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The bell rang for last period at Mengo Secondary School, but the corridors already felt quieter than usual. Kids moved in small groups, whispering, some staring at their phones, others just looking down at the cracked concrete. Nobody wanted to say it out loud at first, but the news had spread like smoke through the dorms and the staff room: one of their own, a Senior Six candidate named Derrick Kato, had taken his own life the night before.
Derrick was the kind of boy teachers pointed to when they talked about hard work paying off. Tall, soft-spoken, always in the front row with his notebook open. He came from a small family in Nateete his mother sold matooke at the market, his father drove a boda most nights just to keep the lights on. They had pinned everything on him. “First born, first graduate,” his mum used to say whenever relatives visited. Derrick carried that quietly, the way you carry a heavy bag you’re not allowed to put down.
He sat for his UACE exams in November. When the results dropped online last week, he checked them alone in the school computer lab after everyone else had gone. Nineteen points. In the old system that would have been a solid Division One, enough for most university courses. But the new grading had shifted the goalposts again. Nineteen points now sat somewhere in the middle good, but not the glittering Distinction his family had prayed for, not the scholarship dream his uncles kept mentioning at every family gathering. Not enough, in his head, to walk home and look his mother in the eye without feeling he had failed her.
He didn’t tell anyone right away. Friends noticed he stopped joining the evening football games behind the dining hall. He started eating alone, scrolling endlessly on his phone, answering in short sentences. One roommate remembers him staring at the ceiling that last night, saying only, “What if I’m just not enough?” The boy laughed it off, thinking it was exam stress talking. By morning Derrick was gone.
He had climbed to the water tank on the old boys’ dormitory roof the same spot seniors used to sneak up to smoke or talk about girls. A piece of rope from the school’s store, tied to the metal frame. No long note, just a short message on his phone to his best friend: “Tell Mum I tried. Sorry.” The night watchman found him at dawn when the first light caught the shadow swinging gently against the sky.
The school shut down classes for the day. Headmaster called an emergency assembly in the main hall. He spoke about pressure, about how marks do not define a person, about reaching out. His voice cracked once. Teachers stood at the back, some wiping their eyes, others looking anywhere but at the empty chair where Derrick usually sat. Outside, Form Five girls hugged each other and cried openly. The boys tried to stay tough, but you could see it in their faces the sudden fear that the same weight could crush any of them next.
His mother arrived later that afternoon, supported by two aunts. She didn’t scream or collapse the way people expect in movies. She just sat on the bench outside the deputy’s office, hands folded in her lap, staring at nothing. When they brought her his school blazer, still smelling faintly of chalk and sweat, she held it to her face and rocked slowly, the way you rock a baby who won’t stop crying.
Word reached the neighborhood fast. By evening small groups gathered outside the school gate, some with candles, some just standing in silence. A few parents whispered that the system is broken too much emphasis on points, too little room for second chances. Others blamed phones, social media, the way kids compare themselves every second. But most said nothing. They just stood there, letting the evening breeze carry the quiet grief.
Derrick Kato was eighteen. He scored nineteen points in one of the hardest exams Uganda has ever set. He was bright, kind, funny in that shy way that made people like him without trying. And in the end, he believed those three numbers on a results slip were bigger than everything else he was.
The school has promised counseling, a memorial corner in the library, stricter rules on roof access. But nobody pretends those things will undo what happened. The real lesson isn’t written in any circular. It’s in the empty desk, the half-used exercise books still in his locker, the way his mother still clutches that blazer like it might bring him back.
Nineteen points. One life gone. And a whole school left asking the same question nobody can answer yet: how do we tell the next kid that they are worth more than any score sheet will ever show?
