My name is Gavin Goodwill Waako and I was born on November 18th, 1997 at Lira Hospital in Lira District, Uganda. My parents are Mr. Robert and Mrs. Betty Waako, and I have three siblings who are Winnie, Jerran and Fortunate. They all currently reside in the city of Kampala, Uganda. My father is a retired police officer who worked for the Criminal Investigations Department for over 20 years, but currently works for a prominent security firm in Uganda as a security manager and my mum is a trained nurse working at a St. Stephen’s Hospital located in Mpererwe which is a suburb of Kampala city. I graduated from high school at East High School Ntinda in late 2016.
After I completed high school, I started living with my cousin in Nyanama who owned a house close to a cosmetics factory. It is at this cosmetics factory where I started working for my whole form six vacation to raise some money to meet my own personal needs. At the start of 2017, I had to enrol for advanced studies at Makerere University, but I didn’t manage to apply due to financial rigidities. I badly wanted to be at school, but due to some reasons for example insufficient funds I was just at home for the whole year of 2017.
Towards the end of May of 2017, I got to learn about African Christian College through Mr. James Akuwa, who for some years was the main reverend at the Lutheran church congregation in my home district of Jinja. Upon learning about this study opportunity at a Eswatini based college, I talked about it with my parents and they encouraged me to apply since it was the only way I could keep myself in school.
I started the tedious process of processing my travel documents late in October of 2017 since we didn’t have enough money to start the process early. Some few months after I sent my online application through the college website, I received an email with my admission letter informing me that I had been granted this golden opportunity to pursue further studies at ACC. At this moment, I had already received all my necessary travel documents so I was only left with finding transport to the college before the deadline.
Throughout my whole life journey to ACC, I faced a lot of difficulties most of which were financial that made me almost fail to travel to Eswatini. However, I thank the Almighty God for giving me the opportunity to be back in school. At African Christian College, I aim at successfully completing my entire course and graduating in November 2020 with a degree in theology majoring in Counselling. I intend to use my acquired profession and skill to give motivational speeches and counsel people, mostly youth, going through similar situations on how to overcome them.
In my life, I have learnt that everything in life happens with a plan from God and that he is always wishing the best for his people. This means that no matter how bad one’s living conditions are today, life tomorrow could change into the best that s/he has never dreamt of.
