Happy Father’s Day Mzee Alipayo Oloya! I salute you
DEAR Mzee Alipayo Oloya, I am writing to wish you a Happy Father’s Day. The celebration of fathers is an annual tradition here in Canada, America and across Europe. I attempted to reach you by phone, but the network signals were too weak.
Opiyo Oloya
DEAR Mzee Alipayo Oloya, I am writing to wish you a Happy Father’s Day. The celebration of fathers is an annual tradition here in Canada, America and across Europe. I attempted to reach you by phone, but the network signals were too weak.
I suspect you are in Pamin-Yai Farm in Amuru where network is not always reliable. I am using my column this week to thank you as a great teacher and father, and also salute the men of your generation across Uganda who were not born into wealth, but had ample vision and energy to focus on the education of their children.
Throughout Uganda, in Buganda, Toro, Kigezi, Bunyoro, Lango, Teso, West Nile, Karamoja, Tororo, and so forth, many highly ambitious men of your generation saw education as the only thing that mattered. The names would fill this entire paper from cover to cover. Some names that come to my mind include Julius Peter Abe, Yusto Otunnu, Bishop Festo Kivengere, Obadia Lalobo, Nua Tukdel Ochora, Mzee Boniface Byanyima, Daktari Ezra Kisigo Mulera, Pastor Andrew Mafigiri, and the list goes on and on.
My late uncle Julius Peter Abe, for example, had so much love for learning and teaching that every single minute spent with him was like drinking from the fountain of life itself. Not only did he provide the firmest educational foundation for all his 16 children, and many grandchildren who are among the most highly educated in diverse fields in Africa today, but taught everyone he came in contact with.
I still recall with fondness my childhood memory of receiving a gift of a duck from my uncle, which I named Mekabam. His singular instruction was that I sleep with one eye open to guard the duck which later had six ducklings. One day, when all six ducklings accidentally fell into an open latrine, I used a make-shift rescue ladder to pull them to safety. I used warm water to wash the smelly muck off their feathers. All the ducklings survived. My uncle had taught me well.
That kind of demonstrative teaching was being duplicated in other parts of Uganda.
Often in conversation with my friend Dr. Muniini Mulera who is the Medical Director of Neonatology at Southlake Hospital here in Newmarket, he tells me about his father Daktari Ezra Kisigo Mulera of Mparo, Rusiga county whose tough-love approach to education seemed to resemble the way you pushed us forward in school. A medical assistant with very high expectations of his seven children, Daktari Mulera used to tell his children: “Look, I don’t have a coffee shamba to leave you, but your coffee shamba is here and now in the education you are receiving.†It worked.
From the same county was Pastor Andrew Mafigiri, an Anglican catechist in Mparo who also made the education of his nine children a priority. Although he did not have a lot of money, and even though the education of girls was considered a waste of money at the time, Pastor Mafigiri made sure his daughters were as equally well educated as the boys in the family. His eldest daughter Erina was the first woman from Kigezi to enter Makerere University. His fourth child Prof. Joy Constance Kwesiga is the Vice Chancellor of Kabale University and one of the most influential educators in Africa today.
In your own case, there were two and half dozen of us to care for. I recall the end of each term when each child was expected to show his or her report card to you. I dreaded those days because I was in the habit of doing well one term and terribly the next.
True, I loved reading and writing but was terrified of math. Despite pointers from you on how to complete the Uganda Primary Leaving Certificate Examinations at Pamin-Yai Catholic School, I flunked twice. Now, here is the piece of news that should make you smile in thinking about those difficult early years in your attempt at educating me.
A week ago on Tuesday, June 15 before a panel of experts at York University in Toronto and University of British Columbia, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation. On hand to lend me moral support was Maureen Muwanga Senoga, herself a PhD candidate at York University in her final year. She is the daughter of the late Eng. Charles James Muwanga of Kyadondo County whopushed hard to have all 13 children educated. The proceedings were also witnessed by Julie P’Bitek, the daughter of the late African literary great Okot p’Bitek who watched it live through video conferencing from the University of British Columbia.
In the research study, I propose a theory that I called the liminal repurposing of culture. Briefly, I argued that children abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) go through a rite of passage in which the Acholi culture itself is manipulated in such a way as to force them into becoming violent child combatants.
However, rather than being simply victims, these children use the same culture to attempt to survive the violence, with the hope of eventually returning home. Unlike other theories given by researchers in this area, I see culture as a dynamic force that can be used for a lot of good and also for perpetrating unspeakable deeds, and the LRA did the latter.
Furthermore, in my study cultural traditions such as dances, singing and rituals such as mato oput, drinking the bitter roots are seen as important in helping rehabilitate and reintegrate the former combatants who were steeped in violence. To this point, my study strongly contradicts your teaching that forbade us from participating in Acholi cultural dances like laraka-raka, the “get-stuck†dance because you feared they would corrupt us from formal education. To the contrary, as I argued in my study, children need these cultural groundings to take on the larger world out there.
This brings me to a confession I have been meaning to make all these years, but never got around to it. Despite the mortal fear of incurring your wrath, my brothers and I used to wait until you were asleep before sneaking out of our beds to go dance laraka-laraka in Aje village, Got Ringo, Pakiri and many other places. We would return home at the red of dawn, just before you came to wake us up to go prepare the cows for milking. And it was sweet—I “got stuck†on numerous occasions with many girls.
So there, now you have the whole truth in a national newspaper. In any event, to you and all the fathers across Uganda, those still alive and those who have passed on, who struggled to pave the way for their sons and daughters to get education, I say thank you very much. The convocation is in October this year.
Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca
DEAR Mzee Alipayo Oloya, I am writing to wish you a Happy Father’s Day. The celebration of fathers is an annual tradition here in Canada, America and across Europe. I attempted to reach you by phone, but the network signals were too weak.
I suspect you are in Pamin-Yai Farm in Amuru where network is not always reliable. I am using my column this week to thank you as a great teacher and father, and also salute the men of your generation across Uganda who were not born into wealth, but had ample vision and energy to focus on the education of their children.
Throughout Uganda, in Buganda, Toro, Kigezi, Bunyoro, Lango, Teso, West Nile, Karamoja, Tororo, and so forth, many highly ambitious men of your generation saw education as the only thing that mattered. The names would fill this entire paper from cover to cover. Some names that come to my mind include Julius Peter Abe, Yusto Otunnu, Bishop Festo Kivengere, Obadia Lalobo, Nua Tukdel Ochora, Mzee Boniface Byanyima, Daktari Ezra Kisigo Mulera, Pastor Andrew Mafigiri, and the list goes on and on.
My late uncle Julius Peter Abe, for example, had so much love for learning and teaching that every single minute spent with him was like drinking from the fountain of life itself. Not only did he provide the firmest educational foundation for all his 16 children, and many grandchildren who are among the most highly educated in diverse fields in Africa today, but taught everyone he came in contact with.
I still recall with fondness my childhood memory of receiving a gift of a duck from my uncle, which I named Mekabam. His singular instruction was that I sleep with one eye open to guard the duck which later had six ducklings. One day, when all six ducklings accidentally fell into an open latrine, I used a make-shift rescue ladder to pull them to safety. I used warm water to wash the smelly muck off their feathers. All the ducklings survived. My uncle had taught me well.
That kind of demonstrative teaching was being duplicated in other parts of Uganda.
Often in conversation with my friend Dr. Muniini Mulera who is the Medical Director of Neonatology at Southlake Hospital here in Newmarket, he tells me about his father Daktari Ezra Kisigo Mulera of Mparo, Rusiga county whose tough-love approach to education seemed to resemble the way you pushed us forward in school. A medical assistant with very high expectations of his seven children, Daktari Mulera used to tell his children: “Look, I don’t have a coffee shamba to leave you, but your coffee shamba is here and now in the education you are receiving.†It worked.
From the same county was Pastor Andrew Mafigiri, an Anglican catechist in Mparo who also made the education of his nine children a priority. Although he did not have a lot of money, and even though the education of girls was considered a waste of money at the time, Pastor Mafigiri made sure his daughters were as equally well educated as the boys in the family. His eldest daughter Erina was the first woman from Kigezi to enter Makerere University. His fourth child Prof. Joy Constance Kwesiga is the Vice Chancellor of Kabale University and one of the most influential educators in Africa today.
In your own case, there were two and half dozen of us to care for. I recall the end of each term when each child was expected to show his or her report card to you. I dreaded those days because I was in the habit of doing well one term and terribly the next.
True, I loved reading and writing but was terrified of math. Despite pointers from you on how to complete the Uganda Primary Leaving Certificate Examinations at Pamin-Yai Catholic School, I flunked twice. Now, here is the piece of news that should make you smile in thinking about those difficult early years in your attempt at educating me.
A week ago on Tuesday, June 15 before a panel of experts at York University in Toronto and University of British Columbia, I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation. On hand to lend me moral support was Maureen Muwanga Senoga, herself a PhD candidate at York University in her final year. She is the daughter of the late Eng. Charles James Muwanga of Kyadondo County whopushed hard to have all 13 children educated. The proceedings were also witnessed by Julie P’Bitek, the daughter of the late African literary great Okot p’Bitek who watched it live through video conferencing from the University of British Columbia.
In the research study, I propose a theory that I called the liminal repurposing of culture. Briefly, I argued that children abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) go through a rite of passage in which the Acholi culture itself is manipulated in such a way as to force them into becoming violent child combatants.
However, rather than being simply victims, these children use the same culture to attempt to survive the violence, with the hope of eventually returning home. Unlike other theories given by researchers in this area, I see culture as a dynamic force that can be used for a lot of good and also for perpetrating unspeakable deeds, and the LRA did the latter.
Furthermore, in my study cultural traditions such as dances, singing and rituals such as mato oput, drinking the bitter roots are seen as important in helping rehabilitate and reintegrate the former combatants who were steeped in violence. To this point, my study strongly contradicts your teaching that forbade us from participating in Acholi cultural dances like laraka-raka, the “get-stuck†dance because you feared they would corrupt us from formal education. To the contrary, as I argued in my study, children need these cultural groundings to take on the larger world out there.
This brings me to a confession I have been meaning to make all these years, but never got around to it. Despite the mortal fear of incurring your wrath, my brothers and I used to wait until you were asleep before sneaking out of our beds to go dance laraka-laraka in Aje village, Got Ringo, Pakiri and many other places. We would return home at the red of dawn, just before you came to wake us up to go prepare the cows for milking. And it was sweet—I “got stuck†on numerous occasions with many girls.
So there, now you have the whole truth in a national newspaper. In any event, to you and all the fathers across Uganda, those still alive and those who have passed on, who struggled to pave the way for their sons and daughters to get education, I say thank you very much. The convocation is in October this year.
Opiyo.oloya@sympatico.ca