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Akabway resurrected Ngora High School after insurgency
James Akabway during the interview at his home in Kumi PHOTOs BY Richard Otim
What you need to know:
Series. The greatest responsibility of head teachers is to nurture the talents of their students and staff. Ivan Okuda caught up with James Akabway, the man who often made things better wherever he went.
“Our headmaster,” are two words that will forever ring a bell in the mind of James Akabway. No, actually they are ingrained in his heart, so much that the 65-year-old speaks them with such infectious fondness. When he was head teacher of Kigezi College Butobere in Kabale, parents often time visited his house at the weekend with a host of gifts and when he stepped out of the school, residents of Kabale Municipality referred to him as “our headmaster”.
“They would bring me all sorts of gifts just to say thank you for keeping our school. Everywhere I went, I was referred to as ‘our headmaster’,” he says with an illuminating smile. Here was the big deal.
The task
Upon appointment as head teacher, the Ministry of Education’s task was clear. “They told me, we are sending you to a volatile area. Do not allow yourself to be pocketed by any group. Be neutral as a peace maker,” he recalls. In the 1990s, Kabale was a melting pot of political and religious tensions, with Democratic Party (DP) and Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) diehards not seeing eye to eye. His work was to diffuse these near-fatal tensions and this, he says, he did and did exceedingly well. “I only followed what the ministry asked me to do by being neutral and it worked. The school performance shot up so high that the record I set has only been challenged but not beaten,” he says with an air of satisfaction.
This was only his first posting as head teacher. In 1982, he had served as senior assistant registrar National Teacher Training College (NTTC) Kyambogo before moving to NTTC Kaliro as deputy director untill 1985. This was only a diversion for a man who had taught at Kololo SS immediately after his Education degree at Makerere University in 1973.
Between 1976 and 1982, he served St Peter’s College Tororo as a Geography teacher, but, “we did not have the same luxury of office space as departmental heads. James Mudidi was the head teacher then and the Idi Amin economic war had started to bite. It was challenging but we managed to soldier on. The students understood the situation and there was no strike over scarcity”.
At Teso College Aloet
From Ngora High, Akabway was transferred to Soroti-based Teso College Aloet. Unlike Kigezi College Butobere and Ngora High, here, the challenge was not as insurmountable.
“The school had its pace. It was already performing and well equipped. My only role was to maintain that and improve it. I increased enrolment from 800 to 1,300 students since the school’s facilities allowed for that,” he asserts.
Akabway, who now serves as a member of the Kumi District Service Commission, advises teachers and head teachers to give the best they can to the education of the nation but not to forget to develop themselves. “It is sad to retire into poverty and begging. We should plan for our retirement,” he remarks.
On best school management practices, he advises, “success of a school depends on who the head teacher is, school management and how the teachers are treated. When my schools had good finances, I did not hesitate to give teachers soft loans”.
For Akabway, the teaching profession could never be more fulfilling than the several lives he has touched in more than 30 years, no wonder, he prides in the title, “Senior citizen” that the ministry accords retired head teachers.
His time at Ngora High, Kumi
Akabway’s time of glee at Kigezi College Butobero was to later be cut short, almost rudely so. A transfer to Ngora High School called.
“The students, parents and Kabale Municipal officials were crying, I was also crying, the farewell turned into a mourning session. It was so painful leaving the school after that strong bond,” he says, surrendering his baritone voice to a bout of emotion. But leave he had to! Ngora High School was a school reduced to almost nothing after the Teso insurgency. The father of six had to start from scratch.
“The school furniture had been destroyed and used as firewood. The school was being used as a refugee camp so you can imagine its state. The library was no more,” he says. “Luckily, the parents and students were very cooperative and responded to my call for reconstruction.” In less than two years, the school was up and running. Students who had been sleeping on the floor with windowless dormitories now had beds. The school library was restocked and discipline returned to the Kumi-based school, which will be celebrating 100 years this year.
“I also introduced termly bursaries to the best students in each class, which sparked competition and by my third year, the school performance was up,’ he says, perusing through a newspaper. Akabway has a voracious appetite for reading. He buys newspapers everyday and religiously follows current affairs.
“That is why I made literature compulsory at Ngora High because it builds the students’ language skills. Every week, students were required to share with the class a synopsis of a novel they read,” he says. That was the making of the former King’s College Budo student.
Akabway was awarded with a memento of excellence of Education by the Ministry for the almost magical transformation of the school after the insurgency in so short a time. But again, his stay at the school was shortened. “We were attending the annual head teachers’ workshops when names of those with letters were read out. When I heard mine, I knew it was a transfer. I was so heartbroken. I needed more time at Ngora to contribute more,” he reminisces, with an emotive tone.
Comfortable
James Akabway during the interview at his home in Kumi. He advises serving teachers to give their best to the profession but not to forget to prepare for a comfortable retirement.
PHOTOs BY Richard Otim
What they say about him
‘James was a very effective teacher who demonstrated leadership skills at the onset, no wonder he rose through the ranks and turned round the schools he headed,’ James Mudidi, former Headmaster, St Peter’s College Tororo
‘He promoted English at Ngora High. He used to give a prize of Shs100,000 for a distinction in English at national exams. Fees in 1994 was about Shs50,000 so that prize was highly coveted,’ James Odomel Odongo, Public Relations Consultant
