Karwemera: A walking encyclopaedia on the bakiga
Festo Karwemera has compiled several literature on the Bakiga and even set up a museum showing the homesteads of old. PHOTOS BY HENRY LUBEGA
What you need to know:
Festo Karwemera has made it his mission that the Kikiga culture does not die with the old generation. To ensure this, he has written books on the Bakiga and set up a museum.
A few kilometres off Kabale-Kisoro road, the ancient and modern live side by side. An old house with a wide verandah, no balcony and wooden windows stands side by side with a modern one with a tiled floor, balcony and glass windows.
In the old one, where there was once a sitting room, now stands rows of books. It is not a bookshop though. Next to them is a simple table with an organised chaos of papers and old exercise books. Besides is another table from which comes the rustle of a computer keyboard as the secretary types away, competing with the sound from the printer fan.
Welcome to Festo Karwemera’s writing workshop in Kagarama, a Kabale town suburb.
Born in 1925 in Karubanda village, Buhaara Sub-county, Kabale District, the 90-year-old Karwemera survived being recruited to fight in World War II because of his father’s timely decision to take him to school. “Many of my age mates were recruited in 1939 to go and fight in World War II. I survived because I was at school. I was in P.2 at Muyebe Primary School.”
Though he managed to avoid military service, he did not survive the 78km trek to Kinyansano from Muyebe to complete his primary education. “My father could not afford to pay Shs15 per term at Kigezi High School which was near our home, so I had to go Kinyansano where he could afford to pay Shs7 per term.”
At Kinyansano, Karwemera and eight other boys from his village were at the mercy of good samaritans who housed them during the term because it was not a boarding school.
“On the eve of the opening day, we would start the journey at 5am and get to Kinywansano at 9pm, ready to go to school the following day. It was more than 12 hours of walking with our wooden boxes on our heads,” recollects Karwemera.
Having completed junior school in 1944, he was not able to continue with secondary education due to lack of fees, hence joining Nyakasura Vernacular Teacher Training College where he qualified as a vernacular teacher.
“Between 1946 and 1954, I taught in the Native Anglican Church Schools teaching vernacular and English as a subject.” Almost after a decade of vernacular teaching he decided to upgrade from a vernacular teacher to a Grade II teacher at Mukono Tucker Teacher’s college.
From Mukono, Karwemera taught at Kantare Primary School from 1955 until 1959. He was appointed an assistant school supervisor in the Native Anglican Church Schools, a post he held until 1965 when he joined Action Aid.
Becoming an author
As a grade II teacher, Karwemera felt he was not qualified enough to be an author. Though he had the interest, he thought that was a field for only university graduates. “My inferiority complex was holding me back. I thought that graduates like Katiti and Nganwa and others who had reached Makerere University could write books.” However, a visit by members of the East African Literature Bureau in 1956 at Kantare Primary School, where Karwemera was a teacher, changed all this.
“I asked them who is legible to write books and they told me anyone who writes sense. I recited one of my poems, and they gave me their blessing, and my first book was a poem collection.”
He has never looked back since then, writing stories, proverbs, and local folklore books in Runyankore-Rukiga, some of them serialised books. Today he has more than 20 titles to his name. “One book that I am most proud of is Social Customs and Myths of Bakiga.”
What inspired him to write
The old man explains that he realised if traditions and cultural practices were not put in writing, they would disappear, and the future generation would have no point of reference about their culture.
His belief in local language has seen him compile a book in which Christian names are given their local version. “It all started when I went to baptise my granddaughter Kaitesi. The priest asked for the Christian name and I said it’s Kaitesi and there was a murmuring in the congregation. After the service, I told the people who were murmuring that if the child had been a boy, I would have had him baptised Nyakabwa. One of them walked away saying he would have stormed out of the church in protest.” According to Karwemera, Nyakabwa is the Kikiga version of Caleb.
Starting the Kikiga ‘museum’
The “museum” located in Kabale townis based on how the traditional Kikiga homestead looked like. “I created a Kikiga museum as a way of preserving some heritage and showing the generation after ours how the Bakiga lived before the advent of the Europeans. “What I have in the museum is just a small portion of the homestead,” he explains.
By the time he conceived the idea though, some traditions and traditional utensils had already been replaced. “The museum idea came when I was working with Action Aid in the early 1960s.
I started collecting some artefacts from the rural areas I used to travel to. In 1975, I opened the museum of Kikiga culture. My earlier plan was to have a typical homestead but the available land could not accommodate all the 10 huts that made up the traditional home, so I decided to have one sub-divided into what other huts would represent in the homestead.”
Despite his advanced age, Karwemera is not about to give up, he is known as the old man who goes out to jog in the morning before going to what he refers to as a workshop to write books.
Honours
For his work, Festo Karwemera has been recognised for what he has done, not only in regards to book writing but also cultural conservation. Makerere University, Uganda Christian University Mukono, the government of Uganda through the Local Government ministry and the Crosscultural Foundation of Uganda have all acknowledged his work by giving him certificates of acknowledgment and appreciation for a job well done.
