KAMPALA (XINHUA) – Five-year-old Hasifa Nakirijja is becoming popular in local media and among netizens in Uganda because of her amazing skills in Kung Fu (Chinese martial arts).
Nakirijja stays with her parents in the shanty town of Katooke, north of the country’s capital Kampala.
The person behind Nakirijja’s skills is her father, Manisuru Ssejjemba, a man-on-a-mission who in 2017 made a journey to a Shaolin Temple, thousands of kilometres away in China.
Ssejjemba set up a makeshift training centre behind his house where he trains youngsters to help promote the Kung Fu culture in Uganda.
Yet the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has interrupted his training sessions as the government stopped public gatherings to limit the spread of the virus.
Before the pandemic, Ssejjemba was training 17 youngsters and seven adults. He said that more people were signing up to join.
Although the training sessions were drastically scaled down, Ssejjemba is now teaching his daughter Nakirijja.
He told Xinhua in a recent interview that since schools are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nakirijja now has more time to train.
Usually before starting his training sessions for Nakirijja, Ssejjemba first demonstrates his own stretches.
Clad in his red Chinese attire, Ssejjemba stretches out for about 45 minutes as he is closely watched by Nakirijja. Then he jogs around the training centre and performs different Kung Fu skills, as some children and adults in the slum area peep through the papyrus mat walls of the centre.
