A coffin amidst fully packed church of mammoth of mourners that could not hold its tears.
On Friday afternoon, the heart of Pallisa stopped beating. At All Saints Church along Agule Road, the air was too heavy to breathe. Hundreds – mothers, boda riders, professors, peasants, MPs, barefoot pupils – squeezed shoulder to shoulder, not to witness a burial, but to ask one question: Who will father us now?
In that brown casket lay, Dr. Henry Stanley Okia. Not just a man. A ladder. A man who started life holding chalk as a Grade II teacher in a dusty village class and refused to stop climbing until his hands touched a PhD.
Counsel Paul Menya, who was a director of the program on behalf of the Parish Priest Ven. Jame Wasike gave the microphone to mourners. What came out not for obvious speeches but heavy inspirational heart bleeding. packages that left listeners silently in sobs.
One by one, they stood – young men and women now graduates, now teachers, now working in Kampala – none of them his blood children. They looked at the widow and failed to speak. Tears rolled freely down their chests. Lips trembled. For a long minute, the church was silent except for sobbing.
“He picked me from nothing,” one whispered. “I had no fees, no hope. He said, ‘You will not remain small.’ Today I have a bachelor’s degree. Today, my father is dead.”
Mr. Asaba Tom, Headteacher of Hillside Primary School, who served under Dr. Okia for 20 years, spoke for the 759 teachers and 10,000 pupils of the three Hillside Schools. His voice was gone.
“Pallisa is grieving, yes,” he said, fighting tears, “but our grief as Hillside family – it will kill us. This man was our brain, our spine, our compass.”
He revealed the numbers that made the congregation gasp – 450 teachers in the Kampala branch, 300 in Hoima, hundreds more in Pallisa. All fed by one man.
“To describe Dr. Okia is to fail,” Asaba said. “He hated mediocrity. If you came to him with a Diploma, he looked at you as unserious. If you had a Degree, he told you – ‘Now you have just started life.’ He wanted us all to fly to the highest level. And now the man who taught us to fly… is in a box.”
Dr. Nakaketi Henry Opolot could not hide his tears. He told a story that defined Okia’s soul. In 2010, a son of Pallisa was rotting in the Anti-Corruption Court. Bail was only UGX 2 million. For two painful days, the elites of Pallisa failed to raise it. Yet their friends from Lango raised UGX 50 million in one day.
“It was humiliating. It was Dr. Okia, who wiped our shame,” Opolot sobbed. “He said, ‘Pallisa, we must never beg again.’ That day, he birthed our Savings Association. He made me Chairperson, he became my Vice, but he worked like the Chair, the Secretary and the Treasurer combined. That small idea is now a SACCO. That is Okia – he turned our tears into a bank.”
Dr. Charles Peter Otim, a retired veterinary consultant, said simply: “Some of us have papers, but we have never had his heart. From Grade II to PhD, he never forgot the barefoot child.”
Then Hon. Achola Catherine, Pallisa Woman MP, collapsed the whole church. She could not stand straight.
“Before Thursday’s requiem at Hillside, I was completely broken down,” she cried, tears streaming. “Dr. Okia made me what I am. He was not my teacher. He was my father, my brother, my mentor, my strategic planner. When I had no one, Hillside carried me, fed me, prayed for me. Pallisa, look at this family – they are burying their supervisor, but they are the ones comforting us!”
Widow Priscilla Okia, holding onto the casket, said only one sentence, but Pallisa will never forget it.
“My prayer,” she whispered, her voice swallowed by grief, “is don’t leave us. Don’t distance yourselves from us. Always be by our side.”
Even the powerful wept. Pallisa RDC, Mr. Dhikusooka Magid, a man known for firmness, confessed: “Dr. Okia was the first NRM cadre to congratulate me when I was appointed RDC because he was a parent at Hillside. He told me, ‘Pallisa is my home.’ Then he shocked me – he paid my rent for five months. Who does that?”
The burial had been planned for Saturday, Counsel Menya announced, but it was pushed to Sunday because of National Cleaning Day – as if even the calendar wanted one more day to mourn this man.
As the coffin was lowered at All Saints, 10,000 Hillside children in different corners of Uganda wept for a man who told them – you must never remain small.
Go well, Mwalimu. Pallisa has lost a library. But Heaven has gained a headteacher.
Rest in Power, Dr. Henry Stanley Okia. Grade II Teacher. PhD Holder. Father of Thousands.