Some students near the dilapidated buildings that tell of a once-great school. Photo/Edgar R. Batte
In today’s column, I present a draft of a blueprint for the revival of Namasagali College in Kamuli, a school in its heyday dominated by children of the 1960s and 1970s neo-colonial elite. Although the blueprint is about my former school, it is also a blueprint for our sleepy upcountry towns on how they can shake off the post-1970s decay and return to their better days during the colonial era.
Admission of failure
The first part of my blueprint for the renaissance of Namasagali College is for its former teachers and students to admit that they cannot, on their own, revive the school and restore it to its past glory.
It was too peculiarly European and British in character to be continued by anyone other than Britons or at least Europeans.
There have been lacklustre attempts over the last 20 years at injecting fresh life into the school, to no avail. Namasagali students, charming as they are, were never nation-builders. Once we can admit this about ourselves, we can move on to the next step.
The question of ownership
The next part of my blueprint is for the school’s former teachers and students to resolve all questions about the school’s ownership. Who owns Namasagali College? Busoga Kingdom? Kamuli District? The Mill Hill Fathers of Kampala? The Government of Uganda?
Once that is established in documentation, the next question is: Can the school be bought or in some way reclaimed from its present owners?
This particular matter is especially important because it is the one most likely to get in the way of the renaissance of the school. The current pathetic state of the school is, in some way, a blessing in disguise. It has become such an embarrassment, such a symbol of collapse and decay that most political, district, and church forces are unlikely to want much to do with it.
Ugandan history speaks of how vested interests tend to get in the way of good ideas. The school’s alumni should initiate negotiations to buy what’s left of the school. If well negotiated, chances are high that the current owners will be only too happy to divest themselves of this embarrassment.
The reconstruction
In the third phase, the new owners of Namasagali, its former students who have an intensely loyal attachment to it, announce a major plan to reconstruct the physical school.
It should be remembered that Namasagali College was born out of the remnants of the old Uganda Railway station that was wrecked by a flooding of the River Nile in 1962. This explains why even during its best years, the school always had a shabby, abandoned warehouse look about it.
After the survey work is done and plans drawn up. Given the amount of construction that has taken place in Kampala, Entebbe, and Mbarara in recent decades, Namasagali’s old students must be realistic and recognise that the school in its new, revived phase must have the look to match its reputation.
I propose, then, that a British or South African land survey firm be contracted to draw up plans for a new Namasagali. The familiar layout of the compound is maintained, but new infrastructure is built in place of the decaying one.
In December 2023 while at the golf club and country club at Kigo off the Entebbe-Kampala highway, the spacious, green, Mediterranean atmosphere gave me a vision of the renaissance of Namasagali.
Just as Kigo and the adjacent bungalows are next to Lake Victoria, Namasagali College is located along the banks of the River Nile. An imaginative British or South African landscape design firm can come up with a new look for the school.
The area behind the main hall up to the riverfront can be turned into a landscaped terrace in the form, say, of a natural Greco-Roman amphitheatre.
The rest of the campus also takes on this new garden, holiday resort look, complete with flower gardens and red-brick finishing.
The student dorms, the headmaster’s and teachers’ houses, the classrooms, swimming pool, staffroom, the dance room, Kasirira, the library, and other buildings are all built afresh in a stylish modern design.
The restoration of the artistic culture
After all this has been done, Namasagali College, the Land of Make Believe, is ready to reclaim its place in Ugandan history. This fourth part of my proposed blueprint requires delicate and tactful negotiations with the government.
Much of the conventional Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) education was a compromise with the Ministry of Education which in the 1970s was alarmed at this strange school. Many parents, government officials, a few teachers, and parts of the general public complained that Namasagali put dancing before studies.
The reason being that while the Uneb syllabus and the A-Level Sciences were part of the old Namasagali curriculum under the recently departed Father Damian Grimes, Namasagali College in heart and image was always the performing arts.
The world has changed much since the school was founded in 1968. We have entered a new chapter in history, the digital and information age.
Eight of the world’s largest business corporations by market capitalisation are connected with the new digital technology economy – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla.
Most of today’s children relate first-hand with and are addicted to this new digital economy, with its brands such as Instagram, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Snapchat.
It just so happens that Namasagali College from 1978 to about 2001 was already pioneering in Uganda this sort of arts-entertainment-media-technology economy.
The negotiations with the government would be to seek permission and political blessing for my plan to have Namasagali College be re-cast as a specialist technical institution rather than a conventional academic school. Uganda already has more than enough of the regular Uneb schools as well as international schools, one more in Kamuli will not add much to the country.
At this stage, what we need is specialisation. Just as we now have schools of catering and schools of beauty in Kampala, Namasagali College in its new chapter becomes an all-out performing arts and social media school, training a new generation of YouTubers, influencer marketers, dancers, radio, TV, and podcast hosts, actors, and all the glitter the school was renowned for under Father Grimes.
European management
After all this has been done, the question of ownership resolved, the physical premises surveyed and built afresh, with the old railway look replaced by a beautiful new golf course-like look, and the charming artistic culture of yesteryear restored, we come to the final part of my blueprint: Management.
Who gets to run this school by the riverside, with its new look a national and social media conversation?
Of course, the same people who founded the school in 1968. Let’s not beat about the bush. For better or worse, Europeans and Euro-Americans have proved themselves to be dedicated, highly competent administrators and managers. A large part of Namasagali’s original appeal in Uganda was that it was run by Europeans.
Let’s give to Caesar what Caesar does best – run and maintain institutions. If this five-plan blueprint can be carried out – especially the point about establishing both the current owner and negotiating a buyback by the old students – there will emerge an all-new Namasagali College, dazzling, self-confident, beautiful in look and spirit, even its most loyal old students when they arrive at the school will shed disbelieving tears of joy.
Needless to say, this will trigger off a stampede of inquiries from parents on enrolment prospects for their children, teachers seeking employment opportunities, politicians claiming credit for having played an important part, and there, at last, the sorrow and shame will be over.
Namasagali College, the controversial, often bizarre but always charming, beautiful school will see a renaissance as the Land of Make Believe III.
