A professor who dreamt of being a bus driver

While 38 years is a lifetime for many, it is the time Bernard Turyagenda Kiremire, a professor of organic chemistry, has spent serving Makerere University. Save for a few years away on study leave, it is a time that has seen him rise from the beginning stages of a teaching assistant to those of the highest-ranking university teacher.

He was recently part of a group of professors who were thrown a retirement party by the university. He will, however, continue to serve the campus, doing research and teaching, as he works on a contract basis. He is a man who as a child, dreamed of becoming a bus driver, but grew up to impart knowledge to others of one of the most complex science disciplines.

His life is one that has been defined by academic excellence in some parts and hard work in others. He does not have a Masters qualification and yet he has a PhD. Reason? His grades halfway his Masters were so good, his supervisors nudged him on to a PhD straightway. He was the only one of his five fellow PhD students who went ahead to graduate.

His story is one of humble beginnings. “I was born in Rukungiri District, in Nyarushanje sub-county, in 1947. And then in the 1950s, around 1955, I was arrested and taken to school,” he says. “I never started voluntarily. They arrested me and gave me six canes and took me to school, saying I had refused to go school,” he adds. “And since that time, I have been in school because I feared canes.”

He attended Bwanga Church School in Bwanga parish, Runkungiri, and Karukata Primary School. He then studied at Kinyasano Junior Secondary School, (the current Makobore Secondary School) Kigezi College Butobere, and Teso College Aleot for secondary school.

Amazed by bus drivers
He says the image of bus drivers wowed him and drew him to wanting to be like them. “I could see these guys with big buses, negotiating corners and I dreamed of becoming a driver,” he says.

“During our time, there was really no peer group for you to see people who have gone to school. So, you really didn’t know what was there. For me, the highest thing I could dream of was driving a bus in the rural areas, until I went to secondary school in Butobere; that is when I started knowing that there are sciences and arts, and one can become a scientist.”

He arrived at Makerere University, as a student, in 1970 to study Chemistry and Biochemistry until 1973. He returned to Makerere in 1974 as a teaching assistant. And from then until today, he would be associated with the institution.

The pay for university staff is a contentious issue. But in the early 1970s, they were well paid, he said, even for teaching assistants, enough to say buy good clothes, support your parents and even buy a good music system.

In 1975, after getting a research assistantship and a teaching assistantship, Prof Kiremire left to study for his Masters at the University of Windsor, in Ontario, Canada. He studied Chemistry and Biochemistry, and towards the second year, switched to a PhD in organic chemistry, which he completed in 1979. He left Canada just at the time when coups and counter coups were the song in Uganda after President Idi Amin’s overthrow. He spent some time in Zambia with his brother before returning in 1980 as a lecturer.

Unlike in the early 1970s, the economy had nosedived into the ground. “Pay was so little,” he says. “It could not get you through a month. You had to do something else in order to stay working at Makerere,” he says. And this he did. He took up a teaching post at Kampala High School, started a chicken rearing business and bought a van, which he used to market bread and confectionaries for bakeries in town. The specific moment he points out as his most challenging moment was in 1986, when the NRM took over government.

Hard times
“It was extremely difficult. You would take your cushions from the sitting room, put them under the bed and lock your room and know that if they break in, I am going to remain with this in my bed,” he says.

It was not until 1991 that he would earn a promotion to Senior Lecturer. In between, he had sabbatical leaves in Glasgow, Scotland and in Italy. From these, he was able to buy a car, which he later sold to buy land and start building rental houses.

Prof Kiremire became an associate professor in 1993 and became a full professor in 2006. He is married to Noredah Kiremire and they have three children, one girl and two boys. And these are what he considers his most treasured asset.

“I treasure my children, really,” he says. “That I have educated them and they are becoming somebody. My first son is doing a PhD, my daughter is doing a masters degree and they are all doing this while still young. My last son is studying software engineering. These are my pride really.”

He says his passion has always been “capacity building”. His draws fulfilment from seeing people he has taught becoming important people. Some of his students are now lecturing at Busitema, Kyambogo, Makerere and Mbarara universities. “I find that as my best achievement in as far as building Uganda is concerned,” he says.

Other feats that he counts as achievements are publication in international journals and the recognition that has come with it. Since 1998, he has worn 17 research grants mostly from international donor agencies. “Using the funds from the grants,I have supervised over 30Msc graduates and 5PhD graduates.Currently,I am co-suprevising 10 PhD graduates,two of whom are Kenyans,”he says.

Prof Kiremire holds a strong attachment to the laboratories at his department. He takes this reporter on a visit through them, explaining the complexities of the machinery inside, and, showing various equipment he managed to get for the university through donations. Perhaps more than anything, chemistry has come to define his life.

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