Today was my first day of school as a Computer Science student at the University of Kigali. I am excited and a bit nervous, and I have been sitting with both feelings all day without being able to pick one.
I have wanted this since 2020. Six years of wanting one thing is a long time to carry something around, and there were stretches where I genuinely thought it was not going to happen for me. So today felt heavier than a first day of school should feel.
Six years of almost
In 2020 I got an admission and then COVID happened, so I only reported the following year. Then rumours started going around about the school. The kind of rumours that make you do the maths on your own life: four years of work, four years of fees, and then somebody tells you at the end that your certificate does not hold. I was not willing to gamble that, so I left.
In 2022 I enrolled at a different college and I was genuinely happy about it. It was directly connected to the University of Greenwich, and considering I have always wanted to do my master's in the UK, I thought this would be a somewhat easy entry after undergrad. It felt like I had found the door. That did not work out because of financial problems, and I dropped out in 2023.
In 2024 I applied through mature entry and I was unsuccessful.
2025 was the year I tried three times.
The first was a scholarship opportunity, and I was turned down because of my age. I was too old. That is the reason I was given, and there is nothing you can do with a reason like that. You cannot work harder at it, you cannot improve your application, you cannot try again next year and be a better candidate. I played it cool when I got the news, said the right things, and let it go. But it hurt me deeply. Being told that the problem is not your ability or your effort but the number of years you have been alive, when those years were spent trying to get into school in the first place, is a specific kind of cruel.
Then I got an admission from the University of Greenwich. Yes, that same Greenwich in London. The place I had been building towards since 2022, and it came back around and said yes to me directly. And I still could not go, because it is very expensive and there was no version of that number I could reach on my own. There is land in my family, but my father's children believe it is better to keep the inheritance to themselves. They do not even use it. It just sits there while a living person's education sits on the other side of the scale.
So I applied somewhere else, self sponsored this time, and I got accepted into a Chinese school. Then the forex situation happened and I could not pay in time. I asked someone for help, he said he would, and then he never did. It is one thing to fail because the money is not there. It is another thing to have someone tell you the money is coming, plan your entire life around that promise, and then watch it quietly disappear. That one broke something in me.
That is six attempts in six years. Every one of them ended somewhere different, and every one of them ended the same way.
And then this year, I was talking to a friend, someone I met about a year ago, and telling him that I would be returning to Malawi. He encouraged me to go back to school. I never told him how badly I had always wanted that, or how many times I had tried already. I just said I had not been lucky, but that I would try.
I do not think he knows what that conversation did.
And then... now
I started the whole process in July. To apply to a Rwandan university I needed an equivalence certificate, and getting it was its own separate story. I ran into problem after problem, and it got so frustrating that I almost gave up more than once. It is a very long story that I never want to think about again, so I will leave it there. But I got it. And I applied to the University of Kigali.
Even then it was not clean. I started the admission process last week and there was something happening every single day. Thursday nearly broke me. I almost cried real tears, but I told myself I was a big girl, and I did not. Yesterday I had to clear with the finance department so they could give me a recommendation letter. The man who handled my file was surprised by two things. First, that I somehow had two different application numbers. Second, that my application had taken so long to get to the point of a student number. But he helped me, and I finally got it.
"It's just school"
When everything was done and I was handed my admission letter along with the recommendation letter for immigration, I was so excited I almost cried. I put it on my status: "this is by far the best day of my adult life." People asked what it was about, and I told them. Two of the comments made me sit down and question myself. They said something that basically meant it is just school, and that they had assumed something major had happened.
I understand it. From the outside, it is an admission letter. People get those every year. But I have been trying to get this one piece of paper since 2020, and I have watched it slip away six times for six different reasons, none of which were that I was not good enough. So no, I do not think I was overreacting. To someone else it is just school. To me it is the exact thing I have been chasing for six years. I have not finished anything yet and I know there is a long way to go, but I am proud that I have started, and I am not going to shrink that down to make it easier for anyone else to understand.
I am scared about the fees. That fear is sitting right next to the excitement. But I am hopeful, and I trust my God will come through.
Okay now, on Day 1
Day one and something interesting happened almost immediately. I did not know that the "no phones during lectures" rule here is as strict as it sounds. In Malawi it is almost a suggestion. I have texted during lectures. I have answered calls just to say "I am in class, I will call you later." Here, I learned the hard way that the rule is followed to the dot. My phone was confiscated within the first hour and I just froze. I also assumed it would be one of those small things where you go to the person who took it and ask for it back. It was not even the lecturer. It was the head of some department who had come purely to supervise and monitor. I figured I would explain, apologise, and be on my way. I was wrong.
So after the whole chaos, I went back to the same man who had helped me the day before. I explained what I had done and asked if he could help me get my phone back. He looked at me for a few seconds and asked, "Is bad luck always following you?" Uhm, what? I mean, yes, but what? I said "huh?" and he repeated it without stuttering. I laughed nervously, because what else are you supposed to do.
I got the phone back, but only for three reasons. One, it was my first day in class. Two, I have not finished my visa process as a student. Three, I have not been fully oriented yet. Otherwise I would have been reunited with it at the end of the module, or the end of the semester.
About the bad luck question
I laughed it off in the moment, but I have been thinking about that question all day. The annoying part is that he is not wrong. There is almost always something going on in my life. Two application numbers. A delayed student number. A three month fight for one certificate. Somewhere, something is always going sideways, and I have gotten so used to it that I did not even notice how visible it had become to a stranger who had known me for two days.
And funny enough, someone asked whether my behaviour is the cause for some of my misfortunes... I didnt know how to respond, I still dont...
And that is exactly why I am scared about this step. When almost nothing goes right, you learn to keep your expectations low so the fall does not hurt. But I have not kept my expectations low this time. I want this too much. Which means if it falls, I will fall harder, and it will hurt so much more than any of the previous six times did. I am not looking forward to that. So instead of bracing for it, I am praying that God gives me the grace and helps me move forward.
What now
Now that I have registered and started, it is as real as it can get. There is no more preparing for the thing. I am in the thing. Which means I need to get my sht together and figure out how I am going to sustain a student life. Fees, rent, food, transport, all of it. I am crying inside about it, honestly. But I am also excited, and I think that combination is what starting something you actually care about feels like.
I hope to come back three years from now and write a proper article about all of it. The highs and the lows, the good and the bad, and every single thing in between.
For now: day one, done.
