Thirty three Old Boys of Ntale recount 1990s memories

The 1990s were a different country. There was no global warming or Kamala Harris. Well, at least not in the news. The ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) had just captured state power in 1986, so their hold on it was a lot shakier than it is now.

The tycoons were different, too. Names such as Ssembule, Patrick Kawooya and Gordon Wavamunno, who permed his hair to look like he was part of the American music group Full Force, were the people we aspired to be like.

President Museveni peppered his speeches with references to Milton Obote and Idi Amin because there seemed a real possibility that the two might return and send the NRM packing.
There were no kingdoms, until the early 1990s had given way to the mid-1990s, a time when our first real professional footballer, Magid Musisi, travelled to France to earn his keep.
Amidst all this, Ntare School was finding its proverbial feet. Its headmaster, Stephen Kamuhanda, had just left King’s College, Budo, where he deputised Samuel Busulwa. Before that, in 1991, the author of this book had just joined Ntare School on February 18, 1991. Back then, the school was a “place of pride and optimism.”

“The 1990s Ntare School experience was mainly forged in the following eight places: the classroom, the dormitory, the dining hall, the sports field, the assembly ground, the main hall, the canteen, and the campaign trail (for student leadership),” writes the author.
It was in these varied crucibles that the ‘lions of Ntare’ were lionised to sufficiently find their roar. When we say lions, we refer to the students of the school.
In this telling, the first lion to share his experiences in this context, was Dan Kidega. Before he became a political leader of note, he was a revolutionary, who changed the fortunes of his fellow students.

“We caused a revolution in the canteen management. When I became the head prefect, I sat down with the chairman of the students’ council and we resolved to make the canteen a student’s project. The canteen became the property of the student’s body. Students stocked it and ran it,” Kidega shares.
This remarkable feat led to other accomplishments, which improved the school and the livelihoods of not only the students, but also helped foster the very ethos of what it means to be in a school that has produced Uganda’s most accomplished leaders, in the last 40 years.
All the experiences shared in this book are of this vintage. We see a student body on the rise, revealing why Ntare is one of the best schools in the country. Of course, such a laurel could not reflect the excellence of the school without also bringing forth the mischief that comes with adolescence.

Hillary Walter Byakwaga, who joined the school in 1993, is Lion 19, in this delectable literary offering. And his recollections are hilarious.

When talking about teachers who impacted his days at Ntare, he says: “Mrs Karusigarira, the Geography teacher, taught well, but her way of talking almost made you fail to understand what she was saying. It is as if the words were being forced out of her mouth. Basing on her looks, the students had nicknamed her ‘Ekitaka,’ an unpleasant word to mean she was plain. This did not go well with her, and, in a rare burst of fury, she allegedly told one class that, ‘You boys call me Ekitaka, but my husband knows how sweet I am!’”

The Roar of the 1990s is an engaging collection of the memories of 33 Ntare School alumni that attended the school in the 1990s. Most of them went on to become outstanding professionals, entrepreneurs and politicians.
Accordingly, they share memories which prove that Ntare School has carved out such singular greatness that it deserves to be called what social anthropologists term a non-recurring phenomenon.