Uganda Museum keeps hidden treasures

By Esther Namugoji

The gallery is just a small part of the museum’s collections

There are more artefacts in storage than on display

Visitors to the Uganda Museum on Kitante Road, in Kampala, enjoy viewing what is displayed in the main gallery. However, many have no idea about a richer treasure trove of artefacts stored in a section that academic researchers are more familiar with.

In fact, even the locked entrance to this section is hidden behind a picture panel showcasing apes. It takes permission from the commissioner, who hands over a key and instructs a guide to lead

interested visitors.

Inside, it is as dark as a dungeon, the lighting having long malfunctioned. One has to make use of light from their cell-phone and squint their eyes to make out what is on display.

Priceless collection

Here one finds hundreds of collections – painstakingly put together decades ago by curators who had a vision of how useful such items would be in the future.

With time many of the ethnographic items our forefathers used lost relevance and have been replaced by modern machines, instruments and utensils. The art of making these items has gone extinct in some

cultures, but it is a relief to see what our ancestors could fathom out of the materials available to them.

There are string and percussion instruments of different sizes from different Ugandan tribes. You find weapons of war and defense, from bamboo arrows and rhino-hide shields, to rows of spears. There is bark

cloth and ornaments made from beads, iron and animal skin. One suspicious looking copper coil bracelet of the Kikuyu people of central Kenya, echoes the stories about material being stolen from the Uganda Railway construction sites to make jewellery.

Treasures from Uganda and beyond
It emerges that one can find artefacts from peoples and cultures beyond Uganda. Apart from the Kikuyu jewellery, there are baskets from the Sudan, Somali pots and Hutu shields, among others.

Other relics include furniture from the first churches and royal palaces – still covered with polythene sheets – and figureheads, all of which are, unfortunately not labeled.

Old photos and negatives, audio recordings and hand-written registers bring a bygone era back to life. One only wishes this invaluable archive was put to more frequent use by more Ugandans.

Preserved flora and fauna

Further inside, a preserved leopard stands in a corner still wrapped in protective polythene. Rose Nkaale Mwanja, the commissioner for Museums and Monuments in the tourism ministry, reveals that there are more creatures preserved chemically, including snakes, birds and butterflies. The museum also has plant collections, especially medicinal and endangered species.

Museum history

The items were brought from the School of Fine Art at Makerere University in 1954, which was the museum’s second home, after Fort Lugard building became too small for the collections.

Most of these collections were made by Margaret Trowell,who was the first curator, and her successor Professor Merrick Posnansky. Mwanja credits Klauss Wachsmann, a musician who traversed the country to gather material for what she termed, ‘the best music collection in Africa’.