The walking stick of the government

Last week in this column I recreated the brief visit of Kabaka Mutesa II to Masaba School, in Bugisu District, in 1956. Fast-forward to the visit of President Museveni to the same Masaba (Secondary) School in 2005 – and you encounter one of the supreme moments of my life. 
That supreme moment was when His Excellency, who was guest of honour at the school’s belated golden jubilee celebrations, soon after commencing on his speech – irresistibly burst into hearty laughter accompanied by tears of pure delight.

At the time of the celebrations ‘yours truly’ here (oftentimes reduced to just ‘I’) was presidential advisor on literary affairs – ah, too many individuals often asked me what that meant! – a position that has since expired as I translate my bygone ventures and current recollections into ink. 
But that was not the qualification for my being at the golden celebrations of Masaba School; I was there as one of the excited original students of the school, having found my way there in 1956, when the school was just three years old and had all the aura of a brand new and unique phenomenon in the very heart of Masaabaland.

Ah, but back to laughter. What could be more heart-revealing and heart-warming than when a personage of the highest social or hierarchical status drops the mask of ‘Your Holiness’ and ‘Your Honour’ – and simply bursts out with genuine laughter? It is at moments such as this that we appreciate the humanity that we all share: the humanity which is, at best, characterised by smiling and laughter and sleep and playing and passion and compassion and work and worship.
Apart from the obvious reason of celebrating the school’s golden jubilee, the second stated reason was that of using the occasion to rally financial support from the Government of Uganda and privileged individuals to rehabilitate the school’s buildings which were visibly in a sorry state of dilapidation. 

Accordingly, almost every speaker who got up to say something dwelt on the need to urgently rehabilitate the school buildings and premises.
Significantly, among the various speakers preceding the President’s important speech were a number of past headmasters of the school. 
To my amused surprise, each one of them in turn said that the school performed very well and was maintained very well under his leadership – and that the fall in standards and the physical dilapidation must have set in during the leadership of a later headmaster!
It was against this immediate background that, when my turn came to say something, I soonest remarked, “As you have heard and can see, Your Excellency, the headmaster who ran this school down has not yet arrived at this meeting to…” – thereby (I recall this with due humility, I assure you) unintentionally causing a burst of spontaneous laugher from President Museveni as well as the guests and hosts.
 
And so it was that when His Excellency soon thereafter got up to deliver his speech of the day, he maintained and extended the atmosphere of laugher and jollity, notwithstanding his serious developmental message.
He was indeed in that very mood from the very start of his speech, first taking the liberty of making a digression in which he generously said that at the time he appointed ‘yours truly’ as presidential advisor, he did not know that I was an old boy of Masaba School.

And then he went on to recall an incident at an NRC (National Resistance Council) meeting in parliamentary chambers which he had chaired some 15 years back, during which ‘Yours Truly’ had said something about a certain Army which up to 1971 was the walking stick of Government, but which walking stick had taken over government, and made the overthrown government its walking stick – at which point His Excellency burst into the aforementioned hearty laughter of pure delight, till he wiped his tears with a handkerchief.

Prof Wangusa is a poet and novelist.                  

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