Kyanku lulls you to sleep on Radio Hoima

Jan 27, 2002

Ssalongo Canan Kyanku is the director and presenter on his own FM station

By Matthias Mugisha Every night, a familiar voice cracks through the FM radio receivers tuned onto frequency 88.6. This voice helps to send the thousands of listeners across Bunyoro to the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo into a peaceful slumber after the day’s work. “You’re listening to Radio Hoima, this is Ssalongo Canan Kyanku with your late night programme, Kipindi kya lala salama.’’ the presenter states at the start of the programme that runs from 10.15 pm up to midnight.The voice behind the microphone belongs to none other than the number one director of the radio station. Ssalongo Canan Kyanku, 47, is a self made man. He is a spanner boy, a garage owner, a taxi driver, a bus owner, A radio presenter, a local media mogul and an employer.Kyanku co-owns Radio Hoima with a colleague Deo Kisembo. Kyanku, rose from the dust. He was only lucky to enroll in a technical college after primary seven from where he obtained a certificate as a motor mechanic. That is all, but everyone in Bunyoro and beyond has known him for his first radio station in Bunyoro in the the last two years “I started the station because there was none in our area.’’ he tells The New Vision. “I teamed up with my friend Deo Kisembo, a radio technician,’’ he narrates. Radio Hoima located at plot 33 Wright road in Hoima town can be heard by people living as far as Nebbi, Bundibugyo, parts of Eastern Congo and Fort Portal. “By end of next month (February), we will hit the air waves of Kampala, Mukono and Jinja.’’ Kyanku discloses. About his background he just says, “I suffered, I was a poor orphan, but I worked hard.” Kyanku who comes from the old and historical Bayaga clan of Bunyoro Kitara Kingdom attended Muhahwiju primary school in Hoima up to Primary seven. He crossed over to Kampala and went to Mahtma Ghandi Memorial College in Kawempe for his secondary school education. After a stint in school, he got employed in garages in Hoima town. After two years he started his own garage, Hoima motors. “I was among the best. I made money and started trading in coffee,” he boasts and adds that it is the coffee trade that gave him a break through. With money mainly from coffee, he bought his first Helix pick up in 1980, and a second vehicle, a Nissan truck two years later.“I was the first man in Hoima to buy a mini-bus among the taxi drivers plying the Hoima Kampala Road in 1986,” he says. Ssalongo Kyanku, says he has about 20 children with his two wives, now has a bus plying the Fort Portal- Kampala road. His radio employs 20 professionals who have revolutionised information dissemination in the region. The queues at the radio station offices bringing in announcements is testimony to that.Kyanku cannot sit down and become bossy. He has two daily programmes on his radio. He reads announcements after the 10:00pm news bulletin and hosts a late night show called Lala Salama.Kyanku’s first born, Richard Isingoma is a farmer. The other children are in colleges while the last born “My girl” as he calls her; Grace Kaisiki is yet to start nursery school. All done, Kyanku still remembers his worst days in life as that when he lost his father and when he was diagnosed as diabetic on December 27, 1999. “But my best day is Sunday. On that day I do not work,” he states.“I visit friends,” says Kyanku the self-made entrepreneur whose voice is the daily sleeping pill of lucky ones who listen to his two-year-old ‘baby’, Radio Hoima.

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