History In Progress Uganda

We did a thing. Open to the public from Monday onward. #hammukasa @makererechussoffical #endangeredarchivesprogramme

All Protocol Observed. With Anthems, lovely speeches addressing numerous things archival, the cutting of a ribbon, group photograph followed by thoroughly engaged conversations with the photographs mounted to the faculty walls and more. The Makerere University work in progress exhibition on our interdisciplinary digitisation, description and research project is now open to the public. There is, of course, more to be seen than what this post has to offer. Open during university opening hours. Daily except Sundays. We hope ‘our’ Ham Mukasa in Heaven approves of what he sees when looking down. Footage produced by @crumanzi and @andreastultiens who also curated the show.

The year is 1960, that exact day, no other. Sanyu Flavia Irene Nampewo gets baptised, Princess Margaret Countess of Snowdon gets married, and “the barber kept shaving” … the difference is nobody is criticising life mistaken for bad taxidermy here. Overleaf, #RadioUganda will be playing Tchaikovsky at 8:40pm … the Basoga musicians at 5:15pm weren’t named this individually, … no complaints about the “taxidermy” because as long as the barber keeps shaving, you’ll see how, … as for why, we may need the “taxidermy” to speak human, as wisely attributed. 10:15pm will be “music from Holland” … Which radio programme would you have been most into? It’s 1960, so probably there are other lives in very different pursuits, for example the push for Ugandans to get more sovereignty beyond self-governance was raging like a Lake Victoria/ Nalubaale cyclone … The radio programmes overleaf this cutout are a million stories, let alone all from Flavia’s baptism, one of the stories is that we’re digitising the cutout while working with the #HamuMukasa family’s contribution to the @britishlibrary #endangeredarchivesprogramme . Code #EAP1750, progress from #EAP656 .

“With the compliments of The Uganda Company Limited.“ Consider this a digital postcard to you from our time travel back to 1938 with #HamuMukasa. Find your 10 cents on the story of Uganda. Make it a shilling for the future. We are doing this with the @britishlibrary #endangeredarchivesprogramme #EAP1750 . A little progress from an earlier effort #EAP656 .

Approaching Masaka. Swipe for detail. Slide dated April 1964, which is probably the date of development. #hipuganda collection #viewfromthisside

What if the photographs in the #robertfyffecollection were not primarily made for botanical or forestry purposes, but, indeed, portraits of the people the photographer worked with? 2x detail of (much) larger negatives. Digitised, cropped, retouched by @andreastultiens Negatives part of the wider @hipuganda #historyinprogressuganda collection. #speculativedocumentary #activatingourarchives

A photograph of an architectural structure? Or a portrait of two trees? …? (With additionally a slide of the Makerere University botany department and the young man we assume once upon a time the slides collection, dated May-April 1964 belonged to) #makerereuniversity #35mmslides #hipuganda collection Digitised and edited by @andreastultiens

What did the penguin say to the secretary bird? How can we know that for sure if it’s not yet common knowledge that #thebirdistheword 🤷🏽‍♂️!? @hipuganda hasn’t been hacked, it’s just a small dosage of @crumanzi ideology not in his own words. He doesn’t own any words! Not even worlds, just let him cook! I say let him cook now. He’s just digitising parts of archives of the #HamuMukasa family, their contribution to @britishlibrary #endangeredarchives programme #EAP1750, working with many others via @hipuganda . Thanks for not paying too much attention to this matter because you matter more. 🙇🏽‍♂️

“Residence Halls Mak. U. Coll.” Featuring Very Cool Cars (swipe!). Dated May 1964. From a new addition to the #HiPUganda collection consisting of about 80 slides. Produced, it appears, by a visiting botany student or scholar. #makerereuniversity @makerere @makererealumni @makererechussoffical 👀☀️

Do you recognise this corner? The one in the panoramic first and second part of this post. It’s colville Road and Portal Avenue and where you now, amongst others, find the Uganda Bookshop. And then some… While at it you might just want to find out who Colville and Portal were and what their respective places in the Grand Narrative are. Part three and four of the post are google maps screen shots. Digitised version of 35mm slide donated to HIPUganda. Photographs produced by Arnold Moeller, who worked for USAID in Uganda for more or less a decade from 1963 onwards. #moellercollection shared with us by Arnold’s son Martin Moeller. #hipuganda #chinainafrica #ugandabookshop #activatingourarchives

“Bridesmaids” swipe for detail! These were not just bridesmaids at any wedding, but a the royal, white one between the Omukama of Tooro George Rukidi III and Omukowu Kezia Byanjeru Abwooli]. Photographed by dr. A. T. Schofield. Pasted by the photographer into an album titled “Mbogo and Toro” in which the photographs appear to predominantly date from the early to mid 1930s. Album in the care of Dr Schofield’s grandson Rob Richards. Digitised and edited by @andreastultiens

3/3 Mzee Edward Lule took us to a relative of theirs, she was among the first native news anchors and news reporters, if not the first news anchor (English) for the @ubc_ug (Uganda Broadcasting Corporation) @ubc_radio_uganda in the 1940s which back then was known by other names of the Protectorate order of things. To earn that responsibility when there were English people living in Uganda at the time was laudable. She told us stories such as how once you’re educated above average, and living affluently above average, there’s no point in falling in love with mass uprising to bring about political change. She cited how Ssekabaka Fredrick Muteesa II and friends such as returnees WWII service did so much to empower the “Bataka” of Buganda who comprised a politically mobilisable majority, spiralling riots erupted, which consumed some of the lives, freedoms, and property of the same people attempting to rally them to the cause of self governance in Uganda. Her stories of houses deemed of the elite being burned, lawlessness and looting on the streets mirrored the events of the late 1880s in Buganda. (Religious wars, et al. Hamu Mukasa, one of the few authors of what transpired in this fin de siecle Uganda had his house torched.) Then, the cycle repeats, but with shorter intervals, that’s, what happens 1967 onwards … she implied, “I used to read the news to the country, i hear the news from the country, and it’s always more bad news.” ... ( @crumanzi ) . Mzee Eddie Lule was introduced to us by @babiryesculptor also a sculptor as the name speaks for the artist. We collaborated with @papashotit who photographed most of Mzee Lule’s sculpture oeuvre which may not be obtainable now, so our collaboration was right on the Kairos. @susanne_holm._ was interning with us at the time, and as fate would have it, she’s now Nalule among her other names, family to Mzee Lule. We’re relishing our times doing the work, behold a portion of memories thanks to Mzee Lule and family.