Every Level Has a Devil
The Beginning
When I was small, my Aunt Edith told me that climbing is not the problem it is what waits for you at each landing.
I learned this in Banda, right above the railway line overlooking the swamp and kyambogo, where the chapati and mpuuta smoke mixed with diesel fumes and evening meant crossing to Bweyogerere with my mother, her hand firm in mine, her dreams heavy on her shoulders. Banda smelled like home like Aunt Edith’s cooking and my mother’s prayers and the kind of ordinary magic that happens when people who love you refuse to let you fall.
Back then, the devil was simple: would there be airtime for my mother’s phone? Would the boda man be at the stage to help me cross the road from school?
Simple devils are honest devils.
The Fall
Makerere University. The dream wrapped in a name. I walked through those gates on schedule, the way my mother had prayed I would.
But at this level, the devil came dressed in freedom.
Too much freedom. Wrong friends. Missed lectures. The slow slide that feels like floating until you realize you’re drowning. Then one day, it was over. Not with fanfare, just with silence. The kind of silence that lives in your mother’s face when she’s trying not to cry.
I came home to the rooms that suddenly felt smaller because my dreams had shrunk to fit them. For years three long, slow years I watched my failure eat my mother from the inside. It showed on her face first, in the new lines around her eyes. Then in her body, in the way she carried worry like a second skeleton.
Starting Over, 2019.
Uganda Christian University. I was older now, sitting in classrooms with people who were living their first chance while I was begging the universe for a second one.
That first year was the worst time of my life.
At this level, the devil spoke in my own voice: Everyone knows you failed. Everyone is watching you fail again. You don’t belong here. Oli muzeeyi. (you are an old man)
The devil at this level knows shame’s language fluently.
But something happened between 2019 and 2022. Something slow and stubborn, like jacaranda roots breaking through concrete. I learned to lead not because I was perfect, but because I had failed and kept breathing. I learned to be a better friend because I knew what it meant to need friends who stay. I learned to be a better son because I had seen what my absence cost.
I learned to play basketball like my life depended on the movement, the sweat, the proof that my body could still do things my mind said were impossible.
I made friends. Real ones. The kind who knew my story and chose me anyway.
The Waiting
Graduation, 2022. It felt like resurrection.
Then came the silence again. Different this time, but just as heavy.
Two years of applications. Two years of interviews where I could feel myself failing in real-time, where the devil whispered: See? The degree wasn’t enough. YOU are not enough. Two years of rejection emails that all said the same thing in different fonts.
At this level, the devil wore patience thin.
My mother prayed. Whenever I visited Mama Shamim reminded me: How proud she was that I went back got my degree and always put a prayer up for me.
The Opening, 2024.
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Kenya. The Silicon Savannah.
The opportunity came dressed in possibility, and I older now, wiser from waiting grabbed it with both hands. Nairobi opened my mind like a door I didn’t know was closed. I could do more. I DID more.
And someone noticed.
My friend, Emmanuel Olimi Kasigazi who saw something in me, who made a recommendation that turned into an opportunity in America. Pursuing a master’s in cybersecurity in the USA a sentence that still doesn’t feel real when I say it out loud.
But at this level, the devil came dressed in achievement.
The Mirror
White Plains, New York. 2025.
I sit in my apartment MY apartment, in AMERICA and the devil whispers: Do you belong here?
I know the term now: imposter syndrome. It has a name, which should make it easier to fight, but doesn’t. The devil knows all my old languages knows about Makerere, about the years at home, about every rejection email.
My blog sits silent. Last post: June 23rd, 2025. I have drafts so many drafts. Words written in the quiet hours when I can’t sleep, when the weight of being here presses down. But when my finger hovers over “publish,” the devil asks: Who are you to speak? Who are you to teach?
The drafts pile up like evidence of belonging I can’t quite believe in.
The Truth About Devils
From Kyambogo to Banda to Kireka to Bweyogerere.
From Makerere to home to UCU to graduation.
From rejection to Kenya to America to this moment.
At every level, there has been a devil.
But at every level, there has also been me the boy who fell and got back up, who saw his mother’s pain and turned it into purpose, who learned that starting over is not failure, it is bravery with a longer route.
The blog will come back. The words will flow again. Not because the devil stopped whispering, but because I learned something my mother and Aunt Edith knew all along:
I don’t have to feel like I belong to actually belong.
Every level has a devil. Even this one. ESPECIALLY this one.
The devil at the top is the same as the devil at the bottom. He just wears better clothes.
The drafts are not evidence of inadequacy. They are evidence of someone who cares enough about his words to wait until they’re ready.
A note to myself, from myself:
Hit publish on this one, at least. Let it be proof that I was here, that I climbed, that every level had its devil but I’m still climbing.
Every level has a devil but every level also has me.
I am enough.
Even when the devil says I’m not.
Especially then.
For the boy who fell at Makerere and rose at UCU.
For the man who waited two years and is now writing from New York.
For everyone who has drafts they’re afraid to publish.
Press publish. The devil loses when you do.
