Never a Dull Moment: 1950S Village Schooling in Uganda

By Katherine Namuddu

Today one hears harrowing stories in Uganda about how hard it has become for rural families to get their children and especially daughters, through the primary school years successfully. It would appear that there are enormous difficulties in getting children to master the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic, let alone to learn and apply the basics of personal hygiene, an acceptable work ethic and respect for individuals and institutions.

In a spirit of wishing to demonstrate how some rural parents used to pursue and accomplish successfully an education for their children, this book tells the story of how Ntaanya negotiated her 12-year passage through various home and modern schools in a rural village in 1950s.

All the stories in this short book are based on actual events spanning a twelve year period generally corresponding to the period when I was growing up in a rural village. The book attempts to show that perhaps the modern school is paying far too much attention to the mechanics of school learning and in the processes it is eroding the complementary work of a variety of traditional learning agencies that in the past, not only provided a child with their first mental and practical curriculum but also greatly supported and consolidated the skills taught in the modern school.

While the book does not deal directly with the curriculum of the modern school, it pays a great deal of attention to describing what a young girl learned from the cultural and home environment right from very early childhood.

Starting with the processes of naming a girl child, the foundational lessons for a childs identity were laid. Sometimes the lessons were accidental as when Muzeeyi and Mugabis baby daughter ends up receiving a name Ntaanya meaning trouble - when the woman from whom she must inherit the name is already in trouble and has been ostracized by her family, and therefore can never be a positive role model for Ntaanya. Muzeeyi is made aware of this when she introduces Ntaanya to Nasedde, Muzeeyis father-in-law.

At other times the lessons are subtle and not actually meant for the child. For example, weaning a toddler would seem like a simple and straightforward matter but it is not so for Muzeeyi who had previously suffered nine miscarriages before Ntaanya came along. The village matriarch and respected traditional birth attendant Zakuzza sees clearly a future problem a child that gets spoilt by an over protective mother and her foster children that are eager to please.

Zakuzza speaks her mind and Muzeeyi and Mugabi must obey a village elder. They take action immediately by removing Ntaanya from their home to her maternal grandmothers residence located some fifteen miles away, where a well functioning weaning school has been operating for many years.

The wisdom and psychology of weaning away from home is amply demonstrated by Digondas handling of Ntaanya. Digonda knows that the first step of removing the breast as the focal locus of getting a child spoilt has been achieved by distance. Therefore, Digonda continues to provide Ntaanya with all the other elements of any childs expectations as the center of attention. Yet during this period, Digonda ensures that Ntaanya starts on her learning to shape her character, to consolidate her identity and to learn to participate in all the chores and activities that support a thriving household and its industry, including learning to fetch water and preparing herbal medicines, which is Digondas specialization.

Importantly Ntaanyas need to play is neither ignored nor taken for granted. As a matter of fact it is emphasized but in a very practical way where Ntaanya learns how to make her own dolls and play cows with the assistance of Digonda and older children in the household. In addition, Ntaanya goes out exploring with the other older children including participating in the harvesting ter

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Oct 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479734832

Katherine Namuddu

Katherine Namuddu was born in Uganda and educated there and in the United States. She taught at Makerere, Nairobi, and Kenyatta universities. She worked for many years with the Rockefeller Foundation of New York. She is advisor on African higher education and lives in Kampala and Nninzi Village in Kalisizo Township.

Book preview

Chapter 1

ORPHAN AND CO-WIDOW

My name is Ntaanya. Muzeeyi was my mother, and all of us children used to address her as Muzeeyi even when she was not yet an old woman. After I had grown up, she told me how my life started.

I was born on Christmas Day in 1946. My father, called Mugabi, Muzeeyi, my two elder sisters, Tekela Kitwala and Ketula Kasiita, and my three cousins, Gava, Kizito, and Tebandeke lived on Kiyoo village, 150 miles south of Kampala.

My parents were devout Catholics and had earlier that day attended church at Katale Parish, three miles away. Muzeeyi had returned home, cooked, and served lunch to the family.

The labour pains had began the minute she smelled pork, then a Christmas delicacy reserved for men. Within an hour, she had delivered me, assisted by Zakuzza, the village elderly matriarch, who was herbalist, traditional birth attendant, and the most respected expert in matters of women’s reproductive health.

Afterwards, Mugabi, without any outward emotion, had gathered together his family and offered a thanksgiving prayer.

Although Kiyoo was miles away from Kampala, the country’s capital city, it was not as far away from modern life as one might imagine. Kiyoo village was only two miles from Kazo, the main town in the area. Kazo had several small shops, almost all of them owned by Asians. The shops sold clothes, shoes, hoes, machetes, cooking pans, medicines, salt, and sugar. The Asians also owned godowns, where they stored agricultural produce, such as beans, groundnuts, and maize purchased from farmers at throwaway prices. The same produce would be repackaged to be sold at exorbitant prices to institutions such as boarding schools and prisons.

Kazo also boasted of a district hospital, a police post, a post office, and administrative offices, including a courthouse and a prison.

Therefore, the majority of folks on Kiyoo and on villages surrounding Kazo conducted all their business in Kazo, and many lived a full life of eighty or ninety years without ever making the trip to Kampala.

In an era before the advent of radio announcements, local news, such as the birth of a child, was sent through messengers. After I was born, Mugabi dispatched my sisters and cousins as emissaries that Christmas afternoon to inform neighbours, friends, and relatives of the event of my birth. By evening, everyone on Kiyoo and many on the neighbouring villages had received the news that Muzeeyi had once again delivered a daughter. Many waited with bated breath to learn what the consequences would be for Muzeeyi. Then as now, male children were at a premium for any family. A man required male heirs in order to perpetuate himself and his clan.

There had been a lot of tension among Mugabi’s extended family and clan around the issue of male heirs. Mugabi, who had adopted Catholicism, came from a large polygamous family presided over by the patriarch Nasedde, who had three wives and more than twenty sons and daughters. After Mugabi married Muzeeyi in the early 1930s, he was expected to put on the heir roster for the family and clan a respectable number of sons. His many sisters and brothers had made that point quite clear to Muzeeyi while she was still a bride.

But things seemed to have gone wrong right from the start. Muzeeyi’s first pregnancy had resulted in a miscarriage. Her second pregnancy resulted in her first live birth to a girl.

Tolerable!

A woman was expected to have at least twelve children; thus, there was still opportunity enough for sons to come along.

But then Muzeeyi had had six miscarriages of the subsequent pregnancies.

Disaster!

In those days, it was believed that the major cause of a miscarriage was either witchcraft or discontent among the ubiquitous ancestral spirits. Therefore, after the series of miscarriages, Nasedde had summoned Mugabi and ordered him to appease the ancestral spirits by offering animal sacrifices together with two gourds of the local beer known as Omwenge.

Instead of obeying his father’s orders, Mugabi had consulted the Catholic priest at Katale Parish, who had told him that Catholicism did not allow appeasement of ancestral spirits. So Mugabi had refused to take to the ancestral spirits the libations of Omwenge and the gifts of a white goat and a black rooster that his father’s family had offered him.

Disappointed and disturbed at his flat refusal to make the offering, Mugabi’s family had decided to abandon him to his fate, asserting that his wife and the priests were exerting undue influence on his decisions and behaviour.

Then Muzeeyi had delivered a second baby girl after her tenth pregnancy. Two subsequent pregnancies were lost before a third girl, I, came along and, as Muzeeyi used to state in later years, closed her womb!

Because there had been so few live births in Mugabi’s house, difficult decisions about what names to give the three girls had not arisen. There was already a rule for naming children enforced by Nasedde, who had received the rule from his father, who in turn had received the directive from his father.

The first three boys in any family of one of Nasedde’s sons had to be named after Nasedde, Nasedde’s father, and Nasedde’s grandfather, respectively. When and if additional boys came along, Nasedde would then have to be consulted so that he could give specific names to the boys.

Similarly, the first three girls in any family of one of Nasedde’s sons had to be named after Nasedde’s first, second, and third wife, respectively. Therefore, since Mugabi’s two elder daughters had already claimed the name of Kitwala and Kasiita, Nasedde’s first and second wives, respectively, I was named Ntaanya after Nasedde’s third wife. At my baptism at the Katale Catholic Parish, the name Lucia was added.

A lot of significance was attached to each of the three names, for the boys and children who had these names were expected to enjoy a special status in the family and the clan. The boys’ whole upbringing would be firmly guided such that they would enjoy special access to their fathers and grandfathers. This would ensure that the sons would eventually end up being the main heirs of major portions of clan and family property, such as land and cows.

The girls who inherited the names of Nasedde’s wives were also accorded some special status. Because they had the names of the three mothers and grandmothers in the family, they would be treated and would usually be addressed as mother by the sons and daughters of Nasedde, as grandmother by their fellow siblings, and, perhaps most importantly, as wives by Nasedde and as co-wives by the women with whom they shared names. Although girls could not inherit clan property, those with these special names might get special dispensation when it came to inheriting cows as an argument could be made, for example, that a girl’s son (her father) was making a special provision for his mother.

While the main purpose of this maze of relationships and special statuses was to cement ties in the family and the clan, the relationships could also be a major source of tensions and exclusion, as was currently the case in Nasedde’s family.

By the time I was born, Ntaanya senior, although the youngest of Nasedde’s wives, was no longer in favour. Nasedde’s two senior wives, Kitwala and Kasiita, had accused their junior co-wife of participating in witchcraft.

Nasedde had subsequently punished Ntaanya senior by removing her from her residence in the family’s main compound. A small house had been built for her some miles away on a piece of land with heavily leached soils, where she lived in absolute exclusion and poverty.

Her own two biological sons and three daughters, fearing wrath from their father and his other two wives and not prepared to lose their inheritance, if they continued to associate with their mother, had more or less abandoned her as well. Ntaanya senior lived alone as none of her children wanted their own children to live with a woman who had been branded a witch by her co-wives.

Because of these tensions, I never made a triumphant entrance into my paternal grandfather’s house when I was presented there at six months of age.

Prior to visiting my grandfather Nasedde, Muzeeyi had to take me to be introduced to my grandmother, co-wife, and namesake Ntaanya senior at her residence.

Muzeeyi was later to describe Ntaanya senior’s residence as a small, miserable, and smoke-filled house perched on a stony compound bereft of any grass or trees.

Muzeeyi had later narrated to me, ‘Even before her exclusion, Ntaanya senior never smiled much as she felt superior to everyone else in Nasedde’s household. Now that she had been dislodged from her pedestal in Nasedde’s house, she looked and behaved like a seriously wounded rhino. Her dark face was perpetually contorted into reams of frowns and squints with a voice as pitiful as that of a serial widower.’

Muzeeyi was of the view that Ntaanya senior was not at all happy to see me. When I was presented to her, she gave me only a few beans of roasted coffee as a mandatory welcome gift. At six months of age, I was sitting and already reaching. But Ntaanya senior did not present me with the traditional gift of Endege—a pair of metallic bangles for wearing on my wrists and ankles. Normally, this would have been the expected gift at this age in order to encourage me to crawl, stand up, and walk as quickly as possible.

The final straw was that Ntaanya senior had refused to accompany Muzeeyi and me for presentation to Nasedde. She had explained querulously to Muzeeyi, ‘I have been unfairly accused of witchcraft without any proof. I have been exiled without providing me any financial support. I have, therefore, vowed never to return to Nasedde’s house except to bury him. There is no way I am going to present this child as co-wife to a man who no longer recognises me as his wife.’

And so it was that I arrived at my grandfather’s house already ‘an orphan’. This state of being an orphan had four elements to it.

To start with, because I did not have biological brothers, I was already regarded as an orphan since Mugabi had no male heir to take his place after his death. I had no future father. Second, Ntaanya senior’s refusal to accompany me at the presentation meant that I came to Nasedde’s house as one without her own relatives, the most important of whom would have been the co-wife and big sister whose name I carried. Also, my two elder sisters, Kitwala and Kasiita, were already in school and could not accompany me to visit my grandfather. Finally, Mugabi fearing that he would get into another verbal fight with his father about his refusal to appease the ancestral spirits and to consider taking a second wife, who would presumably bear him sons, had refused to accompany me to the presentation.

All in all, I received a very lukewarm reception at my grandfather’s house. Nasedde could not hold me in his hands because there was no co-wife to hand me over to the old man, as custom did not allow my mother to touch her father-in-law. His other two wives—one of them my actual biological grandmother—simply sat there and stared, since it was not their cultural role, as long as my namesake was still alive, to present me to Nasedde.

More importantly, Nasedde gave me nothing to take back home. Normally, there would have been four gifts. If I had had brothers to accompany me to the presentation, they would have received a rooster as a token for giving away their sister to her husband—the grandfather. If my sisters had accompanied me, they would have received money for their own use. If Nasedde had held me in his arms, he would have given my mother a piece of barkcloth as dowry. And he would have given me money as his new wife. If he did not have money, he would have given me a hen so that my parents could either sell it and give me the money or let the hen lay eggs for sale. Since he gave me nothing, not only did this indicate non-acceptance of me as a wife but also that he did not want me to prosper.

As Muzeeyi had backed away from Nasedde’s presence, he had unexpectedly shouted to her, ‘Make sure you inculcate good manners in your daughter. Her namesake portends of an untrustworthy woman.’

Muzeeyi had been given lunch with groundnut sauce but no meat or fish, indicating that she was not a daughter-in-law worth spending money on.

But I did eventually get that pair of metallic bangles for my wrists and ankles and money to invest from my maternal grandmother, Digonda, who sent these gifts when I was seven months old. My maternal grandfather had died nine years before I was born. Therefore, even when I eventually visited my maternal grandmother, I could not claim the title of co-wife to her. Instead, I could only be referred to as her co-widow!

Chapter 2

WEANING SCHOOL

At almost five years of age, I was already accompanying adults and other children to the well, carrying back a miniscule amount of water in a tiny pot that the village potter, Muwumbi, had made for me as a gift.

I was a stubby and stubborn child. Whenever I returned from the well and put down the pot, I would run straight for Muzeeyi’s breast to feed. I made it clear that I owned two important items: my mother’s lap and her breast and that I was quite prepared to defend my property at all costs. While I could use the slightest excuse to go off and play, I could not stand to see any other child seated on Muzeeyi’s lap. If dislodging the offending child by force failed, I would howl and scream and throw tantrums. Muzeeyi, out of embarrassment, would give up the other child and hold me to her bosom.

One day, just before Christmas Day 1951, Zakuzza, the village matriarch, who had assisted at my birth, had come to visit my mother. She arrived when I was playing outside the house and running up and down the big compound. Muzeeyi called me into the house to greet great-grandmother Zakuzza. But I continued with my games while the other children entered the house and greeted Zakuzza.

Probably irritated by my apparent refusal to obey Muzeeyi’s instructions, Zakuzza had called out, ‘Ntaanya, come and greet me, or I will take away Muzeeyi’s breast.’

I had burst into loud cries, run straight into the house, and thrown tantrums all over the place while searching for the breast in my mother’s bodice. When I finally found it, I had triumphantly pointed a castigating finger at Zakuzza, proceeded to sit on Muzeeyi’s lap, and started breastfeeding.

Zakuzza had watched this drama with a heavy frown on her brow and had said to Muzeeyi, ‘My dear, you have got to wean this one. Otherwise, she will become wild.’

‘I have tried everything,’ my mother had explained with desperation in her voice. ‘I have worn a vest, but when Ntaanya sees it, she literally tears it off my body. I have even put a bit of pepper on the nipples, but she throws such tantrums that I get a headache.’

‘Well! I know you have told me that Ntaanya is your last born, and I am sure you would want to breastfeed her as long as possible, which is a very good thing. But what I see is not acceptable. Ntaanya is not one of these slow children. She is very clever. She knows exactly what she is doing. She is getting spoilt, and you must rein her in,’ Zakuzza had concluded.

A few days into the new year of 1952, Muzeeyi carried me on her back while Mugabi carried Muzeeyi on his bicycle, and our little party had left Kiyoo to visit Digonda, my maternal grandmother.

We arrived at Digonda’s house on Bweri village, some 15 miles away, in the early afternoon, and we were welcomed with a great deal of excitement.

There were many children at Digonda’s house, and I played a lot of games, especially running around the house. What I enjoyed and liked a lot was that all the older children wanted me to either sit on the lap or carry me on the back.

When Digonda served lunch of fish simmered in roasted groundnut sauce, I ate with gusto, something I rarely did at home without much persuasion. I drew a lot of attention from all the older children as they all gave me little morsels of fish, green vegetables, sweet potato, and mushrooms.

Then I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I was lying on a bed of clothes on the floor. I could not see my banana fibre dolls, which were always close by in my bed. I turned around, but there was no sign of the dolls.

Getting up quickly, I went outside the house, but I could not recognise anything. Everything seemed to have moved. The outer house, which was the kitchen, was not where it usually was. I could not see the plates’ rack near the kitchen, where I was frequently sent to fetch spoons and saucepans. I could not see the goats, which were always near the kitchen, tied around a Mutuba tree, from which barkcloth was produced.

Even the chickens were different. I could not see my hen Kamukamu, a gift from my father, among the bunch that was now busy disarranging the cooking banana leaves inside the kitchen. I could not see the huge red rooster, which I sometimes feared.

Something was wrong!

A good thing was that the banana plantation was all there. But where was the big bunch of bananas that my mother had been promising to give me to cook when it ripened?

Where was my mother?

I supposed that Muzeeyi must be just down the rows of banana and coffee trees. So I launched into a very loud call for her. But there was no answer. I started down the banana plantation, screaming and yelling for my mother.

When finally the other children ran to my rescue and tried to comfort me, I kept on crying and calling for my mother.

I ultimately cried myself to sleep in a small bed that Digonda provided in her bedroom, without finding Muzeeyi. And just like all small children, it soon became natural for me to play with all the other children in the house. I continued searching for my mother for a few days, but I gave up as new games and excursions with the other children to the outer edges of Digonda’s large banana and coffee plantation started and took up more and more of my time.

I had been weaned!

There were lots of children at Digonda’s house and the neighbouring houses, where I was soon venturing to ask for sugar cane, Cape gooseberry, passion fruit, and pawpaw.

Digonda was a beautiful and gentle woman. She had a medium dark-skin complexion known as Kataketake with very white eyes and teeth. Tall, thin, and slightly bending, her neck was covered by black freckles that lined each of the many Biseera, the circular grooves around the front of the neck, which all visitors admired loudly. She had a deep dimple on her left cheek, and the nails on her long fingers and toes were perfectly shaped without the benefit of sandpaper.

Digonda ran a weaning school for all her relatives’ offspring. There were children of different ages—older children—boys and girls who could swing me with one arm from the ground straight on to the back. There were children who had to kneel so that I could climb on to the back and who would then stand up on their own. And there were children who had to squat so that I could stand behind the back so that someone else could give both me and the squatting child a boost in order for the pair to stand up.

However, I was currently the youngest toddler, and I quickly began to enjoy fully all the privileges, which that status conveyed. While at my parents’ house, everyone had addressed me by my name, but here, I reverted to being called baby Omwana. All attention was focused on me.

‘The baby is crying.’

‘The baby has wet her bed.’

‘The baby has refused to eat.’

‘The baby has refused to wake up.’

‘Who will carry the baby?’

These were the kinds of critical issues that Digonda and the older children constantly addressed on my behalf. Everything at Digonda’s revolved around me. As a baby, the other children taught me how to make better and bigger banana fibre dolls. In fact, on many occasions, my grandmother would save, especially for me as a special doll, conjoined banana fingers that the children referred to as Abalongo—the twins. I learnt how to make dolls out of the maize cob coverings. I would save the husks to make bridesmaids whenever I played wedding.

I also learnt how to make and acquire play cows. But this took some work, and Digonda was always ready to help. I would gather Empumumpu—the male inflorescence of the banana whenever it was sliced off the young bunch after accomplishing no task because it did not have to fertilise the female flowers, since they are infertile. The children would then assist me to find four sticks for the legs and another two smaller sticks for the horns. And if I wanted a long swishing tail, I would stick at the pointed end of Empumumpu a shredded palm leaf or a small piece of a banana leaf or the terminal part of the amaranth flower. Getting these cows to stand steady was quite an accomplishment at my age.

The children taught me to play nurse as well. The diagnosis consisted mostly of pocking at each other’s ribcage with all ten fingers. The children would then prescribe a mixture of leaf extracts, which they would often laboriously concoct alongside real experience from watching Digonda, who was an accomplished herbalist. The older children had learnt from her that an extract from the leaves of Ssere—blackjack weed—would stop the bleeding of minor cuts. An extract from the leaves of a shrub known as Omululuza would reduce fever. Hot water mixed with raw garlic would induce vomiting and relieve constipation. And an extract from the leaves of a tree known as Kasenene would cure eye infection and cause sneezing.

Grandmother taught the children gently but firmly about what herbs were useful and which ones were poisonous. As the children accompanied her to her many small gardens of medicinal shrubs and herbs, she would teach them how to identify the leaves, stems, barks, flowers, and the seeds of the same plant at different stages of its life cycle. At other times, Digonda would gather specimens and test, correct, and praise the children’s powers of observation and recall. But she explicitly forbade children from administering medicines to one another without consulting her.

There was also serious learning of the chores in Digonda’s house, in the many gardens and the huge banana and coffee plantations. One such daily chore was the fetching of water from the well.

In the early 1950s, villagers had three somewhat delicate types of containers in which to fetch and store water. Large calabashes were grown and specifically smoked and cured for either carrying water or storing beer. Water was, however, not regularly stored in calabashes as it softened the inside lining too easily leading to bursting. However, Omwenge—the alcohol brewed from banana juice—tended to harden the inner lining, and thus, calabashes were more likely to store beer than water.

Villagers could also fetch water in tins known as Eddebe. But tins were scarce and expensive to acquire since they would have originally been paraffin containers. Their deployment as water containers also competed severely with their use as roofing material. Moreover, it usually required a lot of water and soap, a very expensive item in those days, to remove the pungent smell of paraffin from the tin before it could be used to carry and store water for domestic purposes.

This left Ensuwa—clay pots—as the most frequently used containers for fetching and storing water. At Digonda’s house, children broke clay pots like they were free. Every time children went to the well, one or two of them could be counted on to break a pot or two. Fortunately, in an era predating the mass production of plastic containers which is rampant today, clay potters were to be found everywhere, and since it seemed that many potters lived near clay swamps with infertile soils, they never seemed to be able to grow enough of their own food. Therefore, grandmother always bartered food for clay pots.

When I first arrived at Digonda’s, I would take to the well the smallest pot called Akakopo—the cup. I was very proud to deliver water in this pot because grandmother kept on telling me that all the water