From Naalya to St.Mary's College, Ssenyonjo retires to more work

By Stephen Senkaaba

Opportunity strikes in the strangest ways. For this man it was a call from the Catholic Church to help run a new school in Wakiso. He had been enjoying a stable, fairly well-paying teaching job at Kawempe Muslim Secondary School.

And yet, he was being asked to leave; to start afresh at a new school that had very little on the ground. It was to be a leap of faith for Moses Ssenyonjo. He took it.

Today, he looks back with relish on an eventful journey that has led him to the forefront of Uganda’s education system. 

Ssenyonjo is the proprietor of St. Mary’s College Lugazi (SMACOL). He founded the school in 2007. After a 16-year successful stint as headteacher at Naalya Secondary School, he has now retired to his own school to supervise its operations. 

SMACOL is a co-educational school located on 20 acres of a sprawling green campus overlooking Mabira forest and Jinja highway. It inhales the fresh, clean air of the surrounding greenery and enjoys the serenity of the woods.

With its white, well-painted classrooms, lush rest gardens, dormitories and laboratories, it holds a very commanding view of an otherwise rustic environment. It is modernity mixed with virgin nature. And it is here that I met the man who only 25 years ago did not have his own house.

There was something teacher-ish about Ssenyonjo. Maybe it was the deliberate way he answered questions, illustrating issues with gestures, listening very carefully whenever I asked a question and pausing thoughtfully, slightly biting his lower lip, before giving an answer.

Maybe it was his tendency to beef up all his answers with examples from the past and the present. It could have been the measured tone in his deep voice or the steady gaze in his eyes.  He remains fairly modest about his achievements even when he says: “We currently have 1,240 students here.”

For a school that has been in place for just four years, that is quite enormous. 

When Ssenyonjo  acquired the land on which the school now sits, it was all rock, forest and poisonous snakes. 

“We were very concerned about the terrain,” he says. 

This, however, did not hamper his dream. Today, SMACOL is one of the leading secondary schools within and beyond Lugazi. Yet this is the near peak to a journey that started more than two decades ago. 

A passion for chalk

Ssenyonjo’s teaching career started during his student days at St. Henry’s College Kitovu. 

“I used to teach English literature to Senior Five students at Baskerville Secondary School in Buikwe,” he recalls. 

His choice of an education course at Makerere University was a conscious decision to pursue a much-loved career. And when he graduated in 1988, he became a literature teacher at Our Lady of Good Counsel Girls’ Secondary School in Gayaza and later at Sam Iga Memorial College. But it was at Kawempe Muslim Secondary School that his talent for administration was formed. 

“In addition to my teaching duties, I was assigned to be the boys’ warden,” he says.

As a warden, he closely interacted with students, understood their problems and helped them. 

“I knew each student by name and often talked to their parents.” 

SMACOL is one of the leading secondary schools in Lugazi. PHOTO by Ronnie Kijjambu

Inspired by the humble, visionary leadership of Ibrahim Matovu, the headteacher then, Ssenyonjo worked with the rest of his colleagues to transform Kawempe Muslim into one of the best performing schools in Kampala. 

He was enjoying the steady growth here when he got a call from Rev. Fr. Erinaeus Kasibante, the Kampala Archdiocesan education secretary at the time. “He asked me to be deputy headteacher at St. Augustine College Wakiso.” 

His employers at Kawempe encouraged him to stay on, but he thought hard. 

“As a young man, I knew change was part of life, I saw this as an opportunity… I decided to leave.”

The ride to a new life

Ssenyonjo rode on a bicycle everyday of the week through Wakiso trying to recruit students to the new school. “We started with seven students.” 

Through hardwork and with assistance from Fr. Kasibante and Dr. John Chrysostom Muyingo, a school board member then, the school picked up. Within two years, 500 students were enrolled. After two years there, he left and enrolled for an MA in education Management at Makerere University. It was here that he met Dr. Livingstone Ddungu. 

“He requested me to head a new school, which he had just founded,” Ssenyonjo says. 

From one new school to another. Ssenyonjo embraced the challenge of setting up Naalya Secondary School. With just one building and two students, he literally paved the way to the establishment of one of the biggest private schools in Kampala today. 

“I worked with the students to clear the bush and dig around the school. At Naalya, he worked closely with Dr. Muyingo, the then headteacher at Uganda Martyrs Secondary School Namugongo, exchanging ideas and sharing best practices.

As a headteacher, Ssenyonjo admitted many students who had been rejected on grounds of poor performance. It became his unstated responsibility to turn such students into academic giants. This is a job he did very well, for he not only grew numbers at Naalya, he also turned out academically excellent students who went on to shine at university and beyond.  

From Naalya, he leaves behind two campuses, each with over 1,000 students. To SMACOL he brings determination to succeed and most importantly the ability to inspire team work. 

“We work together with teachers and students to improve standards here, consulting and empowering each other.”

Within just four years, the school has had more than 60 of it’s A level students scoring above 18 points to join university. In 2010, SMACOL ranked number 31 among schools with the highest intake of students to university. One teacher summed it up thus: “These are the fruits of vision and experience of our director.” 

Mrs. Ssenyonjo adds: “It has all about teamwork, planning and learning.” 

As he looks to consolidate his achievements, Senyonjo remains ever grateful to people that shaped his destiny: Bro. Anthony Kyemwa, his headteacher at Kitovu, Fr. Kasibante (RIP), Dr. JC Muyingo, Dr. Ddungu and Ibrahim Matovu. 

It has been a long journey, but one that Ssenyonjo has travelled consistently and faithfully. He took his opportunity and it has paid off.