Mathew Bukenya was a special man

American writer/poet/actress Maya Angelou famously said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

How true!

When I heard the demise of Mathew Bukenya, the former secretary of Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb), the first memory that came to mind was indeed how he made me feel many years ago.

I did not know him personally. My daughter had passed highly at PLE, but had been denied admission to her first-choice school and I was desperate. I remember walking into Bukenya’s office at Uneb and meeting this soft-spoken, amiable and courteous man, despite our huge age difference.

I explained my dilemma and distress that the school’s selection process had not favoured my daughter – unfairly, as I explained. He listened, took down our details, then advised us to formally apply to the school’s supplementary admission that most schools have after the formal selections are done.

To cut a long story short, he put in a kind word for a total stranger when I had given up. When I went back to the school, the headmistress asked me how I knew Mr Bukenya, and she was shocked that I hardly knew him.

She told me because of how highly esteemed Bukenya was at the school, his request for my daughter’s application to be reconsidered had counted, and she was granted a place.

I remember leaving the school shaking like a leaf with untold relief; I could hardly drive. Anybody who has ever gone through the torturous hunt for a child’s place in their preferred school, will relate. I parked at the roadside and wept with joy, before driving to Uneb and kneeling before the kind man to express my thanks. He asked for nothing in return.

This week, I heard that Mathew Bukenya had gone to be with the Lord, and what came to my mind was how I had parked at the roadside that afternoon many years ago and cried, thanking God for people like Mathew Bukenya. May his soul rest eternally in glory.

I know I am just one person out of many that this man touched in different ways, not because he knew me or was related to me, but because he had a listening ear and a compassionate heart. Rest in peace, you kind man. And may the Lord have mercy on you for whatever flaws you may have had.

malita@observer.ug