Prime
Mahanga: A symptom of national malaise
Author: Joseph Ochieno.
What you need to know:
- ‘‘Mahanga was the first purpose-built public school to benefit the then growing-and-affluent ‘urban’ Nagongera”
A routine walk into Nagongera Town Council, Tororo District, caused notice of the dairy corporation plant built by UPC government to boost local yields and related economy, capacitate subsistence producers and storage, add value, supply the local market while enhancing the health needs of the community. That was then. Now the building is nothing-but-shells; young unemployed boys play games by a shade – none old enough to know what the building was for.
Thirty metres down the road is a workshop; making furniture. Then coffins. I see a familiar face – emaciated – younger than me by miles but with a ‘secured future’, he could pass for my eldest brother. Family friends, both elder brothers were older generation of the time, both civil servants; both recently died, one hardly three weeks ago, he succumbed to Covid-19.
Standing next to a coffin already on a boda while speaking on phone, he holds and tells me his mother had just died that morning and burial was due in two days’ time. Condoled and, I would attend, I assured him. I did.
Looking left, is Mahanga Primary School fence and slightly further, the school buildings, now in shells. This is the primary school that produced the best PLE pupil in 1972, just as I started Primary One at the-even-more-prestigious St Joseph’s Boys Primary, Nagongera. Mahanga was the first purpose-built public school to benefit the then growing-and-affluent ‘urban’ Nagongera, a town board at the time. It was built within six years of independence in 1962.
On return from exile in 2005, Mr Osinde (RIP) was quick to proudly remind the gathering I was addressing not far from the ‘coffin workshop’ that he was in fact the teacher who produced the best pupil in 1972. He was right because, I remember him then; I know the family and we are related. They taught, they were tough, smart, motivated, dedicated, equipped and they expected the results.
When my turn arrived, I did well enough (among the best in Bukedi) to go to ‘The School’, I mean Busoga College Mwiri, thanks to St Joseph’s PS. As it happened, I ended up in the same class with the best pupil in the country in our year. He was from Nakasero PS.
While this column will for sure issue a ‘letter’ about Nagongera PS in future, I must ask: what has gone of this country that almost every foundation that was built at independence or, nearly everything else built or founded before NRA/NRM came to power seems to collapse?
How can anyone justify the state of Mahanga PS? Okay, whose job is it to explain why Bukedi sub-region – formerly greater Tororo District before being broken into pieces as districts-for-NRA/M-parochial-chauvinist-business – previously among the best performing districts in educational results and attainment in the country is now no-longer? Granted, it is now among the poorest sub-regions in the country, thanks to ‘fundamental change’ but, at Mwiri, most of the best performing students were not necessarily from the richest families so, what has changed?
Away from Nagongera, Tororo or Bukedi, which government rural schools today compete with private/few government schools like Namagunga, thanks to the nuns?
Evidence from thefts and the shambles of Covid-19 response suggest excess incompetence, lack of accountability and obvious impunity. But it is not too late for Mr Museveni to give leadership and provide urgent answers – that is, if he has any scintilla of moral conscience remaining.
The writer is a pan-Afrikanist and former columnist with New African Magazine [email protected]
