For the next scheduled hearing of the civil suit against the demolition of Uganda’s national museum:
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Remember, remember
The 8th of November
2 p.m. at the High Court!
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Here’s what you can do:
- Call your favorite radio station to keep the case on the public agenda
- Link to a live twitter feed on the case (I’m encouraging a court reporter to tweet the event)
- Join the Save the Uganda Museum Facebook page to lend your support. So far only 265 people ‘like’ the page!
- Ask your local government representatives or MP to join the petition
- Harangue the administrators at your child’s school to make frequent visits to the museum
- Visit the museum yourself, even if you have been there a hundred times before. It’s dirt cheap! Only 2k!
- Donate to organizations that filed the case to meet their legal costs. For instance, the Cross Cultural Foundation of Uganda (A/c 0108213220000 Standard Chartered Bank, Speke Road Branch, Kampala)
- Lend support to the beleaguered staff of the museum currently blogging at http://ugmuseums.blogspot.com/.
Here’s why we should keep fighting:
Did you know that as recently as 1985 the Uganda Museum was just one of several national museums in Uganda? There were two – not one, but TWO – natural history museums in Entebbe and Mweya. There was a museum in Soroti and a second in Kabale that was closed a few years ago. And, AND, there was a medical museum at Mulago.
Sit down my children. Grab a cup of delicious Ugandan robusta. Grab it and weep.
Quoting the 1981 findings of a UNESCO team on the state of the two natural history museums -
Both of these small museums are in an appalling, state of neglect; their collections have disintegrated beyond hope of repair through lack of care during the difficult years preceding the 1979 war.
No one appeared to be in charge at the Entebbe Natural History Museum when we visited it, and the collections appeared to have been completely destroyed by insects.
At Mweya, many specimens that had once been preserved in formaldehyde were in bottles half or three-quarters empty of liquid, and the exposed portions of the specimens were beginning to disintegrate at the top, I was told that many had already been discarded. The stuffed specimens were badly insect-eaten.
The Medical Museum at Makerere university. The Medical Museum is not a museum in the usual sense. It is a teaching facility for the Medical School at Makerere university. It does not come under the Department of Antiquities. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to say something about this most impressive institution. Professor R, Owor, Head of the Department of Pathology, and his staff, as well as Mr Serumaga and his staff at the Department of Medical Illustration which supplies most, if not all of the teaching material in the Museum, are fighting against terrible odds to maintain this indispensable aid to the teaching in the Department.
Crying yet? No?
This was the fate of Kabale Regional Museum as reported by Uganda Radio Network four years ago.
Kabale Regional Museum has lost key funding that would guarantee it a permanent new home.
Samuel Nkudiye, curator of Kabale Museum, says 100,000 dollars loaned to Uganda by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development was intended for the construction of a facility to house the museum. The museum has been homeless since late last year when the building in which it was located was repossessed by its Asian owners.
The credit agreement was signed six years ago between the International Development Association and the Government of Uganda. The funds were also to be used for the establishment of a heritage trail in Fort Portal, development of a countrywide cultural historic sites register and database and training of staff of the Department of Antiquities and Museums in visitor management and museum operations.
The project was expected to be completed by June 30, 2007.
Samuel Nkudiye says the Commissioner of Antiquities informed him that the money was not claimed and so was not used for the purpose for which it was intended. He says the money was instead used to upgrade the Bwindi Forest project.
Remember, remember
The 8th of November
2 p.m. at the High Court!
is another matter.
Still looking for the collectibles. You can only go so far with a display of spears and arrows only. I need (at least a copy of) the Maxim gun that tamed Kabaka Mwanga, then I will open. 
