The Fourth Heritage
Emmanuel Sunlight Kirunda
News & Events 



ANNOUNCEMENT
I have donated copies of my book to all the schools I attended starting with Iganga Town Council Primary School, Nkumba Primary School and King's Collge Budo. Here in the U.S.A, you can find the book within the catalogs of University of Texas-Austin, Lafayette College (PA) and United World College-USA, New Mexico.

Also, a copy of my book can be found in the official catalog of the U.S Library of Congress in Washington D.C.


EVENTS

1. Saturday August 8th, 2009. Birth day and Book Publication Celebration. At Nasty's Rugby Bar (Guadalupe and 36th Street, Austin (TX)) starting at 8pm

2. Book presentation to 'Ugandans in North America' Conference. September 5th, 2009 in Chicago.
Chicago Summary
As soon as I got to the Conference Hotel in Chicago, I started interacting with Ugandans both from the U.S.A and from Uganda. I kept showing them my book and explaining how my 'thinking out of the box' book proposes a specific framework in which individuals can go about integrating our tribal heritages with the religious and european heritages that were brought to Uganda in the late 19th Century.

Among the notable people I spoke with or gave copies of the book were: Hon. Beti Kamya, Prof. Latigo Ogenga, Speaker Ssekandi, Mr. Opiyo Oloya, Prof. Muyingo, etc. Besides those prominent Ugandans, I was able to make contact with some of my classmates and schoolmates from King's College Budo after more than 12 years. See the pictures page for more details.

On the last day of the convention, I made my book presentation to a group of mainly Ugandans and some of my friends from the U.S.A. After the 30 minute presentation, some members of the audience asked me pertinent questions about why I wrote the book, why I think it is important etc. For example Mr. Tenhwa asked why I was changing from Professional Engineering to politics. I answered him that I was not changing. I am still pursuing my Engineering Career and I hope to earn a living through the fruit of my academic work, but I am proposing the specific framework in my book simply because I think it might help some individual Ugandans in understanding or navigating our triple heritages and integrating them in a way that enables each and all of us to live happy and prosperous lives whereever we might be.

Most of the last part after the presentation was dominated by different members of the audience commenting and suggesting additions to what I had presented. An interesting time came when my friend Justas Staisiunas who has read the whole book gave his personal feedback of what he got from the book. He was able to tell the audience that he as a European did not  and does not have the same psychological elements that come about by a confluence of three heritages and he took from the book that I am proposing a new paradigm of how we can look at our triple heritages.  

Lastly, upon giving a copy of the book to Prof. Muyingo, who happens to sit on many boards of secondary schools in Uganda, he proposed to see if we can place several books at some of his schools.

3. Book presentation at Lafayette College, (PA) September 12th, 2009
Lafayette Summary
I gave a 20 minute power point presentation to a group of students and 6 professors at a lunchtime meeting sponsored by the ACACIA society and the Leonardo Engineering club. I essentially gave the same presentation that I had given in Chicago without the specific Ugandan tribal details because no one in the audience was from Uganda. After the talk, I was asked 8 very important questions by members of the audience, both students and professors--you can see the details of the question and answer session in the video section of this website.

In a nutshell, some of the questions were; whether my framework can be applied to other countries - my response was that it can. In fact my friend from Pakistan has read the book and has proposed that together we shall coauthor a paper about how the framework can be applied to the Pakistani society. Another question was about the writing process that I took. My answer was that I set out to write a 24 page paper, but when I got very terrific feedback about the paper from my friends, their encouragement inspired me to turn the paper into a small book. The small book grew into a 271 page book within 4 months. You can see details of the other questions in the video section of this website.

4. October 10th: Book presentation to Ugandan-American Association of Dallas
Dallas Summary
On the occasion of celebrating Uganda's 47 years of Independence, I was invited by the Ugandan-American Association of Greater Dallas to present my book and take part in the celebrations. As one of the 6 invited guests who sat on the 'high table' at the Nyaritex Conference Center event, it was a real honor to speak to an audience of hundreds of Ugandans. Besides the opportunity of eating matooke and watching kiganda maggunju dancers, I was delighted to hear from different Ugandans about their progress here in the U.S.A and also about the 'problems' that are faced by millions of Ugandans back home.

When time came for me to speak, I was wonderfully introduced by Mr. Brian Kwesiga, the treasurer of the new board. In my 10 minutes of fame, I was very encouraged by the facial and sometimes audible expressions of approval or engagement that some of my lines elicited from the audience. For example, when I mentioned that one of the reasons I came up with the idea of The Fourth Heritage is "because I want to be prosperous in whatever part of the world I end up, but I think our society's failure to encourage the individualization of the tribal heritage leaves a psychological gap in people's sense of belonging once they leave the country," I was loudly applauded by some audience members.

Unfortunately, after my presentation, I did not have the opportunity to entertain questions from the audience. Instead, we listened to a presentation by the chief guest, Captain Lucky Lukiah Mulumba who gave an emotional speech about her daughter's struggle with Sickle Cell, and the dire conditions that sicklers in Uganda endure. She is the founder of Uganda- American Sickle Cell Rescue Fund. The night ended by me having one on one conversations with some people and signing some books for people.


5. October 21st: Book presentation and signing in Austin, TX

Austin Summary
I am grateful to MonkeyWrench Bookstore for giving me an opportunity to present my book and hold a book signing event. In a fully packed bookstore setting, I gave a 20 minute presentation of why I wrote the book and the major themes found in the book. Afterwords, the engaged audience asked about 8 very pertinent and interesting questions about my life or the topics I wrote about. One of the question was "why do you think no one has been able to propose the ideas you are proposing?" My answer was that I don't get the sense that policy makers in Uganda have thought about solutions beyond the paradigm that was introduced in 1879 by the coming of European religions and political/social makeup. Another question was "how does your idea of the Fourth Heritage deal with what the evolutionary biologists say that each species has the instinct to propagate its genes at whatever cost". My answer was that if indeed this is true, then the instincts are not only limited to bad greedy instincts. I believe the instincts for good and sacrifice are also there, but unfortunately the human condition allows the bad instincts to drive people who get power while the people with good instincts hardly have any passion to do things in society.

The concluding question was actually an observation from one audience member that my take on morality is that "society started off with an idea of right and wrong within the tribal setting, but then through human intellectualism people developed sophisticated religious and philosophical ideas of right and right, but with your equating Kant's philosophy with the tribal philosophy of 'obuntu bulamu', society is back to where it started". My reply was an affirmation that I believe so: the secular theories of duty-based morality are in agreement with tribal sensibilities of respecting the humanity in each person and universalizing every action you do, and if God comes in the picture, it is because God is the omnipotent higher power that every tribal person ascribes to the mysteries of the universe and what Kant defined as a belief in God is necessary in morality as far as you define God as the 'ideal good'.  



6. Another Book reading and signing in Austin: Time and place to be decided