Above: Sunday during a recent visit to IC’s offices in Gulu, Uganda
**The following is a piece I just wrote for work. This is an example of the type of writing I’m doing most often for Invisible Children–interview-based articles about beneficiaries for use in organization publications/websites. Check out Invisible Children’s blog (www.invisiblechildren.com/blog) to see this post and others like it**
Sunday
St. Michael’s High School
17 years old
When he sat down across from me, I faced a shy boy with darting eyes. Within moments, though, Sunday came alive in a flurry of smiles and hand gestures. We spent 30 minutes talking about school, about the future, about life. At the start of our interview, I asked Sunday how things had been going, and, waxing poetic like someone twice his age, he replied without hesitation. “You know, in life everything has two sides, like a coin. The good also has the bad. For me, it is the same–two sides. But for now, most things are good.”
Sunday, the central figure in IC’s black bracelet video (titled Sunday: The Story of a Displaced Child), is studying at St. Michael’s High School in southern Uganda. With just over a year under his belt at the new school, Sunday finally feels like he’s settled into the school’s rigorous academic schedule. A typical day for Sunday looks something like this:
5:00 am—Wake up, eat breakfast
6:30 am—Start studying for the day ahead
8:00 am—Lessons start
11:30 am—Lunch
12:30 pm—Lessons resume
4:40 pm—Classes end, brief break for supper and rest
6:00 pm—Evening study sessions begin
11:30 pm—Return to the dorm to crawl into bed
After I listened to Sunday’s schedule, I jotted down some numbers in the margin of my notebook: 7.5 hours of independent study per day, 7.5 hours of class time per day. By any standards–national or international–Sunday is devoting an incredible portion of each day to thought, to bettering himself. I asked him if he had difficulty shifting into such a study-heavy routine.
“At first, I couldn’t keep up easily,” Sunday explained. “There were so many study preps. I slept a little each night, and I was tired all the time. But I got an alarm clock and started using a time table. Now I use a time table everyday to organize things. I never needed to use one before.”
As time passed, Sunday acclimated to his new school. And slowly, students he might have never met had he not been studying at a reputable school–students from Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and other tribes within Uganda–befriended him. Learning about the customs of his peers has fascinated Sunday. The bouts of stress and sleeplessness that once plagued him now surface only before term exams, just as they do for students everywhere. Seeing Sunday so animated while talking about school, so excited to share his world with me because it was brimming with positivity, with hope, I couldn’t resist asking him about the flip side of his life’s coin.
“And the struggles? Before you said everything has two sides,” I reminded him. “What’s the other side to all of this?”
His face slackened and he looked down at his feet to mull over an answer. After a moment, he spoke. “I still struggle. When I’m at home, during term breaks from school, I have a lot of things to do. I need to dig with my uncle to help him prepare his fields. It’s difficult work. Look,” he said. “Look at my hands, these are the signs of digging.” He held out two calloused palms for me to see, each crowned with an arc of thin, white blisters.
Like many children here, Sunday helps his family members earn the money they need to survive. The practice is so prevalent in Uganda that school breaks are aligned with the start of the planting season, so children can help their parents in the fields. Whereas his American or Australian counterparts would see summer break as a time to relax and recover from the stresses of the school year, Sunday’s ‘breaks’ from school aren’t really breaks at all; when one form of work ends, another begins.
Despite his blisters, despite his 15-hour-a-day study regiment, Sunday is filled with optimism. When I asked him about his future, his face lit up. “My future is going to be bright! You know, at first my dream was to get into a good school. Now I’m there. I’m in the place I dreamed about. So now I’m aiming at another dream: I want to be a doctor. I know that being a doctor is not easy, but I think I can do it.”
I think he can do it, too. For someone like Sunday, someone who is aware of his ability to overcome adversity, becoming a doctor is simply the next step on a path that he’s already walking.
Walk on, Sunday!
