BUKENYA: My students’ achievements in their various fields justify my classroom career

Wanjiku Matenjwa wrote recently to correct me. She reminded me that there was a “star-spangled” Shakespeare production at Makerere, in which Margaret Macpherson, David Rubadiri, Pio Zirimu, Arthur Gakwandi, yours truly and Wanjiku herself featured.

Dr Matenjwa is right. We did have such a production, dubbed “An Evening with Shakespeare” and directed by David Rubadiri, at the Uganda National Theatre sometime in 1975, I believe.

But the show I was speaking of, which couldn’t have taken place, was the one claimed to have included people like Milton Obote, Julius Nyerere, Ben Mkapa and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who were at Makerere at different and widely-spaced times.

The most exciting part of Wanjiku Matenjwa’s communication, however, was simply my getting to hear from her again, for she is a very special student of mine. She is one of the very few with whom I have had the rare experience of interacting at two, or very nearly three, East African universities. 

When we did the Shakespeare show, she was a literature undergraduate at Makerere. But then, Esther Chesire, another Kenyan student, was grabbed from Entebbe Airport and “disappeared” by Idi Amin’s killer squads.

DIPLOMATIC ROW

The incident caused a major diplomatic row between Kenya and Uganda, which necessitated the evacuation of Wanjiku and many of her fellow Kenyan students from Makerere.

Fortunately for Wanjiku Matenjwa and her colleagues, the University of Nairobi was able to accommodate them, and since there was close coordination of courses among the East African Universities, they easily fitted into their new departments. Hardly a year later, I showed up at the Department of Literature in Nairobi, a fugitive from the Amin terror, like my students.

It must have been then, when I was “freelancing” at UON, that I taught Wanjiku again. I remember Ngugi wa Thiong’o teasingly remarking to me once, when he found me chatting with Wanjiku, “Well, you can see we’re messing up your girl’s neat Makerere tradition with our revolutionary ideas.”

Anyway, Wanjiku maintained her brilliant performance through to graduate study, and later joined me as a colleague in the Department of Literature at Kenyatta, our third meeting on campus. But KU was not yet an autonomous university then. That is why I said Wanjiku and I have interacted at “nearly” three universities. She went further afield later and we lost contact until her recent communication.

But, as I keep saying, naming names is an invidious task for a “long-lasting” mwalimu like me.

Once I start, each and every one of my students and pupils, from the little ones I taught at the Save the Children Reception Centre in Kampala after my O-Levels in 1962 to my current graduate supervises, has a right to demand individual mention.

This is particularly fair because I can say, in total sincerity, that in my entire teaching career, I can’t think of a single protégé of mine that I would rather forget. But of course, even if my editor were to indulge me with a whole column or even several columns, just to mention the names of my students, I would still be found wanting. 

Sometime last December, one of my former students at Kenyatta University, who is also a mwalimu and columnist like me, wondered in these pages if I remember or take due pride in all the hundreds, maybe thousands, of students I have taught in my long and variegated career.

EMPHATIC YES

The answer is an emphatic “Yes” to both questions. It’s impossible, of course, to remember the details of each name and face. But my “collective memory” of all the wonderful people I have been privileged to teach is one, uninterrupted and undiluted stream of joy and satisfaction.

As for the pride, that is unqualified. As I said once in these pages, my students’ achievements in their various fields of endeavour are the surest justification of my classroom and lecture room career, what I called “vociferation and chalk-eating”.

An amazing group I should mention though is my first “oral literature” class, which I taught way back in the 1969/70 academic year at Makerere. There were only five students on Course 707: three Ugandans, one American and one Kenyan. They all distinguished themselves in academic and communication professions.

Constance Lukara and Immaculate Namutebi had illustrious academic careers at Kyambogo University, where I was briefly their colleague a few years ago. The third Ugandan, Josephine Beebwa, headed one of the most prominent girls’ schools in Western Uganda before taking up a university teaching job in Burundi. Currently she represents her religious congregation at the Vatican.

Laura Tanna, the American, settled in Jamaica, pioneered folkloric research there and was recently honoured by the Jamaican Government for her contribution to the country’s cultural awareness: my reggae girl!

The Kenyan on the course was Jim Akenga, the famous broadcaster in the Voice of Kenya (VOK) era of our KBC, who eventually became Director of Information in the line ministry. This group I certainly can claim as my own.

I have often dreamt of a grand reunion with all my former students in Nairobi or in Kampala, or maybe one in each city, where we can relive the good old days and also have a look at where Mwalimu’s teaching has got us.

Recently, when I was settling down to dinner at a hotel in Westlands, a former student hailed me, saying he couldn’t fail to recognise “that voice”. When I called him by name, Leteipa ole Sunkuli asked me how I managed to remember my students.

I answered jokingly that I only remembered the best and the most troublesome ones, but I wasn’t going to tell him to which group he belonged.

Maybe I should ask Sunkuli to organise the Nairobi reunion. But in the meantime, why not get in touch individually, as Wanjiku has done?