How Ugandan orphan became US army officer 

Isaac Were’s journey across the red-rutted paths in Kachonga, Butaleja District, to one of the world’s most elite military schools at the United States Military Academy, West Point—on the western plateau of Hudson River, New York—is a story of how luck and triumph transcended tragedy.

Were was about to mark his seventh birthday when tragedy struck again. His father, Pastor Moses Were, who doted on him during his childhood, passed away after he lost his mother when he was only three.

“I remember when [dad] started getting sick, I knew something was wrong,” he revealed, adding, “When he died, it was a very traumatic experience at that time because I had quite a reputation in the village for being a quiet person. I felt like he was the only person I cared about.”

When his family converged for the last funeral rites beside a bonfire under the velvet dark sky alongside his three siblings, Were was too young to make sense of the solemn state of death as tears welled up in his eyes like a fickle stream. The long shadow of death cast a pall on Kachonga as Were’s bereaved family prepared to lower his father’s casket in the bowels of the earth.

“I come from a little village called Kachonga. My childhood was in a typical village, we did not have much. We were farmers, but as a child, you do not get exposed to the hardships of life until later on. My dad was a pastor. He worked very closely with American missions. Before he passed away, he asked these missionaries to look after me,” he revealed in an interview.

The tendrils of his extended family stretched across Kachonga towards other towns and the city. His sister was adopted by his auntie and Were, alongside his two brothers who previously lived in Kampala, were adopted by a missionary family of Dr Tony Curto and Kathleen Curto from the United States.

“I have two brothers and a sister. After my father died, my sister was going to get adopted,” he told Saturday Monitor, adding, “Six months after he died, my brothers and I moved in with our new parents. We moved from Kachonga to Mbale. It was quite an adventure for us to travel to a town from the village. We lived with them for five years and the adoption process took about five years and then we moved to the US when I was 12.”

Cultural shock
It was a cultural shock when Were, who loved to graze goats in the village, moved to Mbale and later to South Carolina. 

“My sister’s adoption process was not finished and she ended up staying in Uganda while my brothers and I went to the US,” he disclosed, adding, “We spent some time in New York and moved to South Carolina and we were put in school. It was a small private school. That made the adjustments a little bit easier […] Towards the end of high school is when I started trying to figure out what to do next and at that time, I wanted to go to engineering school in South Carolina because I was always interested in how things work, but my [adoptive] mum wanted me to apply to West Point.”

Former US presidents Dwight D Einsenhower, Ulysses S Grant; military commanders Thomas J Jackson, Ambrose P Hill, whose storied careers were forged in the crucible of the US civil war; as well as astronauts Frank Borman, Edward White II, and Michael Collins, went through the hallowed gates of West Point academy.

Joining West Point
Unlike scions of privileged families in the United States, who are likely to join West Point, Were was an orphan from distant lands in Africa, who by the stroke of luck, went to the United States. He laced his bootstraps and cast a voracious eye on joining West Point military academy, which dovetails academics, military doctrine and revolutionary lore.

A year before he joined West Point, he received a scholarship to attend a small military school in Alabama called Marion Military Institute. 

“I had to adjust to a military lifestyle. It made it a little bit easier when I came to West Point [the following year].”

At the time it was started in 1802, West Point military academy was perhaps the most-academically demanding college in the country as the Ivy League Harvard, Yale, and Princeton universities operated on the old classical education model for creating cultured gentlemen, based on Latin and Greek conveyed by lectures. West Point taught in small sections by recitation of material studied the previous evening. 

In order to capture all 50 States, applicants have to receive a nomination from Congress or the Senate. The admission criteria is stringent with a focus on academics, leadership and physical fitness. 

There was no service commitment. This was justified by the idea that these civilian graduates would join the state militias and share their military experience.
 

Transformative experience
Were said this was one of the most transformative experiences in his life at the academy that instilled in him austere discipline, integrity and empathy.

“Throughout the journey, I faced numerous challenges that tested my resilience and character. I learned the valuable lesson of embracing failure as a stepping stone to success. I discovered that true accomplishment often demands personal sacrifices and dedication,” he told Saturday Monitor, adding, “More importantly, I honed my leadership skills, acquiring the ability to guide and inspire others towards a common goal. Along the way, I forged lifelong friendships that continue to enrich my life. Collectively, these experiences have shaped me into the individual I am today.”

He cited West Point’s three pillars of academics, leadership and physical training, saying leadership and military training are undertaken during the summer.

“The first summer is really introductions to military training—how to march, how to use a weapon, how to follow rules,” he revealed, adding, “In order to be a good leader, you need to follow rules. During the first year, you are only responsible for yourself, you are being introduced to new things, the basic military tactics, then each summer, it escalates, and gets more intense, and you are put in leadership when you are in charge of other people, and it just progresses until your final year when you can lead an entire platoon, battalion or brigade.”

They then “emulate the military” by putting cadets “in a company when you have a squad leader, or platoon.” This, Were added, can prove to be instructive “when you go to the army.”

The academic programme
For the rigorous academic programme, Were chose Mechanical Engineering as a major.

“I was always interested in how things work, but it was a general programme in the sense that you are going to get exposed to a lot of things because the curriculum is meant to make you an all-rounded individual,” he disclosed, adding, “So your course load is more than the size of other peers who were going to other colleges. You had to take Maths, you had to take English, Philosophy, Literature, Politics, etc.”

Were was part of the track and field team as athletics are compulsory. After four years at the academy, one is supposed to serve for at least five years before you can leave the army.

“I was commissioned as a logistics officer, dealing in ordnance, ammunitions, and maintenance, and I did that for at least six years, he said, adding, “When I finished school, that is when the war in the Middle East was winding down. I was stationed at Fort Hood Texas and there weren’t doing any deployment.

Were was later deployed in Europe for nine months in Poland and Germany for the majority of the time. He trained with the Polish army as the US attempted to project its military alliances in Eastern Europe at the time Russia began to engage in geo-political games of brinkmanship.

He returned to West Point and briefly worked in the admissions office, where he was the diversity outreach officer-in-charge of the north-eastern region in the United States.

Returning home 
Were said he had quite a comfortable life in the US, but his desire was to return home. In July 2022, he started a tech firm—Zimba Technologies—based in the Kampala suburb of Ntinda.

“It really started while I was at West Point. We could have conversations, I like to dabble in a number of things, I wanted to do something much larger that offers seamless technology to those who need to access credit,” he told Saturday Monitor, adding, “I hope to expand the business to Nairobi (Kenya), Johannesburg (South Africa), Lagos (Nigeria), and elsewhere on the continent.”

Last November, after updating its software, the company onboarded 30 savings and credit cooperative organisations, as well as microfinance institutions. Were added: “Additionally, we are developing a multi-currency wallet integrated with mobile money, banks, and other payment gateways, enabling Ugandans in the diaspora to transact and save with local institutions, thereby benefiting the institutions and the economy as a whole.”

He said that there are lots of opportunities for young Ugandans who are creative but they lack venture capital.