“When I got to Uganda, I was told that I could not do a medical course at the diploma or degree level without having sat for my A-level exams,”
Moses Malish Chrispinho Ramba
Moses Malish Chrispinho Ramba is a young man with the determination to succeed in life, despite the hurdles he has been through in his quest for a bright future.
He was born and bred in strife-torn South Sudan, but like any other child, he had big dreams that not even the frequent outbreak of war back home could stop him from dreaming.
“Back home, I dreamt of either being a pilot or a doctor,” he says.
“However, after joining primary and secondary school, I learned that aviation is a very demanding course that needs a great deal of sacrifice before one can qualify and dream of taking to the skies.
I decided to take a different path and chose to become a physician,” said Ramba.
His dream and search for education have seen him traverse the East African region from South Sudan to Uganda and Kenya in search of education.
Through the journey, Ramba has come across many challenges requiring immense sacrifice and he has weathered numerous risks that dogged his childhood, forcing him to escape from his home country in search of knowledge.
“I did my national secondary exams in 2015.
I passed and got grades qualifying me to join medical school.
However, my family could not raise the fee for my university education,” Ramba reminisces.
Despite the hitch, he did not give up hope but continued with the quest for a bright future ahead.
“In 2016, a hospital in our village in the town of Yei needed translators.
The hospital is owned and run by Americans.
The majority of South Sudanese speak Arabic, which the white doctors could not understand,” said Ramba.
Ramba got hired as a translator at the hospital and had the opportunity of serving as an assistant nurse at the facility.
“The hospital is called The Harvesters.
When I was in primary school, I attended Harvesters primary school, which is also owned and run by the same people in charge of the hospital.
That’s why it was easy for me to get hired as a translator at the hospital,” explained Ramba during the interview.
Ramba was excited to be associated with the Harvesters organization after getting hired as a translator by the American doctors who run it.
“The American doctors were good to us.
They started teaching us some medical activities like taking the patients’ temperatures and checking their pressure.
That revived my hopes of pursuing a course in medicine.
In the hospital, I also met a South Sudanese clinical officer and we became friends.
I worked there for a year before leaving,” said Ramba.
He met the director of his former high school, who linked him to a sponsor after he had left the hospital.
The sponsor agreed to pay for his university education.
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At the time, the university education in South Sudan was going through troubled times and he decided to travel to Kenya to further his studies.
At the time, his uncle Peter Dinya was studying at a Kenyan college.
When Ramba contacted him and gave him the good news about his benefactor’s offer for him, he was offered a place at the Kenya Methodist University to study a degree course in medicine and surgery.
He, however, failed to join the university after the benefactor said she could not afford to pay the fees at the institution and advised him to try an alternative institution charging lower fees.
Ramba had an uncle in Kampala City, Uganda.
He decided to contact him for help.
His uncle agreed to accommodate him so that he could join a medical school in the country.
In September 2017, Ramba, then 18 years old, traveled by bus to Kampala to meet his uncle who had relocated to Uganda.
“When I got to Uganda, I was told that I could not do a medical course at the diploma or degree level without having sat for my A-level exams.
The other option was to start at the certificate level, with my form four certificate from South Sudan,” said Ramba.
He took up a certificate course in Medical Laboratory for two years at the Mildmay Uganda Institute of Health Services.
However, he encountered another problem in college.
“The Uganda Allied Examinations Board messed up my certificate and transcripts.
In the documents, my name was interchanged.
The details in the documents did not match those in my primary and secondary school certificates,” said Ramba.
He said in South Sudan, the naming of children is different from other countries.
“In South Sudan, one must have four names. Two are your given names, one is your father’s and the fourth is your grandfather’s.
This ensures foreigners do not easily sneak into the country and end up getting South Sudanese citizenship because they will be required to present the identities of the father and the grandfather’s,” Ramba explained.
“This makes it very difficult for one to lie about their lineage and acquire identification documents.
With the four names, the name of one’s father is the surname and not the grandfather’s. In my case, my surname is Chrispinho.
“But this was reflected differently in the UAEB documents.
The order of my names was changed, making it difficult for me to use my transcripts and my former academic certificates to get a job,” said Ramba.
The student completed his studies and planned to take up a diploma course in clinical medicine since his sponsor was willing to pay the fees.
But his uncle advised him to try and get admission to a Kenyan university.
“When I told my uncle about my plans to do a diploma course in Uganda, he told me it would take too long to complete the course.
He advised me to join a university in Kenya for a degree course,” said Ramba.
He got his admission letter from Uzima University on January 1, 2021.
He was admitted to study for a Bachelor’s Degree in Clinical Medicine and was supposed to report at the university within ten days.
The fees were lower than that of Kenya Methodist University (KeMU), and his sponsor agreed to continue supporting him.
“The news gave me great joy since my sponsor was willing to pay my fees.
But I still had the unresolved issue of my certificates in Uganda which I needed to deal with urgently,” said Ramba.
“Back in Uganda, the election fever had gripped the country.
I desperately wanted to leave Kampala for Kenya to secure my admission at the university,” said Ramba.
So, he hurriedly packed his bags and left Kampala, two days before the elections were held in Uganda on January 14, 2021 and travelled to Kisumu to begin his journey as a student at the Uzima University in the lake-side city.
When he got to Kisumu, he was confronted with a language barrier since he could not speak Kiswahili.
“Almost everybody in Kisumu speaks Kiswahili, which I don’t comprehend.
I mostly bank on Google translator to learn the basics, but I am always in short supply of the much-needed Kiswahili,” he says.
The Swahili language nightmare has haunted him from the marketplace to lecture halls in his new institution but he is taking everything in stride as he struggles to learn the basics of the language.
“I usually rehearse before going to the market to do shopping.
I arm myself with a few Kiswahili words. I also use sign language by pointing to an item that I want to buy and then pay. It is very difficult to bargain because the sellers cannot speak well in English either,” he says.
Ramba said he was surprised to find out that even students on campus struggle to speak in English.
“Hardly can they sustain a conversation in English without falling back to Kiswahili.
Sometimes, even lecturers forget that I am in class and start speaking in Kiswahili, but I always raise my hand to remind them,” said Ramba.
“However, they always crack their jokes in Kiswahili, and I am always the last person to laugh in class after I get a translation of the jokes from my friends,” he said.
He is yet to adjust to the Kenyan diet.
“I am shocked that Kenyans eat ugali without soup. I have never seen it before.
If I must eat ugali, I need soup to help me swallow the food.
I tried eating ugali with sukuma wiki, and I had to use water as well to help me swallow,” said Ramba.
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