She has taught for 65 years

Apr 16, 2005

JUST a day before the World Book Day, Fountain Publishers will be celebrating more than 40 years of one of Uganda’s finest and oldest children’s author Janet Nsibirwa Mdoe.

By Elvina Nawaguna

JUST a day before the World Book Day, Fountain Publishers will be celebrating more than 40 years of one of Uganda’s finest and oldest children’s author Janet Nsibirwa Mdoe.

After writing several books for school children for the past four decades, Mdoe’s books have finally been professionally published and will be out for sale this week. Most of her books were merely typeset and bound and were used by children in the schools she taught.

With a teaching career spanning over 65 years, the “Sweet Old Granny,” as her students have called her for the last 20 years, is not yet about to quit the chalk.
At 85, Mdoe is still teaching at Green Hill Academy in Kibuli.

Although now slightly bent from old age, her strides are still quick and she manages to do almost everything by herself.

On retiring from public service in 1981, Mdoe joined Kampala Parents School in 1982 where she taught until 1993, when she, together with the late Gladys Wambuzi and others, started Green Hill Academy.

Born in 1920 in Kasawo, Kyaggwe, Mdoe started school at a local Church of Uganda school in Ntenjeru Bugerere, before joining Gayaza High School in 1928 and Buloba College to train as a teacher in 1936. Those days, they were called Vernacular teachers.

“One day the headmistress called us and said she had good news for us. The new British Governor of Uganda was interested in women teachers and so they would no longer be called Vernacular teachers, but primary school teachers and their salary would be about sh12 per month,” Mdoe says nostalgically.

Mdoe thus became among the first female primary teachers in Uganda.
She started teaching at Buloba College demonstration school in 1939 and later at Gayaza High school from 1940-43.

At the beginning of 1944, she went to teach in Sudan, where education had just started and there were still no female teachers. “ When I told my father about it, he was so excited that his daughter was going to teach in another country,” Mdoe says, referring to her book “Real Life Experience” for the exact dates.

Mdoe returned to Uganda in 1947 to further her education at Makerere University. It is at Makerere that she met her husband Micki Mdoe, who was a student of Sociology. Getting married to him, meant going to Tanzania, where he came from.

There, she taught in several schools before returning to Uganda in 1956 to teach in Mengo Preparatory School, where the Kabaka of Buganda, Ronald Mutebi II was one of her pupils.

Mdoe later served as headmistress of Matale Girls’ Boarding school and assistant headmistress of Budo Junior School before going off for a two-year-teacher-training course in Australia under a common wealth bursary.

She has also served as deputy and later principal of Lady Irene Teacher training college Ndejje, now Ndejje University.

At Green Hill, Mdoe heads the infant section and trains teachers in the school. But even at her age, she does not seem to see a life outside her teaching profession.

Fountain publishers will be recognising her works by publishing and launching her books on April 22, at Green Hill Academy.

Mdoe is a mother of two, Joy Maraka also a teacher and Kenneth Mdoe a retired civil servant. She is blessed with six grandchildren.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});