By Ian Ortega
No one is coming to save you. No one will give you the job of your dreams. No one will build you the house of your dreams. No one will hand you these things on a silver plate. You have to look the world in the face and demand for what you want, for what you deserve. If you’ve put in the hard-work, the persistence, the intelligence, the world must answer to these demands.
Lots of people try to hide their past. Lots of people never want to talk about those moments when they were still at nothing. But those are the moments I enjoy talking about. I love to speak more about my failures than my successes. Because my failures, my struggles, make me.
I went to Primary School at Shimoni Demonstration School (formerly Indian Primary School). I spent 7 years in a school with a population of over 5000 students. At one time, it was believed to be the most populated School in Africa if not the world. That school made me.
It taught me from early on, that if anything was going to be, it had to be about me. Break time was a struggle, you had to fight your way through the canteen. You had to dodge tens of teachers to finish the week without a spanking. To have no crime in Shimoni was to play it too safe. I will never forget the time one teacher caned us for not having 95% which he said was the passmark for his exam aka D1. Even though it was a UPE School (having been changed to UPE when I was in P.5), that school had teachers that were committed to their work. And so, I learned a lot going to that school. My father always wanted otherwise. He felt I shouldn’t have gone to Shimoni, my mother insisted I had to complete the tradition since most of my cousins had gone through Shimoni.
Long before the rise of schools such as Kampala Parents and Bright Grammer, it was Nakasero, Shimoni, Kitante, Buganda Road that ruled the day. That explains why I joined Shimoni.
But how do you stand out in a population of over 5000 students? How do you stand out in sports, in music, in academics or in anything? Shimoni was like a pool of the very best all being brought to one place.
It taught me one thing, you can make it anywhere. Ours was the last year at Shimoni before government chose to shift the school to Kololo. It also marked the end of the great civilization. If I am not mistaken, Shimoni was the 5th best in Uganda in the PLE results of that year.
Today, I meet most people in my class who’ve gone on to do wonders. I think I am the luckiest person to have gone to that school. Nothing, I repeat no experience will ever come next to Shimoni. I will never forget that evening football that I played by the Sub-way grounds just opposite Parliament. I will never forget how we easily entered Parliament and greeted Ministers. The guards were not paranoid, they assumed we were kids of MPs. Some times we would end up in Radio Uganda studios. And when Garden City opened, we would spend our Saturdays there. There were the golf-course grounds. We stepped onto the golf course before we ever got membership to those exclusive clubs. Of course, these were crimes at the school, but we were kids, we could get away with anything. I can’t count the tens of times I walked into Uganda Bookshop, picked any book I wanted and no one stopped me. That was the beginning of my passion for reading.
Above all, Shimoni taught me the value of independence, the value of not being a cry-baby. It was either you win, or you get lost in the statistics. There was no other option. Since then, I don’t wait for life to act and bring opportunities my way, I go out and make those opportunities. If I want someone, I go out look for ways to meet them. If I want something, I work for it. I don’t care how long it takes, if you stick long enough, you eventually get what you deserve.
So why did I write this? To say that SHIMONI is the greatest Primary School in the history of Uganda. Save your arguments for other platforms. Nothing comes next to Shimoni. It’s the goddess of all Primary Schools in Uganda. An eighth day should be added to the week. That day should be named Shimoni and on that day we shall speak no word except one in praise of Shimoni!!! We shall worship the school that was, the school that is responsible for Ugandan Civilization!!!
