The miseducation of Muniini

I learnt a fair bit about British history and a lot about the French Revolution. I became rather obsessed with the latter, especially the aftermath of that very bloody revolution. Likewise, I learnt lots about the history of Africa, mostly about how we were discovered and civilised by the Europeans. To be sure, I learnt next to nothing about my own ethnic community’s history and Africa’s positive role in human progress and civilisation. 

 English literature? Bring it on! I consumed William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Robert Bolt, Giovanni Guareschi, Bernard Shaw, and a few others, with an insatiable appetite.  For the most part, the great African writers, whose works were already in print when I was a schoolboy, were not part of the curriculum. I read Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Mongo Beti, and Alan Paton, though I suspect that most of these were enjoyed outside the set curriculum.   I studied the Bible and got pretty good and tracing the Israelites’ long walk from Egypt to Canaan, and the Apostle Paul’s journeys of evangelisation among the Gentiles. I knew, almost by heart, the words of Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount. I was baptised and confirmed into the Anglican faith, and learnt by heart the various texts that were a mandatory part of Sunday worship. However, I remained impervious to the message of the Bible until I became a Christian by choice in January 1975.

Speaking of 1975, it was in that year that I first visited a national park, not because I was seeking knowledge as a “biologist,” but because some of my Makerere University classmates and I were returning from a few days of learning industrial health at Kilembe Mines near Kasese. We spent a night at Mweya Lodge, enjoyed the camaraderie that that lovely resort’s atmosphere enabled, and beheld the stunning beauty of the non-human residents of what was then known as the Rwenzori National Park. (The miseducated successors to the semi-literate Idi Amin renamed the park after Queen Elizabeth II.)  Upon leaving the park, I was as uneducated about biology and my natural environment as I had been when I passed the O-Level and A-Level examinations ina the subject.

 So how exactly did my primary and secondary school education prepare me to help build my community, my country? No, I don’t mean working in the civil service (a transplanted British concept) or teaching students that meant recycling the same information designed to clone more miseducated products.  What if I had failed my junior or senior secondary school examinations? Would I have done better than an average non-schooled peasant in contributing to the positive transformation of my community? How did my passing exams about the Canadian Prairies, the steel industries of Pittsburgh, USA and the cities along the Rhine in Europe prepare me to change life in Kahondo ka Byamarembo?

 Then there were the university degrees for which we burned the midnight candles at Makerere.  How many Bachelor of Science in Agriculture graduates of my generation became actual farmers? How many Makerere medical school graduates formally learnt how to start and manage fiscally stable health centres in a resource-challenged country? Without doubt, Makerere Medical School graduates were some of the best doctors in the world, at par with the best in the famous medical schools of Europe and North America. However, the economics, business and management side of healthcare service was a foreign concept, with most of those who became medical superintendents of the country’s hospitals learning on the job, and without teachers at that.

 It still amazes me how Kisiizi Hospital in Kigyezi, started in 1958 by two Brits, Dr Leonard Sharp and his son Dr John Sharp, continued to function very well during the state collapse that Uganda endured in the 1970s and 1980s. When things broke down, they personally repaired them. Being a medical doctor did not stop them from fixing stuff. On the other hand, equipment in government hospitals frequently did not work because the distinguished doctors there could not possibly allow filth on their white coats and silk ties. This, in a poor country!   In my private life, things were, and have remained, a loud testimony of my miseducation. When my water heater malfunctions, I call a mechanic. When our car engine is unhappy, we take it to the garage. When the fridge is acting up, I reach for the phone, and a mechanic charges us high fees for a small problem. Meanwhile, my high school classmates and I still get nostalgic about learning physics, including something called “practicals.” 

 Perhaps I was the only one who walked out of high school with precious certificates, but little education. Don’t get me wrong. I had excellent teachers throughout my school days. Okay, after Primary Four because the earlier years are a blur, except for memories of playful engagements with my peers, and ruthless caning and other abuse by teachers.  I greatly appreciate what I was taught from Primary Five to Senior Six. It prepared me to live and work in a country for which I was cloned.  I was effectively educated to become a bwana (boss). That was the culture and the curriculum that my excellent teachers faithfully followed and executed.

 Upon graduation from Makerere, I began preparations for the life of the big man, my life eased by servants and other perks that came to me because I convinced the examiners that I was a truly educated man. Even my early years in exile in the Kingdom of Lesotho were a continuation of the illusion. What with the extraordinary ease of living, my pampered life a given because I carried certificates of entitlement.

Life as a postgraduate student in the Republic of Ireland and in Canada disabused me of the notion. I discovered how miseducated I was, and how false my claims to have studied things like physics, chemistry and biology were.  Happily, the new secondary school curriculum in Uganda promises to offer relevant and applicable education to our younger citizens. It will be an uphill journey, partly because of shortages of teachers with the skills and attitude that deliver the new curriculum’s goals. However, it is a great start that may finally produce truly educated Ugandans.

Mulera is a medical doctor.                      

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