By Emmanuel Ssejjengo

He was born left-handed, but was brought up as a right-handed person, just like many other Ugandans. Rev. Bernard Bogere Ssenkubuge, 60, did not only choose to tell of his woes, he decided to fight against the victimisation of left-handed children.

As the proprietor of Lugazi Community Day and Boarding Primary School in Lugazi, he is involved in the day-to-day running of the school and that is how he decided to invigilate an examination.

“One day in 2010, while invigilating exams, I discovered there were a number of left-handed pupils” says Rev. Ssenkubuge. He admits he only took notice of the students because of their sitting postures.

“Out of 100 children in the examination room, 15 used their left hands.”

Later, he also discovered that nine of the 35 teachers at the school were left-handed as were 78 children out of the 1,400 in the school.

That discovery brought back childhood memories for Rev. Ssenkubuge, who recalls being punished for using the left hand to eat or write.

At an early age, he had to learn how to write with the right hand, which he found “unnatural and difficult”.

After the discovery at his school, Rev. Ssenkubuge devised means of making the left-handed children more comfortable in class. He started by putting simple measures into place.

The left-handed children in his school either have a desk to themselves or sit at the end of the long benches.

This helps them write easily with the left hand without causing any discomfort to fellow classmates.

The reverend’s campaign to help left-handed people did not stop with his own school. He carried the campaign into other schools, especially those on Mukono and Buikwe districts. Through his own research, he discovered that about 12-15% of children in primary schools are left-handed.

Fighting stigma
Left-handed people face some form of stigma in the communities they live in. Rev. Ssenkubuge confesses that he was forced to “unlearn” being left-handed because his parents considered it a disgrace. His case is not isolated.

“My parents used to beat me whenever they found me eating with the left hand,” says Julius Kato. His twin sister is also left handed.

Luckily for Kato, his plight changed when Rev. Ssenkubuge convinced his parents there was nothing wrong with left-handedness and they finally accepted it.

However, some practices are hard to alter. Religious practices like crossing oneself among Catholics must be done with the right hand.

In the armed forces, the salute is with the right hand.

Noticeably, the scouts and girl guides do it with the left hand simply because Baden Powell, the founder of the movement, was left-handed.

Among Muslims, money is handed over with the right hand.

It is also deemed rude to offer the left hand in a hand shake. In addition, the left hand is deemed unclean in the Islamic faith since it is used in the toilet.

Therefore, it should not be used to eat food or hand over anything to people.

“Left-handed people should be taught to adjust to some of these practices,” argues Rev. Ssenkubuge.

Without the right equipment like specifically designed, computers or pairs of scissors, left handed people become slow learners. Forcing a child to adapt to the right hand when they are born left-handed has been linked with stammering.

Way forward
Life for left-handed people in Uganda still hangs in a balance. Most of the schools do not provide facilities for left-handed learners.

When Rev. Ssenkubuge discovered the plight of left-handedness, he searched for ways of helping his pupils.

At the Special Needs Education department at Kyambogo University, he was informed that left-handedness was not inclusive in their programmes.

The Ministry of Education also has no special programme for left-handed learners. However, all is not lost.

“The first step is to change people’s attitudes. I go to different schools especially in Buikwe and Mukono districts and give lectures on left-handedness. I discourage teachers and students discriminating their left-handed counterparts,” adds the Rev. Ssenkubuge who has developed a 10-step test for left-handedness in children which he shares with parents.

Teachers not trained to handle left handed children
Regina Nabakoza, who has taught for six years, says she improvises to make life comfortable for her left-handed pupils.

“When I identify them, I let them sit where they will not interfere with the others. They should sit at the end of the bench and not in the middle,” she explains.

She adds she has also noticed that left-handed children are sometimes bullied by fellow students and in such cases, she gives the bullies some responsibility, such as, being the class monitor.

Keep Left Uganda and the National Curriculum Development Centre are in partnership to help left-handed students.

The partnership hopes to have a proper head count of left-handed students in the country and thereafter, determine what is necessary to make left-handed students compete favourably with their counterparts.

Real life experience

By Juliet Kasirye

When I was still in primary school, I felt uncomfortable writing down notes in class because my classmates always made fun that I was writing abnormally with my left hand.

My classmates also insulted me when I accidently knocked them during mathematics lessons, especially when we were doing measurements and geometry.

Deep down, I was irritated and contemplated dodging classes and quitting school. My class teacher also made my life a living hell because he often beat my fingers whenever I used the left. He would force me to use the right hand because he thought I would learn with time.

During that time, my exams were always under-marked by some teachers because they claimed they could not understand what I had written since my hand writing was very bad. Still, my class teacher harassed me because he wanted me to be uniform like other children. She also thought that using the right hand would help me improve on my hand writing.

When I reached primary seven, my class teacher stopped harassing me when he realised that he could not change what was inborn. When I enrolled for secondary school, I failed to get a seat because the school only had chairs for right handers. Sometimes I inconvenienced students during exams because I could not sit and write properly using such seats.

Right now I am at the university but people look at me in a funny way when I go to the restaurant and I use a left hand to eat. Do you think it is abnormal?”Mathew Makanga, a student at Makerere University still wonders.

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