Auma grew and sold vegetables to pay for her Bachelor’s degree

When Consy Auma and her cohorts of the Bachelor of Science in Food and Agribusiness class dashed to the arena in jubilation once their degrees were conferred upon them, her mother, Mary Akech, joined her in celebration.

Tears that rolled down Akech’s cheeks during the short celebration at the Gulu University’s 17th graduation ceremony on June 17, were a signal of the huddles her daughter encountered to earn the award.

Of the 46 graduates who scooped the award of Bachelor of Science in Food and Agribusiness, Auma, now 23, was among the six women.

School versus marriage

When we have a chat, Auma, who attributes her triumph to hard work and discipline, said she had to choose between education and early marriage, several years ago, due to the financial difficulties her family faced at the time.

When she sat her UACE exams in 2014, her choice was not about what career path she wanted to choose. Her worry was about raising tuition fees to advance her education.

Although it felt quite stressful since she was going through a time in her life where she needed to choose between dropping out of school or forging ways of raising money for her education, she she embarked on vegetable growing.

Hustle

Together with her mother, Auma says she planted cabbage and eggplants in their home at Kompetene village, Pajule Sub-county, Pader District, in the first rain to sort out tuition for the one of the semesters.

But once she sat UACE exams from Kitgum High School in 2016, a fresh hurdle to figure out how to raise money to see her join the university, emerged. While her other four siblings progressed with their primary school studies, the family income continued to dwindle. 

Motivated by the urge to join university and achieve a dream for her family, Auma left the village and relocate to Gulu City,  where she enrolled to work as a potter at a cotton ginning plant.

The job s she did toraise tuition

“I badly needed a job to raise the money for tuition. As the vegetable growing business was progressing, I got additional funds from the ginning job I did,” she says.

Months later, Auma would switch her job from the ginning factory due to sexual harassment and worked as a pump attendant at one of the fuel stations in Gulu District. “The pay was better and I would send my salary to my mum in the village to rear chicken and boost vegetable growing,” she said.

Dream come true

In 2017, Auma applied to join Gulu University, but nearly lost hope when her application was rejected, since she could not raise all the money required to join the first year at the campus.

“The university was charging Shs630,000 per semester to cover tuition, but the money I had could not sort out the other fees such hostel, feeding, and other utilities. So, I had to choose working at the fuel station and considered that as a dead year,” she recalls.

In 2018, Auma was financially prepared to launch a second attempt to join the university. She applied for a Bachelor of Science in Food and Agribusiness, owing to the uniqueness of the course and the fact that it teaches purely value addition.

An oasis in the desert

But luck struck Auma in 2018, when her district leadership visited the village for a baraza –a community gathering, and asked students who were on their vacation and preparing to join university to apply for a study scholarships.

I had raised enough already to start the first year but was still uncertain of how the following years would unfold. “I quickly applied for the opportunity and I was lucky to get the scholarship.  The sponsorship was from Forum for African Women Educationists (Fawe), specifically for girls from disadvantaged communities,” Auma says.

Akech, her mother, could not imagine seeing her daughter graduate last month.  “It was a huge relief for the family. She continued to use part of the funds we raised in the project to clear other bills and utilities while at the university besides the scholarship and we repurposed the savings we had to pay fees for our other children in school,” Akech said.

The vegetable growing initiative did not stop since her daughter needed more money for her upkeep during the course. “The poultry and the gardening continued and wherever she returned for holidays, she would actively engage in the money-making small ventures, “she adds.  

Overcoming hurdles

Amidst all these financial huddles, three years later, Auma scored a CGP of 4.46 in a science course.  Unlike graduates who once they graduate, search for white-collar jobs, Auma knows that the solutions to tackle her village’s most urgent farming problems, the rudimental subsistence farming, lies within her.

She intends to retreat to her community and practice climate-smart farming to rally her people to adapt to new methods. To realise her dream, Auma, who is passionate about farming, says she is relocating to live in the village in Pader District.

“Now that I have graduated, I will return to grow the vegetables and rear animals, but through modern approaches so that my people can learn from me,” she says.

“I want my people to learn that there is more to agriculture than just using a hoe. Our mindset on agriculture needs to change. Right now, I have acquired skills of adding value to so many crop products and I am sure people in my community will learn a lot from me,” Auma adds.

 Calvin Okello, a project coordinator at Fawe, noted that Auma is one of the 300 disadvantaged students they have been supporting since 2017.

“These are students from rural communities of 13 districts across Uganda including Pader, Buliisa, Buyende, Pader, Abim, Bukwo, among others. We support them by paying their tuition in different public universities,” Okello said.

The students sponsored by Fawe major in courses limited to the fields of Medicine, Agriculture and Science.

Supporting communities

According to Okello, Auma and her cohort are scheduled to undergo a mandatory orientation by Fawe on life after school to prepare them to face the job market.

“We are now starting to prepare them for the exit back to their communities and we have hired experts to guide them,” he adds.  “We want each of these graduates to go back and support their own families and communities. We are confident that they will serve the communities, Okello added.