MUGUMYA JOHNBOSCO

Born and raised in Uganda, Mugumya’s early story of his mother’s mental health issue led him onto the path of clinical medicine. Holding a Diploma in Clinical Medicine and Community Wellbeing, Mugumya has been holding the role of a Clinical Officer for five years. His vision is for a healthy population with accessible quality and holistic care to emergency cases and their associated mental health illness. Relentlessly, Mugumya works to make his vision a reality.

“I Do Not Believe in Miracles but in Consistent Efforts, Networking, Collaboration and Hard Work”

Q: Tell us a few things about your country, and also your life's story!

Uganda is a nation in the East African region, a landlocked country whose diverse landscape encompasses the snow-capped Rwenzori Mountains and immense Lake Victoria. Its abundant wildlife includes chimpanzees as well as rare birds. Remote Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is a renowned mountain gorilla sanctuary. Murchison Falls National Park in the northwest is known for its 43-meter-tall waterfall and wildlife such as hippos.

I was born to a family with nine siblings in a remote part of Uganda in a district called Kyenjojo. At the time of my birth, my mother was suffering from a mental health illness to the extent that she almost dropped me in one of the rivers close to the hospital where I was delivered from. This led me to study health-related courses that delivered me into a professional environment of responding to public and mental health issues. I am currently working on creating therapeutic communication groups that promote peer-to-peer counseling, building social cohesion, improving the acceptability and mental well-being of people with mental health issues associated with emergencies. I am highly passionate about public and mental health impacts, epidemic and pandemic responses, and looking up to scaling the therapeutic communication groups from 10 to 110 accruing to 1,680 mentally well and eventual peer educators/mentors in 5 years then 330 groups in 10 years.

Q: How did you experience the global pandemic crisis, did it change your life or/and your views about the world? How?

The pandemic posed stringent regulations on public gatherings which is in light to public good in a way to curb down the infections, however this posed a great challenge to offering public awareness and training which predominantly were done through collective meetings and public gatherings for my project in response to epidemics.

I could not praise my way out of community engagement and sociotherapy approach as it was inevitable to stop offering psychosocial support, home based care and first aid skills that were necessary for emergency response and COVID-19 after massive impacts on mental health. I am always very fluidly to adjust strategies to fit the current challenges, so I set up to carry on the strategy through home to home using already established community links and radios. I moved door to door to train individuals in home based and first aid care, and also sensitize the public on standard operating procedures to curb down the pandemic.

Q: What are some of the key challenges in your society currently? 

My society has increasing mental health cases. For example, over 14 million Ugandans are affected by mental health issues as reported on the parliament website (https://www.parliament.go.ug/news/5894/prioritise-psychiatric-treatment-mps) and the official national newspaper (https://www.newvision.co.ug/articledetails/133833). This is what triggered the sociotherapy approach to fasten its belts on solving this issues.

Q: Share with us some of the hurdles that you had to overcome in your life so far? How did you handle them?

I was born from a poor economic background and it was hard to even be able to get the basics. It sounds like a miracle to be here, but I believe it has not been any form of miracle, as I do not believe in miracles but in consistent efforts, networking, collaboration and hardworking plus resilience to achieve individual goals.

During my primary level of education, I was able to achieve great academic results that I was picked up by a sponsor from an exchange programme student from the United States who was teaching our class for my brilliance to support me in my secondary education after excelling with 6 aggregates of Ugandan Education which just fell short by two points to get the best of the best mark. This support kept me alive and helped me to pursue my education up to completing a college degree. Today, I have won Mentorship by GTF, awards for Mandela Washington fellowship a flagship for Young African Leaders Program. I have also won other fellowships such as one million leaders Africa and impacted society in various ways. In late 2019, my mother suffered and was diagnosed with cancer of the small intestines (cancer of the colon). This was the most testing period of my social life as I had to spend sleepless nights and days and be able to balance between my professional work and my mother’s hospital drills. It was so challenging but I tried my best to ensure my mother was free from pain and died painlessly in September 2021.

Q: If you were to ask one thing from our current leaders, what would it be?

How can we better solve the problem of moral deterioration that has actually seen us lose integrity and promote corruption leading to gross loss of revenue from the government to individuals, especially from African governments?

Q: Why is the role of a mentor important for you?

A mentor is one that guides me to shape and horn my skills, direction, goals, and life solutions. My mentor has gone beyond her role. She has helped me discover hidden potentials that I would not have discovered if I did not have her. Sometimes I disturb her with several perspectives, but she has always been there to listen and interact with me.

Q: Do you have a lesson that life has taught you and you would like to share?  

Life has taught me that it is upon me to be better, and better the lives of others. Since I was born, I have always pushed or created doors where I find no door. I live to challenge the status quo and I believe this is the best way to live. In my life, I hope I will run for presidency or any route to lead my country in the best possible way. This is always the feeling I have. But as of now, I will do work impacting people and causing positive change so as to see the world get better. By doing little, we achieve a little better and then the little becomes much in the course.

Q: Name a project, a foundation or a person in your country that you think is doing great work in helping improve other people's lives!

Patrick Bitature.

Q: What are some of the challenges that women in your country face and what efforts are made towards gender equality?

Women in my country lack self-esteem and inspiration. This keeps them tied to beliefs that prevent them from challenging the status quo. Young girls on the other hand are facing the effects of COVID-19 and thereby prominent teenage pregnancy cases increase.

Q: Share with us a phrase, a poem or a story that means something to you.

"There is no rest for me in this world, Perhaps in the next". This is a phrase that I woke up to every day of my life. It helps me to pick up energy and move on with my chores and goals. I extracted it from a movie called "Peaky Blinders series 4 by Tommy Shelby,"

Q: Share with us a project that you would like to make happen for your country or a cause that you are passionate about.

Vision: A healthy population with accessible quality and holistic care for emergency cases and their associated mental health illness.

Problem 1: (INCREASING MENTAL HEALTH ILLNESS ASSOCIATED WITH COVID-19 AND OTHER EMERGENCIES): Intended innovation and focus -To restore individual social make-up through the creation of more than 100 therapeutic communication groups making a total of 110 therapeutic communication groups (each group with 12 members) thus promoting peer to peer counseling, increasing social cohesion, improve acceptability and mental well-being of people with mental health issues associated with emergencies and also strengthening first aid capacities at the household level through training in home-based care and first aid, and incorporating recovered COVID-19 patients from Isolation centers into their homes and proper health education, promotion on COVID- 19 emergency impacts on mental health and then scale the 10 therapeutic communication groups that are already existing.

And then scale up the started sociotherapy organization activities from 110 therapeutic communication groups to 330 groups, promote peer-to-peer counseling and mentorships thereby fostering social cohesion, acceptability, and dignity of community members and reducing mental health illnesses. These members are trained in sociotherapy and then rolled out as a competent team that can use appropriate materials and facilitator guides, and each peer will be distributed into other 20 targeted beneficiary therapeutic groups in communities who will have been identified or come voluntarily with any mental illness associated with the emergencies. And then the cycle continues. The project will facilitate peer-to-peer counseling, create active communities through training in home-based care and first aid skills; as well as incorporate COVID-19 recoveries back into their communities.

Q: Anything else that you may wish to add? 

I really like my mentor Fabienne and I love the GTF opportunity. You are one of the best things that happened to me this year (2022). I will be grateful to meet physically with my mentor in the future and give back to the GTF community in all forms affordable.