It's Our Duty as Parents to Teach Children about our Culture

Like most of my most treasured habits and traits, I attribute the love for my culture and language to my mother.  Growing up with a single working parent, my mother- she always shipped me off to my grandmother’s home in the village at every opportunity.  In the 1970s, Kireka where I lived with my mother, was not that much of a town but it was better than Kiwanga a mere 5km away along Jinja Road. The house in Kiwanga had no power, there was neither radio nor tv. We woke up every morning to go to till the gardens using a handheld hoe and used firewood to cook. This was certainly not the kind of life that would be cherished by a young man growing up.  The food was cooked as is – straight from the garden, with no spice or oil and it had a bland taste, but we never went hungry.  It was there in plenty and most importantly it was organic.  Bread was only eaten during the Christian festivities of Christmas or Easter, not that we used to eat it every morning in Kireka, but it was available when you could afford it.   

I must have been 6 years old the very first time my mother bundled me into a car and left me in Kiwanga. I recall having cried the whole day and even cursed her for leaving me in the bush. I certainly did not like it. Yet this place did eventually turn out to be my favourite childhood place. Like all kids of that age, I soon made a lot of friends at my grandmother’s place. I started looking forward to the school holidays with excitement. During the holidays, there would be no less than 20 of us grandkids – and this meant loads of fun and playtime. Our Jjajjadid not care how far we went out, how much we played as long as we did our morning lubimbi and were back home for dinner before darkness set in.   

My mother’s family loves our Buganda culture to death. One of my granduncles was a Saza chief.  He wrote a book about serving as a soldier in World War II.  How I wish he had penned something about his life as a Saza chief.  I would have had an opportunity to peep into what life was like, for my mother never stopped going on about them good old days. 

I learnt very early on from my time as a child, even if the kingdom had been abolished, that we as Baganda had a Kabaka who had been ‘exiled and killed’ by a man called Obote. I was not of voting age in 1980 when he returned to stand for the office of the President of the Republic of Uganda, but even if I were, Milton Obote would not have got my vote. I had heard so much from my mother’s conversations with other adults in Kireka and back in Kiwanga that I knew that Obote was not good person. He had visited untold suffering on our kingdom, our people and our culture. In my world and thinking then, he was the reason why my mother was always unhappy and mourning the passing of a Kabaka.  From my mother’s conversations, I fell in love with the Kabaka I had never seen and from my grandmother; love for the culture of Baganda got deeply engrained in me.   

Culture is defined as the ideas, customs and social behaviour of society or ethnic groups.  My grandmother lived and brought us up in the culture of the Baganda. It was so strict that it got scary sometimes. I wish I could pass even half of what she passed on to me to my children.  On a good day, she would tell us stories about the palace, the origin of some cultural taboos while being careful enough not to reveal to us that most of them were myths.  She probably believed some of them herself. I fell in love with our culture, our ways of life and the mighty kingdom of Buganda. 

Later as I improved my reading skills, I started reading novels and other books. While my peers walked around with books written by James Hadley Chase, or novels from Mills and Boon, I was reading Nketta Mu Bizinga, Zinunula Omunaku, Sanyu Teriberera, Kate ne Banne, Bonna Baasumagira, Bazibumbiraetc. I did not only enjoy the stories that were being told but I immensely improved my understanding of the culture and writing of Luganda. Later, an opportunity presented itself to further my understanding of the Buganda culture during my secondary school education. I studied Luganda as a subject for two years and would have loved to continue with the subject to an even higher level. This was not to be because I was also an avid science student and the school lessons’ timetable would not allow a student of Physics, Economics and Mathematics ‘to study Luganda’.  In fact, I attempted to attend some Luganda lessons along the way but whether deliberately or not, a few weeks later the timetable was tweaked, and Mathematics and Luganda lessons ended up being in the same period. I had to make a choice. 

My interest in Luganda did not go unnoticed. I was teased by friends and detractors for being a ‘Luganda lover’. There are two comments I especially remember to this day. One of my friends asked me whether I was studying Luganda to be a Luganda news reader and he went on tease me ‘Amawulire gagaano nga gabasomerwa Robert Kiggundu’ while imitating the voice of a popular Luganda news anchor of the time called Robert Bogera Mayanja. Later on in our young adult life, I chaired a lot of wedding meetings and one misguided young muganda lady (she would be called a Slay Queen today)came to me and said,‘but you guy why do you like using Luganda all the time, wabula oli local’. Such comments would offend me, but never made me lose the interest. Actually, I went on record later in life to say that I will never apologise for speaking Luganda or being proud of my Buganda roots. 

Many years later, my good grasp of Luganda and average understanding of English paid off.  For many years between 1998 and 2008, I made money out of my oratory skills and apt knowledge of Luganda. I was hired as a spokesman at traditional weddings (kwanjula),as an MC for conventional weddings and offered basic information to those who wanted to learn a thing or two about the language and culture for a small fee.  Now that I am almost 50 years old, I feel so proud to be a tad knowledgeable about my culture and language. It’s a feeling I cannot exchange for being modern/advanced or whatever the opposite of ‘local’ is. Yet I still know so little of this vast language and culture. I still join Luganda and Buganda Culture interest groups in my quest for knowledge. I only have one regret; none of my children has picked the same interest in our language and culture as I had when I was growing up. 

For the young ones out there, who are interested in learning and understanding your local languages and culture, do not give up. The attackers of our languages and cultures will brand you all sorts of things; backward, local even satanic, but there is no better feeling, especially later in life than knowing who you are and why you are. However well you speak the English language, you will still be called a foreigner. Two of my relatives have had their entire education in UK but when it comes to that time – they are classified among those who speak English as a foreign language.  Unfortunately, they cannot speak what is presumed to be their first language – Luganda. I am probably guilty of not insisting on them speaking it all the time, but I try to teach them the importance of knowing and getting acquainted with their local language and culture.