My son returned from university with a master’s degree.

We slaughtered a goat.

Three years later, I was still giving him pocket money.

So I went to see Uncle Rwamiti.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “The boy did everything correctly. Good school. Good university. Master’s degree.”

Uncle Rwamiti poured his tea.

“Where was he going?”

I laughed.

“To university!”

“No. That is where you SENT him. Where was HE going?”

I became quiet.

Uncle Rwamiti continued.

“Did he want to build something? Solve something? Become something? Serve somebody? Create something?”

“I wanted him to get a good degree.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Now even the tea was becoming uncomfortable.

Then Uncle Rwamiti said something I have never forgotten.

“A degree is like a bus ticket.”

I stared at him.

“It proves you boarded the bus. It doesn’t prove you knew where you wanted to go.”

That evening I went home and, for the first time in three years, stopped asking my son:

“When are you getting a job?”

Instead I asked:

“What problem in this world are you becoming useful enough to solve?”

He didn’t have an answer.

Neither did I.

Perhaps that was the first honest conversation we’d had about his education.

We had spent twenty years preparing him to graduate.

We had spent almost no time preparing him to have a direction after graduation.

—Uncle Rwamiti
Making sense of change through ethical storytelling.