name Joseph Kayima (Kayima)
age 5 years old (tanno)
home Kyeitabya, Uganda (Kiboga District)
class starting P1 next year

Kayima is your typical 5-year old…all hugs one moment and “play”-fighting with his friends the next. Although he’s faced more than his share of challenges already in life, you wouldn’t know it from the huge smile on his face and adorable dimple on his left cheek that greets you every day.

Kayima has many brothers and sisters and is fortunate to live with both of his parents, both of whom are farmers (or “diggers” as Kayima refers to them). Kayima’s older brother, Sunday, currently attends Nambi Primary School. His favorite color is green, his favorite food is Matooke and he loves, repeat LOVES, football. But behind that smile, Kayima’s struggles are real. Very real. More than 80,000 children in Uganda die each year from Malaria…and Kayima was almost one of them…

But today he has that adorable smile back on his face and continues to work towards his dream of “being like Gasana” – the community leader in and from his village in Kyeitabya who has made a name for himself as a Civil Engineer and who believes strongly in the power of education…so strongly, in fact, that he donated three acres of land to BT for Kayima’s school.

So these days, while anxiously awaiting the day he will be able to sit in a classroom for the first time, Kayima spends his free-time building bigger and bigger structures out of anything he can find right next to the site of his future school…the BT Academy of Kyeitabya.