Health Information Systems Officer with Solthis. The position required someone who could speak French and English.

After two years, he was promoted and transferred to Guinea Conakry which was also Francophone where he worked for six months before moving back to Uganda.

“I decided to choose a job in Uganda despite five other options abroad because I wanted to come back home after spending five years away. It was an all-new interesting experience. I started with working with Medical Research Council as an economist. I’m sure that if it wasn’t for French, I would not have gone that far within a short period,” says the 28-year-old health economist.

“To the students out there, just know that if you can speak two international languages, either French, Germany or Spanish, you become a hot cake,” Katumba asserts.