Mention one, two, three or four artistes in Uganda, and the fifth one will most likely trace their artistry back to Namasagali College. Especially those who earned their stripes in art, from the late 90s and further back.
From the 1970s, when the so-called traditional schools threw their weights on deeply imparting the orthodox curricula as it were, rendering the arts less important, Namasagali College chose a different path.
The school was established in 1965, in the Eastern part of Uganda, particularly in present day Kamuli district. Originally, the institution was called Kamuli College. A year later, the school would be relocated to its current location, not far away from its initial locus, and consequently it changed its name to Namasagali College, jointly owned and run by the Busoga Kingdom and the Mill Hill Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church.
Subsequently, the first two Head Teachers of the school were Mill Hill Fathers, namely, Father Navel (1965 to 1966) and Father Damian Grimes (1966 to 2000). Grimes would go ahead to become the custodian of Namasagali’s identity, as this article seeks to elaborate.
After Father Grimes’ tenure, the school became publicly owned under Ministry of Education and Sports. It was not too long before its revered image would become a preserve of history books.
Located strategically on the banks of River Nile, as it flows gently to Egypt, the sagalis, as the students in 70s, 80s and 90s, referred to each other, indeed, enjoyed a serene surrounding, perfect for a creative mind.
Namasagali College: the place where students’ and parents’ expectations of what a school ought to be were blown far out of the ordinary; a school with a peculiar extra-curricular regimentation that set ground for students to learn music, dance, drama and everything art. If you were around the National Theatre in the 90s quite often, then you possibly remember a school whose students frequented the place with such fascinating uniqueness that no other school could even try to replicate.
At Namasagali, your voice had to be ready for a challenge beyond shouting in class and reciting facts and concepts from History, Physics or Biology. Your limbs could not afford to be feeble because the dance trainings were rather intense, your creative mind had to be busier than just thinking about where you left your meal card. This culture was largely exhibited in the school’s sports activities as well. Indeed, Namasagali was the embodiment of a holistic education.
While your orthodox school followed a 6:00am-till-late program, where students endured everything books and blackboards, classes at Namasagali would end at 1:30pm every weekday, and the rest of the day would be about extra-curricular activities, central among which was drama and sports.
When Namasagali and theatre became inseparable
Now, Namasagali College, for those who attended the school in its prime years, was not your usual boujie, traditional school with facilities modern enough for a child to almost feel at home. No. In fact, at first glance, one would struggle with the idea that the premises hosted a school, because until 1965, the place was a railway station. It was transformed into a school with no major refurbishments made.
Ian Kiyingi Muddu, an arts writer, wrote, in 2020, that the school’s main hall, where its iconic plays were birthed, used to be a warehouse for the railway station. Yeah, the facilities were makeshift to that level. But boy did that scrappy environment mould some of the most revered artists in the land!
Well-to-do parents, government officials all could not resist the urge to have their children share in the ever-flowing cultural enrichment at the school. It did not matter that their children, indeed, had to fetch water from the mighty Nile because, well, the school had no running tap water. But who cares about tap water when you have the world’s longest river in your backyard?
Speaking of the school’s firm grip on art and culture, Namasagali College had a very strict structure that had to be followed to the letter. Every Sunday, all students had to participate in a dance that showcased various routines and cultures, coupled with annual creative dance competitions. On top of this, the school staged beauty contents, poetry recitals and a drama & music festival every year.
Amidst Namasagali’s emphasis on non-academic activities, theatre became the hallmark of the school and its identity. Father Grimes, the longest serving Head teacher of the school, never stuttered when it came to stressing how passionate he was about drama and dance.
In fact, a story goes that, when Grimes realized that boxing as a sport at Namasagali College was a violent one, which reduced students confidence, after losing a match, he banned the sport, replacing it with acting.
In the 80s and 90s, when Namasagali College had the National Theatre as their home for theatrical activities, it was a time of untamable excitement in town. Everyone sought to watch, listen and marvel at the crisp voices, thrilling footwork and dance moves, and creative wordplay displayed during the students’ plays on stage.
Owing to Father Grimes’ tenacious attitude towards perfection, precision, impression and assertiveness, as Muddu wrote, whenever the Sagalis pulled up, as today’s street speak goes, they would turn heads. The girls were always the crowd pullers at the theatre, clad outstandingly in their short, red dresses.
Speaking English too good to imitate, the Sagalis were the epitome of enviable students by the rest of the students that crowded the Kampala-based theatre at the time.
When you wanted to watch Juliet piercing through Romeo’s heart with love and passion, it was Namasagali students that gave you that passionate once-in-a-lifetime feel.
Even outside the mainstream entertainment, all the Sagalis who made their mark at National theatre were stars in Kampala. If you are an admirer of Cleopatra Koheirwe as an actress, today, chances are high that your parents were her first admirers on stage, as a student from Namasagali College.
At the National theatre, the school held annual theatre productions and for the biggest part, Father Grimes was the writer and Director. Casting which student would take a role in a play, as actor and former Sagali – Raymond Rushabiro, recalls, was always meticulous. Only the cream of the cream made the cut.
From the annual creative drama competitions held at the school, as this article earlier mentioned, the best actors, dancers and singers from the various inter-house and inter-class competitions would make it to the final team. With Father Grimes’ pedantry, you had to show up with your A+ game.
“It was always a whole lot of training drills, rehearsals until perfection was attained. Singers had intensive vocal training,” recalls Rushabiro, an award-winning actor who still thrives in theatre as part of the cast of Fun Factory.
In fact, there were, Rushabiro adds, “classes on human anatomy and physiology for dancers to be aware of their bodies and movement on stage.” That is how particular Grimes was with his dramatists.
On stage, Namasagali, despite having Grimes, an expatriate from the Western world, at the helm of the school and its productions, exemplified Africa and her stories as much as it could.
The most notable African stories can be traced in some of their plays like Song of Bantu (1978) which had exciting Zulu dances that got the audience almost attempting to dance along. Adapting West African music and sounds, Spanish Romance (1991) and Great Caesar (1989) were spot on. From the captivating tales of Shaka – the Zulu hero, Song of Impi (1982) was one of the school’s hit plays at the theatre.
Other plays included In The Beginning Was The Woman (1996), Notorious (1997), Bashi Bazook (1998), The Republic of Faminia (1999), The Secret Agent (2000), Timeless Beauty (2001), The Silent Rebel (2002), The Xenope (2003) and The Fury (2004).
Namasagali College’s repertoire spanned over 20 musical and dance dramas over a period of close to three decades. At the National Theatre, no school had ever embodied drama and theatre like Namasagali did.
When Namasagali spewed talents in the creative sector
When Namasagali College shined, in the 80s and 90s, the mainstream spectrum of art and media shined, too. At the time, it should be remembered, that theatre, on a larger scale, was in its prime time, and to a memorable extent, some of the notable drama outfits have Namasagali College to thank for talents they started out with.
When the Ebonies became the most venerated drama group both on TV and stage, in the 90s, they had playwright and actor – Kwezi Kaganda, a former Sagali, to shape their beginnings. Rushabiro would join them later on.
Still talking theatre, when Phillip Luswata’s sketch comedy outfit – Theatre Factory, started out in 2003, a lot of its cast was made of old students of Namasagali College. From Kaganda, Gerald Rutaro, it was almost a Namasagali reunion in there. “I found it so easy to put together a team that had some old students of Namasagali, who despite already being funny, were equipped with a full package of training as actors” Luswata says.
Because the school was such a strong force of influence across the creative sphere, when private FM radio sprung up, Namasagali had a ripple effect in that space as well. When Kampala got a feel of the late DJ Alex Ndawula, for example, not many people knew that he had cut his teeth as a DJ back in school at Namasagali College. From the fancy nightclubs of the affluent, Ndawula went on to entertain fans on Sanyu FM and Capital FM from 1993, until 2017, when he retired. He passed on in 2022.
In dance, Namasagali still owned the template that the rest applied to shape the art form further. The school trained and produced some of the best dancers in the land. Before you got to celebrate her as a BBC newscaster, Nancy Kacungira and her sister – Seanice, were incredible dancers that shook the National theatre stage, during their days as Sagalis.
More professionally, the school gave birth to The Obsessions, a group that started out as dance majors, before incorporating music, later. Roger Mulindwa, one of the originals of the group, owes his footing to Namasagali College.
And it was not just The Obsessions; Julius Lugaya’s Dance Week Uganda became what it became because of Lugaya’s time at Namasagali. In fact, he said, in an interview with the Daily Monitor, that “contemporary dance scene in Uganda has its roots in Namasagali College”.
While him and his dance cronies, like Roger Masaba, went the contemporary dance way, Jesse Kakooza, another dance major from Namasagali, went pole dancing, and if you remember this trend in Silk Lounge, years back, Kakooza was the brains behind.
Can we talk about talents born in Namasagali and not talk about divas Juliana Kanyomozi and Iryn Namubiru? Certainly not. While the two did not make their names in theatre, like many other old students of Namasagali, their musicality started out as karaoke stars, doing a lot of Mariah Carey covers.
“I met Iryn at Namasagali and would later start preforming with her as karaoke stars at Sabrina’s Pub. We later formed IJ as a singing group, recording a few songs,” Kanyomozi said during a talk show on KFM, in February, 2024
Speaking of artists who met at Namasagali, Benon Mugumbya and Elvis Kirya a.k.a Vampino, a duo that got famous as Benon and Vamposs, in the 2000s, cannot be overlooked. In a YouTube interview with Truth Gossip, recently, Vampino recalled how he formed his stage name at Namasagali College.
“It came out of a suspension I got at school. I did not go back home, illegally staying at school, only coming out of the dormitories at night – like a ‘vampire’, until my suspension elapsed. Thus, students started calling me Vampire,” Vampino revealed.
Together with his friend – Benon, with whom they were already singing at Namasagali, they decided to artistically turn Vampire into Vamposs as the former’s stage name. From there, Vamposs added, “the group Benon and Vamposs” came about.
Namasagali College now in tear-jerking shambles
It is quite saddening that for a school with such artistic might and history as poured out already in this article, one can only talk about Namasagali College in past tense, almost in mythical tales.
Those who have seen the premises in recent times, and know a thing or two about the school’s heavy history, can cannot help but get teary. The school’s story, unfortunately, did not end in a fairy-tale. The structures, as Muddu described them in his article, can almost be likened to a dungeon. The walls that once housed some of the best creative ideas, now look unrecognisable; the roof tiles are now getting buried as the weeds and grass reclaim spaces.
While alumni cannot fail to feel nostalgic now, they sure cannot believe what became of what was once their beacon of artistic excellence.
When the school’s mastermind – Father Grimes, retired and returned to England, in the early 2000s, after the school had failed to pay off bank loans of up to UGX 800 million, that was the beginning of the downward spiral of the Namasagali College. From the mid-2000s to date, you could struggle to speak about the good old days of Namasagali in the same breadth.
In 2012, however, efforts to revive the school’s past glory, especially on stage, were made. In a production dubbed The Happy Life Hotel, staged at National Theatre, former students of Father Grimes, who had then become professionals in various art forms, came together to rekindle what Namasagali once meant. And they did.
While some had not stepped on stage in over 15 years, they went through classic training ethics of Grimes’s Namasagali, this time under the stewardship of Joanita Wandera, with help from Koheirwe, and Brenda Maraka on the iconic Namasagali costumes.
Lugaya, Masaba and Kakooza returned as professional dancers to direct this part of the play. At the time, one could describe the cast and crew as a star-studded one. Under the theme Pursuit of Happiness, the play was written by Father Grimes and Amelia Mbooto – following in the footsteps of their earlier plays.
The Happy Life Hotel was a comedy about love and deception, where characters strived to find their rightful place in the world. It was largely a dance drama. At the nostalgic day of the play, old students shared in the merry and old-time-sake moments with hard-to-miss faces of Robert Kabushenga, Rebecca Kadaga, Patrick Bitature, Juliana Kanyomozi, Charles Mbire, Miria Matembe, Alex Ndawula, all of whom were old students of the school.
It had been resolved at the time that old students would stage a play every year, as was the old Namasagali College routine, and that the proceeds from these plays would go to the Father Grimes Foundation.
Whatever became of this plan, only fate knows. But what is known to all is, Namasagali College will go down in history as the true beacon of art and cultural excellence – the life of the party during it’s time.
