I called it a situation analysis! What is a situation analysis actually. “Situational analysis is the process of collecting, evaluating, and organizing information regarding an organization’s internal and external environments” (Masud, 2023). This situation happened to me when I was in high school in Rwanda. This boarding school I joined in 2016 after fleeing my home country Burundi in 2015. I wasn’t done yet with my secondary school education, so I had to go to this school to finish what I have started. 

Guess what? 

In Burundi we studied in French but in Rwanda, I had to switch to English. I have no idea what happened in my mind but I switched from French to English as a snap of fingers. I took me quite some time exercising the language but it came so quickly compared to other colleagues I was studying with. 

So it came to a point where I didn’t want to live the rest of my life in the refugee camp I was living in; Mahama refugee camp, the largest refugee camp every existed in Rwanda with more than 70k+ refugees by 2016. It was a weird place; imagine 70k+ people living on around 175Ha place! This is so small and you can guess why I wanted to leave that place ASAP. 

So, I had a conversation with myself, how am I going to leave this refugee camp and have my life outside it because there is no way in hell anyone would enjoy living in this place. So, I was sort of planning my way out. thought, ‘look, I spent my two years here in this boarding school. I am okay but it’s almost over; so what can I do’. I analysed what are the options and what I have in my control. Two options came to me: 

1. A job 
2. A university program

For a job, I would have to find a job; find somebody who would take a bed on me and give me a job but I had no control over this. It depended on some external parties that would have to find me or find them, and eventually get a job. But concluded that chances are low on this, let me say. 

I evaluated the second option of a university scholarship. Well, by the time in 2018, there existed two scholarship programs that were available in Mahama refugee camp. DAFI (sponsored by the federal Government of Gernman). This would give me a change to go and do my undergrad at the University of Rwanda. So, I evaluated conditions for this scholarship. I needed to be at least in top 5 refugee students to have great score in National Exam. 

The second scholarship option was Kepler program. This would allow me access to a degree in Business, Management from Southern New Hampshire University. The condition for access as well was the same; speak good English, have great score from the national exam and pass the admission test (written and interview). 

What I did from here; you are not going to believe it: I woke up everyday, for the last 3 months of the school year 2017-2018, 4 am to go to revise materials. This was one hour before everybody else would wake up. I eventually succeeded; not bad, I got 80% in national exam in Computer Science. I was actually the very first person to get that much at that school; I was no genius but of course the school was not of a higher standards in the country I have to admit 🙂 

Finally I passed all the screening for the Kepler scholarship and got out of the camp in September 2018 to go start my Bachelor of Arts in Management from Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU). The program that I admired and that played a big role in building myself and my future.

PS. Credit where it is due; I am grateful of the scholarship of Maison Shalom International and Kepler SNHU Global Education Movement. 

References 

Masud, A. A. (2023, October 11). Situational Analysis: What it is, importance + how to conduct it. QuestionPro. https://www.questionpro.com/blog/situational-analysis/#:~:text=Situational%20analysis%20is%20the%20process,and%20threats%20(SWOT%20analysis)