Uganda’s visually impaired teacher who started a school for children with his condition

Located in Kisoga town, Mukono District of the Central Region, Uganda, Salama School for the Blind is home to 73 visually impaired children. In April 1999, Kinubi, together with the Uganda National Association for the Blind (UNAB), started the school with the mission of helping blind children access education easily.

How the journey started with the loss of sight

Kinubi was born to pastoralist parents in Mbarara Western District of Uganda in 1960. But bad luck struck his village when there was an outbreak of measles in the Western Region and several children lost their sight. Among them was Kinubi who was then at age five.

He said that his parents, being pastoralists, moved from one district to another looking for grass to fend for their cattle. “My parents left me home alone with my two young siblings for almost three months, by the time they came back, measles disease had struck the village and I was among the affected children,” he said.  

The intervention by his parents to rush him (Kinubi) to Mulago referral government hospital in the capital Kampala, did not yield much as the doctors “told my mother that your son has completely lost his sight”.

His education

Starting or going to school for a blind child such as Kinubi was not rosy, as he testifies. “My relatives always told my mother that I was cursed by the family and even my father, (Deceased), was not even interested in my well-being on earth. Whenever my father got drunk, he would tell my mother that I am not part of his family," he said. 

Kinubi said that through village friends and health workers at the hospital, he was eventually taken to school by his mother. “My mother being a rural woman was hesitant thinking that the government wanted to take me away from her and also because my father constantly beat me up for failing to look after cattle, so she decided that I can join a school,” he said.

Kinubi studied at the St Francis Primary School for the Blind, Soroti District, Eastern Uganda, in 1964. Later in 1975, he went to Iganga Secondary School (now Iganga Girls’ School) and then joined Bishop Willis’s Teachers College in Iganga district as the first blind student to be admitted to a teaching college.

At the teaching college, Kinubi faced challenges as the National Institute of Education (NIE) - which was then a government governing agency handling education institutions in the country - tried to bar him from sitting for his final examinations.

“The NIE wrote several letters to my teaching college director trying to bar me from sitting for my final examinations, possibly reasoning that a blind person would not be able to teach students properly,” he said.

However, luck fell on him when his tutors and human rights organisations fought hard to support him through several petitions to the President of Uganda Milton Obote’s office.

As Uganda was celebrating the International Day of Blind Persons in 1981, human rights organisations that fought for the rights of disabilities presented his case (Kinubi) to President Obote, who immediately put up a committee to investigate the matter.

“After two weeks a committee came up with a report and handed it over to Obote who issued a decree that no Ugandan student would be stopped from pursuing his education as long as they go through normal procedures, this opened the gates for all blind students to join the college,” Kinubi said.

After completing his studies in 1982, Kinubi was posted to Madera School for the Blind, Soroti District, Eastern Uganda and later transferred to St. Helens Girls School, Mbarara, after four years. He was later transferred to Nakalanda Primary School in Mukono, Central Region and in 1996, he enrolled at the Institute of Teacher Education (ITEK) now Kyambogo University to pursue higher teaching education. 

Founding a school

Kinubi said that initially it was opened in 1960 under the Uganda Foundation for the Blind for rehabilitation of the blind. During the 1970s under the government of President Idi Amin, the centre started collapsing till the 1990s when it collapsed completely.

In 1999, Kinubi, working together with the Uganda National Association for the Blind (UNAB), identified the centre to set up a school for the blind in the central region. “At that time, communities-based rehabilitation services did not function well, most of the people who got blind later in life were rehabilitated within their communities but could find their land stolen or families broken,” Kinubi said.

He said that there were no schools admitting blind children in the central region of Uganda at that time and few schools for the blind that started in the 1970s were located in eastern and western border towns of Uganda.

Kinubi, who had just completed his studies at Kyambogo University, decided to start the school with only four visually impaired children and three staff including himself working as a teacher and headteacher. Later, parents around the area started bringing their children to the school after a period of six months. The school enrollment now stands at 70 for both girls and boys.

Kinubi said that little funding from the government pays teachers’ salaries and buys some school scholastic materials coupled with donations from well-wishers. He calls upon parents and communities that have blind children to take them to school and discard the primitive notions of disability being a curse or a result of witchcraft.

Other responsibilities

Besides teaching, Kinubi also promotes the rights of the visually impaired in Uganda. “I became a leader in the Uganda National Association of the Blind (UNAB) where I was chairman from 1997 to 2005.  I stood for leadership positions in the National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda (NUDIPU) and in 2003, I was chairman of the board, where I served up to 2013.”