24 February 2018
The leafy wind-swept hill-top of Namilyango, in Mukono district, and also home to the oldest senior secondary school in Uganda, Namilyango College - a school that has since 1906 when it was founded to today curved out for itself a reputation as a veritable center for academic excellence - on Sunday, 24th, February, 2018, was the setting of a carefully-prepared, high-impact, ten-minutes presentation that our Ugandan based Regional representatives of Eastern European University Association (EEUA), Irina and Walter Geria, made before an appreciative audience composed of senior four and senior six candidates. Also in attendance were many parents of the students, academic staff, and administrators of the school. Altogether, more than 500 people.
The response was superb, judging from the audience reaction during, but particularly after the event. Our flyers just seemed to fly off the tables. They soon ran out. Many parents dissatisfied with the brevity of our presentation rushed around the representatives and sought further audience. Among them was one who invited us to make a longer presentation in his school. It turns out that besides being a parent, he also doubled-up as a Deputy Headmaster to a different school! One parent waited for us patiently at the parking lot. After speaking with us about his son’s academic ambitions and how they had been frustrated by the economic demands of enrolment in foreign universities, he concluded with the remark: “It seems to me that you been sent here today by God!”
Actually, he was just one among many parents and students who were waiting for us at the parking lot. Several just wanted our telephone and office contacts because they had missed on the opportunity to get a flyer.
Namilyango College’s Deputy Headmaster, the gentleman who was coordinating the whole event, personally invited us to return on the 4th of March to speak with the other students of the school who had missed out on the opportunity to listen to the talk. The school career guidance mistress, too, came over to request for flyers she said she wished to pin up on the school’s notice board. She was very cooperative, obviously impressed by the content of our delivery.
That same evening, she sent to us the names and telephone numbers of all the senior six candidates of the past year who had successfully completed their UACE examinations, once again cementing Namillyango’s sterling reputation as an elite top-performing secondary school in Uganda. She felt they too should learn about the opportunities to study in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe.