Namasagali says farewell to much-loved headteacher

The first thing you noticed about Fr Damian Grimes were the full-rim rectangle eyeglasses. Very much his trademark, they gave him the appearance of a scholar as indeed he was.

The spectacles also did little to hide a steely stare that was at once both mesmerising and intimidating. In fact, what has not receded from the collective memory of students once entrusted to his care is how, with genteel insistence, Fr Grimes was rigorously demanding of maintaining eye contact during an interface.

He was also keen on sitting with an upright posture, discloses Albert Gomes Mugumya, who authored a book titled The School in the Wilderness: Namasagali College, A Great Past Behind it after studying there from 1989 to 1995.

 Fr Grimes, who died on September 4 aged 93 at the Abbotsbury Care Home in Southport, England, was Namasagali College’s most consequential head teacher after wielding the leadership reins there from 1967 to 2000.

An enchantingly paradoxical figure, the whip made of hippo hide he used to reprimand errant male students at the school divided opinion as much as his choice to be unfailingly supportive of the revealing uniforms female students sported.

The aforementioned uniform was, in fact, intended to be an act of self-preservation—tailored to enable female students to run fast. Just in case. And at Namasagali College, there was no shortage of such cases.

Peaceful backwater

If there was anything that spoiled the tranquillity of the peaceful backwater, it was the threat posed by snakes via their venomous bites. There is no great secret to, or difficulty in, figuring out why there was such a glut of snakes at the school. Namasagali College emerged from what was left of a pier after a railway line built by the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation ran into a perfect storm.

The waves of Kyoga commerce lapped far beyond the lake’s shores during its heyday when a ferry—burdened by tightly pressed cotton bales—regularly docked at Namasagali from northern Uganda. But when the 1960s El Niño rains rendered the Namasagali quay unusable, the place became a breeding ground for snakes.

Before there was Namasagali College, there was Kamuli College. Founded by the Busoga Kingdom in 1964, Kamuli College relocated two years later to the place that once was a pier but had since become a snake sanctuary. Well, sort of. Fr Grimes had joined the school in 1965 as a headmaster following a stint at Namilyango College. He pushed for a move to the wilderness if anything because he thought it a scenic beauty so much that he asked to be interred there. Kamuli College morphed into Namasagali College in 1967, holding the distinction of being Uganda’s first private school. It soon became a magnet for well-heeled children from influential families, including, in the 1980s, one of President Obote’s sons—Tony Akaki—whom Fr Grimes famously reprimanded when he fell foul of the fine line between right and wrong. Akaki was not the only child of a big shot to make headlines for all the wrong reasons while at Namasagali College. An episode where a helicopter landed at the school to pick a student came up for mention on the floor of Parliament.

Yet, despite the school reeling off a who’s who, its dormitories, for one, looked like they could do with a fresh coat of paint. Fr Grimes always responded to protestations of parents who were set back a princely sum to take their children to the school with an icy answer—they had other options. It is easy to see why parents did not turn their backs on him—Namasagali College in many respects offered a well-rounded education.

Ahead of time

Known to frown upon rote learning, classes were done by 1:35pm so as to allow students to get important life skills. And they did just that as their telling influence on Uganda’s arts and culture scene attests.

The school was also a powerhouse in sports, notably chess, boxing, and swimming. The latter was a no-brainer as this school in the wilderness maintained a decent swimming pool—a rarity back then.

An outpost it might have been, but Namasagali College, or, more accurately, Fr Grimes, was ahead of time, offering computer studies as early as 1989. The culture engendered at the school was, however, too avant-garde in a country that remains very conservative in its outlook. Parents were always up in arms about students—especially female—wandering around the school premises half-naked. As Mugumya points out in his body of work, there was also discomfort over the proximity Fr Grimes kept with female students. He held female-only sessions in which ideas drummed up included “the importance of safety in numbers, the value of chastity, and the directive to trust no man apart from one’s father, among other insights.”

It is easy to see why Fr Grimes would be drawn to a place—Namasagali—whose etymology can be traced back to a fascination with a colonial-era train i.e. oku lamusa ggali , in Lusoga, (meet and greet the train).

Born on June 11, 1931, in Wakefield, North-East England, his father—John Grimes—was a railway guard.

Fr Grimes will be interred today at the school he literally built from scratch.

The article was first published by the East African Centre for Investigative Reporting Limited.