My life as a teenager was not so flowery–I studied in the best of schools in the Pearl, for I had one of the best brains you could ever come across on the market (I should by now be living on Mars, or lodged somewhere up there chilling with the aliens, not here). That ought to be a good thing. Well, it was far from it.
It only meant that I was schooling with the crème-de-la-crème sons and daughters of the most respected African gentlemen, as Barbra Kimenye would term them. I was only from a moderate family, as they come, so I didn’t quite like it around them. And yet I couldn’t really figure out why, though I had such enviable brains plus the bonus of a cute countenance and all that, I always felt that way–uneasy uneasy like that.
The kids had tasteful slang–the US drill kind of substance, smelt good; these were kids girls craved, kids who pulled down their pants, and it came across as, well, cool.
That fright thing trailed me all the way to campus. And that’s where I figured out the root of that flimsy, feeble feeling; I didn’t have the money and the means, yet cool universally means money. Money comes with power, and power shines a certain ray of attraction on whoever possesses it.
There is a sort of punch that hits your stomach with an unusual magnitude when you get to a new school, and half your class are kids with rides. You feel silly. You start believing your parents are some joke.
I dated a moneyed girl on campus once and dumped her in a week. No, she wasn’t high maintenance or ill-mannered; she was actually nice, comely and all that. But her status–the subjects she discussed, the names she dropped, the places she frequented, the cars she drove, the trips to Canada, the company of young CEOs she kept, the air around her, man, that aura was too much for a kid like yours truly to handle.
There is a type of people whose life looks like it was gifted to them in a brown envelope, and however much you try to convince yourself they are faking it, you really appreciate that they are not. That point in your life when you discover not everyone is broke as you suppose is very life-changing!
Romeo, for instance, arrives in lecture 20 minutes late because “SafeCar guy delayed.”
He smells like Dove and wears imported deodorant you can’t pronounce properly. He’s the one always rotating between sneakers that cost a semester’s rent. His cologne announces him. People don’t greet him–they inhale him.
He’s the one whose weekend starts on Thursday, because his father’s city apartment business can resuscitate the entire university. He would randomly say, “Let’s hit Nyanja and catch lunch, I’m bored,” and people would actually go. You? You can’t even afford to be bored. Do you even know that Nyanja is a restaurant at Speke Resort? No, you don’t.
Now you recognise the kind of ordeal I would be going through at campus because of a person like Romeo.
But don’t be fooled; being loaded comes with its own headaches–different from hunger and trekking, but headaches nonetheless.
The loaded campus guy is always walking inside a minefield of pressure, expectation, and temptation. The world has already decided who he is. So he must maintain that aesthetic of ‘clean boy.’ One wrong outfit and, eh, looks like Daddy’s business ain’t businessing. Bro can’t even do a Rolex without being fussed about.
So he keeps the performance running. While the broke guy is naturally shielded from that nonsense, the loaded guy is naturally exposed to it. High-end parties? He has to show up and make the tables dirty.
Those secret house parties in a Najjera apartment or a Bukoto villa where drink and the hard stuff are on rotation so heavily that patrons drink deep and forget themselves silly? He has attended enough to write a thesis. He has done three-s*mes; he has done four-s*mes, even six maybe. Perhaps he has kissed a fellow boy a few times. He has sniffed coke (not the drink😂) from the tummy of a girl.
The problem? Luxury goes hand-in-hand with spiritual, financial, emotional, and sometimes biological danger.
You see, my brother, campus girls smell money the way bees smell flowers: the rides, the dates, the restaurants where mere water costs 10K “for ambience.” So they come to collect. He becomes the 3 letters: A, T and M. His DMs look like a charity organisation–Uncle this, Uncle that. ‘I am not your uncle, silly,’ he would like to scream, but he is choked hard to even try. His relationships are sponsorship programs. He is paying his girl’s tuition out of blackmail.
And loaded as he is, being young and excited, he entertains it all until he’s neck-deep in cash and emotional debt.
You see, when your life is easy, you start believing that people love you for you. Does Brian White ring a bell? Very well. Campus, and well, wicked Kampala, will teach you that when your wallet closes, even your shadow abandons you.
Loaded guys often discover, painfully, that 80% of their social circle was sustained by vibes and bank notifications.
With money comes access to liquor, drugs, dangerous friends, preferred treatment, and freedom without guidance. So, some loaded boys slide slowly into habits that ruin futures: the bottle, the casual drug culture, careless sex, gambling, the nightlife loops of “just one more night”
Money amplifies everything–including self-destruction.
When your parents don’t restrict you because ‘you’re invested in,’ you can drift. Many loaded boys fail academically not because they’re dull, but because they’re distracted, funded, and unmonitored.
You miss classes because you were ‘recovering.’ You forget coursework because you were ‘travelling.’ You repeat semesters silently–money paid, reputation intact. But the wasted years never come back.
But let’s be honest, being the loaded planned kid at campus, as we said, isn’t completely tragic. He enjoys things many only dream of: comfort, access, security, opportunity, social capital, and a smoother route into adulthood. If he has a good head, he could actually be someone to be proud of.
The problem begins when the soft life becomes a personality, not just a privilege.
The real danger is that being exposed to too much luxury too early can numb discipline. It can make you forget reality–that outside campus, everyone starts from zero, and the world doesn’t care who your father is. If you understand this, you are good.
Just like the broke boy needs protection from desperation, the loaded boy needs protection from excess. One is drowning in lack. The other is drowning in abundance. Both are underwater–different oceans, same problem.
Universities rarely address this side. There’s no counselling for “I have too much money, and it’s ruining me.” There’s no mentorship for boys raised in comfort but dropped into Kampala’s chaos.
Maybe we should talk about that, too, in the comments.
