A collection of photographs, paintings and other art pieces of traditional, religious and political significance in Uganda have found a home at a private museum in Bweyogerere, just outside Kampala.
The conference hall-turned-museum called Nassiwa House is located at Rest Gardens, a private conferencing and hotel business.
Dickson Hakiza, the General Manager, says that the proprietor initiated the idea, to preserve the political, cultural and religious history of the country.
//Cue in: “There are many different….
Cue out…why they are all here.”//
There are pictures of presidents swearing in, some meeting international delegates, presidential candidates campaigning, Pope John Paul II’s visit in February 1993 and consecrations of bishops among others.
Hakiza says that the pictures have been purchased or collected from different sources, and some of them have had to be re-printed.
There are also paintings and photographs of traditional music instruments, physical instruments from all regions of Uganda and traditional dress, like bark cloth.
Cue in: “The reason we decided….
Cue out: …open to everybody.”
He adds that the museum is meant to be a research and learning centre for people interested in the country’s past.
Uganda has only one National Museum, which came under threat of demolition this year, as government planned to give the plot of land on which it stands, to an investor to put up a 30-storey building to house the East African Trade Center.
