With the aim of saving and cutting costs, students are increasingly sharing accommodation with colleagues of the opposite sex, resulting to loosely defined relationships where sex is part of the cost/benefit in the equation. Much as cohabitation may not be a new trend among university students, it has swayed from the olden whereby girls used to cohabit with mainly old working class men who were looking for marriage, and has taken a new dimension as harsh economic times push more students to share accommodation with fellow students of the opposite sex.

Each financial year the budget is read, with new taxes imposed on everything including students’ accommodation, heading to the hiking of hostel fees by the owners. The expensive hostels leave the poor students pushed to the wall and they have to find alternative means of survival.

Eleanor Nasibumbi, a 3^rd year student at Makerere University says that it was nothing there were no strings attached when she started living with Paul Kansiime, during their first year. They met during the Mitchelex bazaar, where Paul had been pinned a poster that he was looking for a roommate in order to share rent.

“I called him up on the number that was on the poster and found out it was a boy. I was puzzled at first and wondered how I could share a room with a boy who was not my brother, but because it was the only option I had at the moment, I took it up. We lived together as brother and sister for the entire first year, but later on developed intimate feelings for each other. We started dating and it later turned into a serious relationship,” she narrates.

Much as some students may find themselves in situations as these unintentionally, some cohabit intentionally as a way of keeping their relationships stronger.

Cohabitation is simply an act of a man and woman living together and having a sexual relationship without being married. This trend is continuously eroding the “near absent” level of morality among the youths. I would prepare to describe it as the deadly trend in most of Uganda’s universities.  

Taking a closer look at the universities today, unmarried students do not only live together but majority of them engage in sexual activities, among other things that married couples do.

On visiting Paul and Eleanor, there is no sign of a chair or a table, but the room is extremely tidy with only three cooking pans, some dishes and a kerosene stove. It is clear they share the bed since room is furnished with only one bed.

Eleanor explains that since their relationship grew stronger, they decided to sell of the second bed and started sharing a bed with Paul.

Meanwhile performs all the duties as those of a real wife including having sex, keeping the room tidy, washing his clothes and fixing meals. She however narrates that it is not easy to balance between being a wife of some sort and a student at the same time.

“It is stressing especially when we have disagreements and sometimes and late for class because am trying to fix breakfast for him,” she narrates.

For other students, intentions for cohabiting are not mindboggling; some students who are engaged in the practice say that it is by living together that they get to know if they are compatible or not for marriage, whereas some students find it hard to live away from each other because of the strong intimacy sandwiched between them, and the addictive dexterity of sex over them makes them confuse sex for love.

Once they start to engage in sex, majority convince themselves that the sex will strengthen the relationship and instead of the sexual act being a life given act of mutual love, like it used to be back in the day, it is becoming a life-drawing and self-abuse of the other part.

Very often, the need for companionship and fear of loneliness becomes so strong among students that they begin to think they cannot wait for marriage before living together. This eventually leads to insecurity especially on the part of the ladies.

John, a student of Uganda Christian University (UCU) who says that he and his girlfriend were initially in a causal relationship recently moved in with his girlfriend because he was tired of making appointments in order to meet his girl.

“Cohabiting is fun I do not need to make an appointment to see my girl, and spend a lot of money on organizing dates at Casablanca,” he says.

John also insists that cohabiting is cost effective, saying that all expenses in the relationship are shared considering that we are living in harsh economic times. “When you are just dating, you spend a lot on the girl; you have to buy chocolate, ice cream and other little things each time you go to visit her. But with cohabiting, you all understand each other’s pockets and she will not complain when there is no money, but rather contribute,” he says.

Shanti a Kenyan Student at Kampala International University (KIU), told Kampala sun that she started cohabiting because she had dropped out of university due to lack of fees and the boyfriend was willing to take her in, to save her the cost of renting.

Martin Baluku, a lecturer at Makerere University says that most students are simply ignorant and are trying to copy western cultures from the movies they watch. “Many girls and boys in campus are about 18 - 21 years old. This is nearly still adolescence. So that misdirection is still part of the equation and peer influence. Because my colleague is cohabiting with a rich boy/ sugar daddy, I also should do the same,” he says.

Baluku insists that it is not because they are poor that they are cohabiting, but they are just immature and do not know how to take the right decisions.

“Some of them are testing freedom for the first time. That freedom includes having sex without fear of breaking rules, visiting night clubs, excessive drinking, drinking, and dodging lectures and naughtiness. It creates more trouble when someone misuses freedom,” he says.

According to Baluku, cohabiting while at campus is like committing academic suicide because it affects performance in class, and usually the girls end up pregnant; which many parents do not approve of.

“When a girl is cohabiting, she has to make sure she services the old man or boy she is cohabiting with; taking on the responsibility of a married woman, which in the African dimension is not so friendly to academics,” he says, advising girls to one thing at a time.

Patrick Kagwa a single father, says that he used to drop his daughter at Complex hall, Makerere University every semester, says that he paid for his daughter to live in a hall, but later discovered that his little girl was cohabiting with an old man somewhere in Bukoto.

“I was told by her friends that as soon as I left her in the hall, the man would come and pick her up and take her to his place. He would then return her at the end of the semester, since he was aware that I would pick her up. I was so disappointed and felt betrayed by my own daughter.”

He says that students tend to be reckless when they join a free environment for the first time, and urges parents to instill good morals in their children because charity begins at home. “As a single parent, I never had the time to look out for my children; I always returned late from work and never had time for them.”

Kagwa calls upon parents to always look out for their children and find out where they live and who they live with and also who their friends are.  

Alex Kiwanuka, a counsellor at Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU), told The Kampala Sun that the popularity of the emergency pill among university students has led to the high rates of cohabitation among campusers, saying that majority no longer fear having unprotected sex, because they can always swallow the pill whenever they engage in unsafe sex.  

He says that many students misuse these pills and that they could lead to complications in the future.