By The Independent

Copyright independent

SPECIAL REPORT | Namasagali College in Kamuli, Uganda has kick-started a series of activities to mark the first anniversary of the death of their longest ever serving headteacher, Mill Hill Missionary (MHM) Rev Fr Damian Grimes. Fr Grimes taught in Uganda from 1959 and was between August 1967 and December 2020 headmaster of Namasagali established at a disused railway terminus-cum-harbour along the River Nile as it prepares to pour into Lake Kyoga. Beyond Kyoga, the river plunges over the Murchison Falls to career into Lake Albert then trudge on to Sudan and Egypt where it ends up as a delta on the Mediterranean Sea coast.

While Fr Grimes had retired back to the United Kingdom (UK) when he died in September last year, the Namasagali College Board of Governors (BoG) and the Namasagali Old Students Association (NOSA) successfully sought special dispensation of the UK Foreign Secretary to repatriate the remains for burial at Namasagali.

The anniversary activities started with an Agape (Greek expression for unconditional, selfless and sacrificial love) evening at Kati Kati restaurant in Kampala on Friday, 12th and will climax with the official opening of the mausoleum at Namasagali on Sunday 21st September. Fr Grimes was a great adherent to Agape, organising it for students (girls and boys alike) to play popular music deep into the evenings, dance in swimwear and sip on coffee. Fr Grimes also regularly held other party-mood events at the riverside, such as the Saturday evening dance called “ka-danki”, during which he ensured that every girl had a boy to dance with and vice-versa. His reasoning was that if the children were not given opportunity to dance freely at school, they would be tempted to jump through windows at home to go dancing with companions of doubtful character. There was also a boating regatta, where students would compete to paddle locally made boats to Bugerere, one kilometre across the river on the Buganda side. Champion swimmers, including a girl called Grace Flavia Ibanda, also braved the fast-flowing waters laden with snakes to cross the river.

Some of the alumni hope that an annual pilgrimage to the Grimes Mausoleum will revive the fortunes of the legendary school

Namasagali College was once Uganda’s biggest, richest and most famous Ordinary (O) and Advanced (A) Level boarding private secondary school in Uganda with a population of nearly 900 in 1990. Fr Grimes mostly took in mediocre students but gave them a broad range of skills that enabled them to succeed in life. Uganda’s Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for East African Community Affairs Hon Rebecca Kadaga, is a Namasagalian of the 1970s. Musicians Rachael Magoola, Julian Kanyomozi and Iryen Namubiru are also Namasagalians. So are Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA) Deputy Executive Director Olive Birungi Lumonya, Chief of Citizenship and Immigration Control Major General Apollo Gowa, lawyers Isaac Musumba and Robert Kabushenga as well as journalist/business guru Stephen Asiimwe.

However, the school fell on hard times in the late 1990s and has since been converted into a Government Universal Post-Primary Education and Training (UPPET) school, with a population of only about 300 many of who are day-scholars. Government has already contracted the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) Construction Unit to replace the crumbled railway terminus-cum-harbour structures with modern buildings. Some of the alumni hope that an annual pilgrimage to the Grimes Mausoleum, along with construction of modern facilities at a railway terminus-cum-harbour that was abandoned following the el nino floods of 1961 that made them unviable as a transport business, will revive the fortunes of the legendary school.

Former Teacher Alfred Geresom Musamali Read from Grimes Book of Memoirs

The Kati Kati Agape was attended by Lumonya and Gowa. Former Namasagali teacher Alfred Geresom Musamali read to the alumni what he called the juiciest excerpts from “Uganda: My Mission” written by Fr Grimes. The book of memoires was published by the St Joseph’s Missionary Society of the UK in 2016. In the book, Fr Grimes narrates his escapades with former President General (by then he was not yet a Field Marshal) Idi Amin Dada who insisted on being addressed by his full titles of Victoria Cross (VC), Distinguished Service Order (DSO), Military Cross (MC) Conqueror of the British Empire (CBE) and King of Scotland.

On two occasions, writes Fr Grimes who was in the 1970’s Chairman of the Uganda Armature Boxing Association, he had to fool Idi Amin in order to move things forward. “Apart from the actual boxing, there were several conferences, social events and diplomatic events to attend. As Chairman, I was the host in particular to Monsieur Houcine Houichi from Tunisia, who was the Chairman of the African Bureau of the International Amateur Boxing Association (IABA),” writes Fr Grimes. He was a very charming, gentle man, but spoke only French, so I had to act as his English interpreter. It was not the first time that my French had proved useful since at previous conferences and competitions we had had to deal with officials and delegates from French speaking countries,” writes Fr Grimes in the book Musamali read aloud.

In the Book, Grimes says He Did Not Only Award Idi Amin a Fake Gold Medal but Also Translated for Him Fake French

“Looking after Monsieur Houichi was not always purely diplomatic. At one function, I arranged for him to be sat down in the place of honour as chief guest, but then I had to go to attend to some other matter. Meanwhile, a senior army officer arrived late and the stewards turfed Monsieur Houichi out of his seat and sat the officer there. When I realised this, I told the stewards to correct it, but they would not listen,” he adds, saying that it took intervention of a more senior military officer to recover Monsieur Houichi’s seat.

But Fr Grimes points out how General Idi Amin, himself a former boxing champion, was always meddling in sports administration. “Amin, of course, was very much in evidence, and he was being very charming. Some people said that he put the charm on, but I do not think so. He was a psychopath, so when he was nice, he was for that moment being nice, even if shortly before he had been issuing murderous orders”.

A psychopath is a mentally unstable person, especially one having an egoistic and antisocial personality marked by lack of remorse for one’s actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies.

“Quite apart from social and diplomatic events, Amin also sat and took part with us at the tables when we were undertaking the administration of the actual matches, working out draws, allocating of referees, judges, and so on. As Amin was working with us, especially as we were working out the distribution of medals, we realised that Amin would regard it as proper that he should also get a medal and, naturally, only gold would do for Amin,” writes Fr Grimes. But they had no spare medals so Fr Grimes riskily faked one for General Amin.

“Fortunately, in boxing both semi-finalists get a bronze and in the heavier weights there are fewer competitors, so sometimes there is a spare bronze and one was spare in this case. Of course, it would have been unthinkable to present Amin with a mere bronze medal. I am a model railway enthusiast so I solved it by painting the bronze medal gold with model railway paint. Amin did a bogus exhibition bout in the ring with the coach, Grace Seruwagi, and of course Amin was allowed to win. Houichi presented the fake gold medal to Amin.,” writes Fr Grimes.

As if presenting a fake medal to General Amin was not grave enough, Fr Grimes also says he fakely translated Houichi’s French for the President. “Houichi made his presentation speech in French, which I had to interpret. This was a bit of a strain since it was very embarrassing for me to have to shout translations of Houichi’s extravagant praises of Amin down a microphone to a very large crowd of people. At one point, Houichi described Amin as ‘Champion de toute L’Afrique’ (‘Champion of all Africa’). I was just not prepared to say that. Something inside me rebelled and I skipped past that part of the speech and continued to translate the rest of it. I thought I had got away with it but a journalist came to me afterwards asking me about the piece I had left out,” the MHM priest adds.

Musamali and Esther Mwambu are Raising a Storm by Seeking to Revise the Grimes Book

The book is, however, out of print and Musamali and Esther Mwambu (co-editors), Fr Grimes former student and personal assistant, are working with NOSA, the Namasagali College Board of Governors and Patrict Baguma Bitature who is the administrator of the Fr Grimes Estate to get the book republished locally. But Musamali and Mwambu also propose to revise sections of the book before it goes into print. Concerns have been expressed in NOSA circles, though, about the competence of Musamali and Mwambu to revise the book.

“Fr Grimes recorded events as they unveiled themselves before his own eyes and ears. Some of the events even occurred before any of us was borne. Besides, Fr Grimes was a native English speaker. It is, therefore, unlikely that any of the former teachers who only served briefly on the Namasagali staff, together with one of the Namasagali former students who also only briefly acted as the Fr Grimes personal assistant, could have the competence to either recall the events or craft the narrative more accurately, more grammatically correct and more humurously than Fr Grimes himself did,” said one of the concerned alumni.

The co-editors defended the initiative, saying, in his Acknowledgements Fr Grimes points that “My laziness and reluctance to write prevented any progress in the work. However, Mr Tefula, a former student of Namasagali who has a senior post in finance at the United Nations in Nairobi, Kenya, persuaded me to send him regular emails in which I wrote sections or short chapters of the book” (pi). Then, according to Musamali and Mwambu, in the Preface, Fr Grimes admits, “I was never a regular journal writer, so my observations will necessarily be to the best of my recollections” (piv). This combined lack of reference records and reluctant to write, say Musamali and Mwambu, gives us an impression that Fr Grimes run the risk of not being thorough enough in crafting this book and constitutes the prime rationale for our proposal to revise the book in spite of the majority of his alumni possibly disapproving of the “tampering”. They say that most likely the persons against the revision have not read the book to see the glaring issues in it, including factual mix-ups and grammar errors.

The Co-Editors Say, “We do Fr Grimes great honour when we seek to uplift his book to the highest standards”

In their concept note for the revision the co-editors say, “We do Fr Grimes great honour when we seek to uplift his work to the highest standards”.

They say, “The challenge will then be how to do so courteously – that is, without distortion and without causing any embarrassment… It is our hope that this revision will add value to the Fr Grimes memoires by contributing towards making the reading flow more smoothly, the meaning clearer and, therefore, the narrative more entertainingly”.