The Uganda Museum is located in Kampala the capital city of Uganda. The Museum displays and exhibits ethnological, historical, natural and traditional Life collections of Uganda’s cultural Heritage.
The Uganda Museum was found in 1908, after a call for all articles of interest were procured. There many playable musical instruments, weaponry, hunting equipment.
The Uganda Museum is one of the oldest Museums in East Africa; it was officially established by the British protectorate government in 1908 with ethnographic material.
The Museum has a collection of objects of interest throughout the country to set up a Museum. It started in a small Sikh temple at Fort Lugard on old Kampala Hill. The Museum at Fort Lugard become too small to hold the specimens, the Museum was the Margret Trowel school of Fine Art at Makerere University College, later on funds were raised for a permanent home later on the Museum was moved to its current location on Kitante Hill in 1954, in 2008, the Museum has recently turned 100 years old.
The ethnography section holds more than 100,000 objects which are historical and add cultural values.
Traditional reed door leads to exhibits on health, knowledge system objects’ of warfare, dressing, traditional dressing and other various ceremonial practices in Uganda.
The instruments are arranged according to the Major groups of music instruments, percussion, drums, string instruments and wind.
The Uganda Museum carries out research across the country, with intensive research in Karamoja region, Eastern Uganda at the foothills of Mount Elgon and the western rift to Dellu, which is near the Uganda’s boarder with Sudan.
The research unit has yielded fossils that relate to human evolution. For instance, Uganda is aged between 19 and 20 million years, this was discovered in Napak research around the heritage sites which has taken place in the eastern and western part of Uganda.
The Uganda Museum collaborates with Mbarara University, College de France, Natural History Museum in Paris and the University of Michigan.
COLLECTIONS
There is a wide range of collection which exists from the 1960s to the present date, specimens are displayed in the Natural History, and Collections in store are available to researchers and upon request by students.
EDUUCATION SERVICES
The permanent exhibits, the Uganda Museum offers educational services in form of demonstration lessons, workshops, and complimentary services. Thus using the available specimens, the Museum arranges a variety of tropical lessons that are all related to school curriculum. The student Tours are giving introductory lectures with slides, aids and other films.
The Uganda Museum staffs from Education section into a remote area of the country to teach in Village whose schools are not able to visit the Museum.
The schools are used as Visual aids; the Uganda Museum hosts lectures, public talks and workshops on relevant topics to the Public.
The Uganda Museum is well equipped facility with Internet café, Canteen, which offers a variety of traditional foods of Uganda, showcase and gift shops.
The Uganda Museum building is one of the best cultural villages with huts that depict traditional lifestyles of people in Uganda.
Visitors want to experience the indigenous ways of the Uganda people, an array of cultural material, these include milk pots from the wood, bead work, basketry, gourd vessels, horn works, cutlery, ceramics, leather works, armoury and instruments displayed.
The houses at the Uganda Museum include the Batooro house, Bunyoro House, Ankole House Hima House and Kigezi House; all these represent the western region. There many interesting items in Tooro House such as beddings, wooden beds, backcloth blankets and royal drums. Ankole House are the Banyankole, there quite a number of things that were used to prepare Millet breadboard the invention of milling machines.
In Hima house which belongs to the Bahima, there are Milk gourds that are used for keeping Milk and Horns to represent the type of Cattle used to dominate the Hima Kraals, the Milk has product made out of it, it’s a made lotion that can be used to smear a would be bride.
The Western part of Uganda in Busoga House, Bugisu house, Jogadhola house, Teso House and the Karamojong House.
The Bugisu House has a number of circumcision tools, including headgear, regalia and knives.
Teso House has several calabashes that are used for brewing and drinking Malwa, one of the popular local brews in the Eastern Uganda, there mingling stones and pots for Kalo preparing; this is one of the main Foods.
Other Houses include Lango, Acholi house, Alur House and Madi House all from northern Uganda.
Some culture houses contain arrows and bows that are mainly used for protection tools for hunting.
The Buganda house represents the people from the central region, some of the things inside the house include backcloth, drums, baskets for Luwombo, hunting nets, wooden sandals and the game called Omweso which popular in the culture of Buganda.