Suitcase In, Suitcase Out: A Tale of Two Students’ journeys

By Thandolwenkosi Theodora Sibanda

There is something about a suitcase that makes a journey feel real.

For a first-year, it is often new. Still stiff from the shop. Packed with clothes, new bedsheets and everything you think you might need for the next few years. It carries excitement, nerves and the feeling that something is finally beginning.

For a final-year student, that same suitcase can look very different.

It has been through years of university life. It has travelled between residence and home, carried clothes for weekends away, and perhaps been shoved into the corner of a room more times than anyone can remember. Now it is being packed again, not for the beginning of another semester, but for the end of one chapter.

At Africa University, both suitcases can exist on the same campus. One is coming in. One is preparing to go out.

For Jedidiah Busiso Kuuya, a first-year BSc Honours in International Relations and Diplomacy student, the arrival at AU has meant discovering just how different university is from everything he knew before. Coming from Christian Brothers College in Bulawayo, Jedidiah was surprised by the sheer size of his university classes. It is the kind of detail that makes university suddenly feel very real. Then there was orientation. Library orientation, ICT orientation, learning where classes are, meeting new people and trying to keep up with everything happening around him.

“It taught me that you have to stay on your feet,” Jedidiah says. “You’ve got to move with everyone else and be quick on your feet.”

But if his first few weeks have taught him anything, it is that university is not only about keeping up. It is about discovering.

“I am excited about the people I will meet, the relationships I will build and the international environment around campus. I look forward to learning about different cultures, languages and food while developing professional connections with lecturers and fellow students”, he says.

There are nerves too, particularly around academics and the possibility of failing a module. Still, when asked what he would tell someone arriving at AU next year, his answer is surprisingly simple:

“Prepare to have fun.”

That is the beauty of being at the beginning. There is still so much ahead that even the uncertainty feels exciting.

But somewhere else on campus, Awande Gwafa, a final-year BSc Honours in Social Work student, is looking at the same university from the other side of the journey.

His suitcase is no longer about everything he needs to bring to AU. It is about everything he will eventually take away from it. For Awande, one of the moments when university began to feel connected to the “real world” came during attachment. After a short orientation, he moved into hands-on fieldwork and watched the theories he had learned in class become part of everyday professional life.

“You get to see theory being put into practice,” he says. “You get to understand how organisations are run, how management is done, and the chain of command and all of that.”

Attachment also gave him something he is carrying into his final year: “It’s definitely time management and finishing tasks,” Awande says.

Unlike the first-year student wondering what university will become, Awande is now thinking about what comes after it. And surprisingly, he does not describe graduation as something frightening.

“I don’t think there’s anything scary about graduating,” he says. “I’m on my final lap.”

There is excitement instead: employment, new opportunities and the possibility of discovering what life looks like beyond AU. For him, reaching final year is something to appreciate in itself.

“It is a privilege to come to AU from first year to final year.”

And perhaps that is where Jedidiah and Awande, despite being at completely different points in their journeys, become remarkably similar. Both are standing at the edge of something they cannot completely predict.

Jedidiah is a young student looking forward, still discovering the university, the people and the possibilities ahead of him. Awande is looking forward too, just in a different direction. One is wondering what the next four years will bring. The other is wondering what the years after those four will look like.

One suitcase is being filled with anticipation. The other is being filled with memories. Yet neither journey is entirely certain.

If Awande could sit down with his first-year self, he would not tell him to have everything figured out. He would tell him not to worry so much.

“Just take your time, and every opportunity that you get, grab it with both hands,” he says.

Maybe that is what the two suitcases ultimately represent. Not simply coming and going, but becoming. The first-year arrives carrying everything he thinks he needs to become who he wants to be. The final-year leaves carrying pieces of the person he became along the way.

Different students. Different stories. Different directions.

But for a brief moment, their journeys meet on the same campus. One suitcase in. One suitcase out.

And somewhere in between is Africa University.

• The writer is a Second-Year Software Engineering student in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences