College of kings, chiefs and peasants

Significantly situated on the very same hill housing the original burial grounds, known as Nagalabi, for the royal remains of the kings of Buganda – and being more than 50 years old by the year of Uganda’s acquisition of nominal independence from her ‘tactically and temporarily withdrawn’ colonial master – King’s College Budo instantly struck the first-time visitor as an optical self-contradiction. It was an extensive flat hill-top of soft and rich green grass, upon which sat incredibly ancient-looking buildings! Ah, was ‘bukadde magezi’ – ‘old age is wisdom, old is gold’ – perhaps the reality that awaited us?

‘Obuddo bulungi – The velvety grass is so beautiful!’, one impressed visitor from afar long ago is famed to have exclaimed upon getting to the top of the hill that was later to be named ‘Budo’ – and mis-spelt thus (with a single ‘d’) in perpetuity.
Thither did we ascend, new arrivants of Senior Five (the first of the then two-year Higher School Certificate curriculum, HSC) in that historic year of Uganda’s first theatrical ‘change of guards’, 1962.
 
Thither we ascended in small numbers from all over Uganda: but strictly from only schools with Anglican foundation like Budo itself – the exception to the rule being just one Muslim among the total of 35 of us new arrivants.
Originally established as a school for children of the royals and children of the Kabaka’s chiefs, Budo had eventually opened its doors to the children of non-royals and non-chiefs and peasants, as long as they met the standard of high grades at lower levels of schooling before applying to join it. 

But in keeping Budo’s having been initially a school for royalty and the mighty, there were indeed a good number of students hailing from Buganda’s gentry and second generation educated elite as well as from homes of county chiefs and chiefs of other grades. Of singular note was Prince Patrick Kaboyo (1945-1995) of the Kingdom of Tooro (my housemate in England House, two classes behind me), who was destined to briefly become Omukama Olimi III of Tooro, in 1965 and 1993. 

It was truly phenomenal that there we were, children of royals and cultivators socialising freely and receiving the same prime education and being equally groomed to become pious and nationalistic ladies and gentlemen of a Budonian brand – a brand which, as rival students from other schools were wont to point out, was not far from making us look and behave like swaggering snobs! 
In keeping with the times, among the 35 of us, there were disproportionately only two female students, one in Arts and one in Science!

But in that random HSC cohort of ours, there was a handsome number who were destined for top-notch professional achievements. 
There was Francis Ayume, from West Nile, who was destined to become a Speaker of Uganda’s National Assembly; and Akiiki Mujaju, from Fort Portal, who was destined to become the first Ugandan professor of Political Science at Makerere University. Others included Sam Tulyamuhika, from Kabale, the future first professor of Statistics and Probability at Makerere University (and NRM’s ambassador to Somalia); and Sam Owori, from Bukedi District, the future managing director of African Development Bank in                                                                                            Abidjan.
In the years to come, commencing in 1988, the above alumni would be among the selected number of their predecessors and successors at Budo who would head back to the school in a handful of numbers every year to receive, from the chairman board of governors, awards of Budo’s Order of Merit, ‘For Distinguished Service to the Nation.’ 
(Far in the medium future lay 1999, the year ‘yours truly’ here would make a humble return to the school on such an occasion – in company of the illustrious Prof Richard Kanyerezi [1934–] of Makerere University Medical School, who would delight us all by describing his balding head of accumulated learning and wisdom as his priceless ‘PhD = Poor Hair Distribution’!)

Prof Wangusa is a poet and novelist.                

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