Karamoja: hear our voices

My material on Karamoja is going up, slowly slowly, so I thought I would put the first two pieces here. More is following, and I'm still hoping to get more done before I post a bunch of pictures and general reflections next week.

Ngeleca Maddalina - "I don't remember the last time there was meat to eat"

KARAMOJA, The Ik are one of several ethnic communities in Uganda's northeastern region of Karamoja, near the border with Kenya.

Culturally and linguistically distinct from the rest of Uganda, Karamoja has often been marginalised and lacks the kind of services and infrastructure found in the rest of the country. While most ethnic groups in Uganda are Bantu, the Karamojong are Nilotic - they are taller than most Bantu people, speak a dissimilar language, and still dress in traditional clothes. (More...)

Namoe Aisha: "I'm ready for the medicine, me myself, I'm ready for it"

MATANY, Namoe Aisha, an HIV-positive widow with four children, is currently undergoing treatment for tuberculosis at the Matany Hospital in Moroto district, a remote region of Karamoja in northeastern Uganda. She told IRIN/PlusNews about the difficulties she has encountered since being diagnosed with the virus two years ago.

"When I was still young I went to Soroti [a district in eastern Uganda] for school, and there I married a Musoga [ethnic group in eastern Uganda] man. We had four children. Two years ago he became very ill and he died.

"I was also sick and I went to test and found that I have HIV. My co-wife [her husband's other wife] was also sick with AIDS and she died soon after our husband. She had refused to be admitted to hospital even though she was coughing with blood. (More...)

A lovely Ik: more Karamoja

Because of their small numbers – around 5,000, most people guess – the Ik are marginalized even within Karamoja. As the tribe has shrunk, most of their cattle has been stolen by neighboring Kenyan tribe the Turkana who live directly across a mountain range that serves as a border. The Ik have abandoned traditional cattle-keeping ways and turned to agriculture. However, their lack of agricultural experience as well as last year’s floods, followed by this year’s droughts, means that most people don’t have enough food to feed their families. The increasing price of food worldwide also means that, even in this remote region, food purchased from neighboring tribes has also gone up in price.

Book Club - TUESDAY, 27 MAY (ie, tomorrow)

The long awaited book club arrives.

The onus is on me to pick the location, I guess, and I was thinking Iguana, but that's so not central. So I have to fall back on the default Mateo's. We can discuss a different place for next time....

Tuesday, 27 May, at 7 pm, at Mateo's

Come. Invite friends. Bring books.

I'm guessing there will be a blogger or two there, since the only way this has been discussed is via blog, so maybe we can also talk about meeting during a different part of the month next time, not so close to BHH. (I'll miss it, again, next month. Is the media establishment at large conspiring to make me constantly go up country on assignment during BHH?)

27th Comrade - this is on the day of the month dedicated to you. I think this means you should come.

Karamoja: a superlative

I've just returned from Karamoja, an impoverished region in the north-east of Uganda, bordering Kenya and Sudan. The people who live there are culturally dissimilar from the rest of Uganda, and partially as a result of this, marginalized politically and economically, with almost no existing infrastructure or opportunities for people who call the arid region home. They are traditional cattle-herders, with the modern twist of abundant AK-47s that make raids on neighboring tribes deadly.

Last fall, there was a flood. This spring, there's been a drought. Things are much worse than they were when I visited last year. Or maybe I know better to recognize how bad things are.

Sometimes, I feel like at least once every few weeks, I come home and say, "That was the worst/poorest/saddest place I've ever been." But only one place can truly take the superlative.

I hope that I don't see anywhere worse/sadder/poorer anytime soon, because this was pretty bad/sad/poor. It will take me awhile to decompress from watching a famine unfold and children die. It will take me awhile to sort through all of the material I've gathered and try and form a coherent narrative.

In the meantime, here are some photos I took of a few little boys from the Ik tribe. They were so cute, laughing and smiling and running around and being kids. The distended belly is a tell-tale sign of malnutrition, but more subtly, the orange tinge at the hair line is indicative of Kwashiorkor.


Three...
Two...

One!

Nagenda Art School Opening

Just wanted to plug an event taking place this weekend...

La Fontaine, Kisementi, Saturday, 24 May

Nagenda

This one-night-only event will act as a fund raising event to help Nagenda International Academy of Art and Design (www.nagenda.org) open its doors in September 2008. Our featured artist is Kizito Maria Kasule, Makerere University Professor and Founding Director of NIAAD.

NIAAD will be the first of its kind in East Africa! Slated for official opening in September 2008, NIAAD will be a self-sustaining institution where local and international artists will hone their creative and entrepreneurial skills. Located on the edge of Lake Victoria, NIAAD will provide a lush backdrop for students, instructors and volunteers to gather at a top-notch facility. Artists will be inspired to promote local arts and crafts techniques; learn cutting edge design technology and encourage one another through a network of alumnae and international artists. NIAAD is a fully registered community-based organization within Ssisa sub-county Wakiso District in Central Uganda.

NIAAD's mission is to establish a continuous and self-sustaining center where mediums of artistic expression will be learned and appreciated. Their objectives include:

1) to establish a local and international arts training center for people of Uganda and beyond;

2) to preserve, promote and utilize indigenous art and craft skills through training and research, fostering a sense of community pride and shared history;

3) to create employment in the arts by training school dropouts, orphans and other disadvantaged people;

4) to provide art training in a high-caliber academy setting to students whose primary and secondary schools cannot employ art teachers;

5) to provide and equip ordinary people with art and designing entrepreneurship skills which they can use to market their art and craft products.


NIAAD will not open its doors without the help of art lovers like you! Please join us for this special event and schedule your tour of the NIAAD center with us!

Up, up and away....

I'm off to Karamoja for the week. Will report back soon.

Paying for safer sex

Many people have criticized a new program in Tanzania that gives people economic rewards when they test negatively for STIs (sexually transmitted infections). Congo Girl calls this “derogatory.”

Yet, one of the many purposes of this program would be to give people money so that they don’t have to have sex for money, or engage in other risky sexual behavior associated with economic gain, a fate far more derogatory, in my opinion, that participating in this program.

(The program has other purposes and aims, but here, I’ll mainly be discussing this one.)

So, here’s the thing, sex, in an African context, is NEVER the kind of glamorous-I’m-wiedling-my-all-powerful-feminitiy-to-make-loads-of-money kind of thing. No Eliot Spitzer Number 9 here. More often than not, “risky sexual behavior” isn’t sex work as an employment category but as a means to put a coin in your pocket. The line between a sex worker and someone who has a sugar daddy is practically nonexistent, as is the line between a sex worker and someone who is hungry.

In a western context, the idea of sex work as a woman’s prerogative is controversial, but valid as a hypothesis. In Africa, it is not. The question that needs to be asked here is, why are women having risky sex? And the answer, always (okay, almost always, like 99.9 percent of the time always), is that they need the money.

They need money to buy food. To pay for shelter. To survive.

If they’re only saying yes to risky sex because of extreme poverty, then it is the poverty that is derogatory and the payout that is empowering.

One interesting comment on Congo Girl’s blog is that this will perpetuate economic inequality between postives and negatives. This is a valid point, as is another point by a reader who asks what happens to someone who is raped. These are things that the researchers should consider.

The jury is still out on whether or not this will work. I’ll be curious, along with a lot of other people, to see what happens. One thing that I worry about is the fact that women are paid out every six months: this may not be frequent enough to cover the daily grind. It’s a lot of money, as much as the annual income of most participants, but I fear the long wait in between payouts might cause participants to engage in risky behavior to cover costs in the immediate present.

But this is a concern with the program design, not the program concept. The design will be tweaked over time as the researchers figure out what does and doesn’t work.

The concept, however, is far from derogatory in my opinion. One comment on Congo Girl's blog says that this program makes her “uncomfortable.”

The only thing that makes me uncomfortable is the thought of women having sex for the cost of a plate of beans and posho. If this program can reduce that kind of occurrence, then the commenter should handle her discomfort while the program participant is eating.

Book club and other updates

Haven't been on blogger much this week, and next week, I'll be upcountry, so expect the paucity of posts to continue (though I will probably do another one today... try to take off the weekend).

But, I promised a book club/book swap, and I intend to keep that promise. I propose:

Tuesday, May 27, at 7 pm, location TBA

We will all bring a book, and then swap. We can discuss the possibility of all reading the same text for subsequent meetings. If you've already told me you want to attend, then I have you on a list. If you are hearing about this for the first time or suddenly have the desire to part with an Aristoc purchase, feel free to let me know and I'll add you to the list.

Museveni in the Holy Land

There have been surprisingly few mentions in the Ugandan media of the fact that Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan President, is currently in Jerusalem. Few mentions in the international media as well, though this is to be expected. Who else is there? George Bush, Paul Kagame, a few other international state heads, and a whole lot of Jews, and some Palestinians who surely have not attended the festivites.

Officially, he's there for a conference. Unofficially, I've heard a whole slew or rumors ranging from things I'm not willing to say on a public space like a blog, to other things I'm not willing to say on a public space like a blog.

Having now spread this tidbit of information, I'll leave you to speculate about possible meanings.

Museveni at Chogm. COPYRIGHT Glenna Gordon

Afghan Women on Film

I look at a lot of different photo essays online. A lot. A few every day, at least, to try and learn from what others are doing and see where I can take my work.

Few make as much of an impact on me as The Hidden Half, a photo essay in Mother Jones magazine. While it doesn't dazzle with tricky techniques or saturated color, in terms of effect, it does more than any fancier essay could hope for. Don't get me wrong, the technique is perfect, but if you're trying to get what I'm talking about, after looking at this essay on Afghan women, look at this essay. Pretty pictures. But that's all, just pretty.

I'm only posting a few here, because I hope you'll go look at the whole essay. It's work your internet cafe time.

October 9, 2004, saw the first free, democratic presidential election in Afghanistan. In the months prior, the Taliban peppered villages and cities with "night letters" warning women not to vote. In June 2004 a bomb exploded on a bus full of female election workers in Jalalabad, killing three. Still, these four women at a Kabul polling station-and 40 percent of women nationwide-asserted their new right. But, as a Womankind report summarized, "paper rights have not equaled rights in practice."

Why this photo is amazing: technically, it's great - there's the division between the three women in blue and the woman in white from the slightly out of focus foreground. But what's really amazing is the content, the emotion, captured here: the daily grind of these women, trying so hard, how they have to go somewhere in a back corner to just exhale. The photographer's intimacy with her subjects is unmistakable, and that's why the photographer could capture such an amazing image.



The waters of Band-i-Amir Lake are thought to cure many ailments, including infertility. If a woman has not conceived soon after marriage, her husband’s family will often travel for days-by car, donkey, camel, or foot-to bring her here. Most Afghans don't know how to swim, so the woman is tethered around the waist as she enters the lake. The husband follows behind and, as is the custom, pushes her into the frigid water three times.

There is something so moving about this photo - the amazing landscape, the disorientation and confusing imagery (just what are they doing?), but it all comes together to reveal an aspect of women's lives in Afghanistan that most people know nothing about.


Inside a Kabul home, a heavy curtain is all that separates a prostitute's work from her family life. Her 15-year-old daughter also sells herself, but not in the house. Too many men going in and out would alert the neighbors, and that could prove fatal.

Here, the photographer is working with limitations: I assume that the woman pictured didn't want to have her face shown, but the photographer worked around this. She used the curtain, which serves such a necessary role in this woman's abode, as part of the photo. The photographer has the curtain do all the talking, and that's what makes this photo amazing.

Lion sex, Scarlett Johansson and Google

Dear Google Users,

When you search for lion sex, just what is it that you're looking for? And why do you think you'll find it on my blog?

Every day, according to Google Analytics, I get many a hit from web trawlers looking for "lion sex" or "lions sex," or other variations, including but not limited to: "angry lion," "lion do sex," "lion tribal," "lion sex with lion," "what can't lion do."

And you, yes you, in Norwalk, USA, who Googled, "How many times does a lion have sex?" what drives your curiosity? And you, from Glen Allen, USA, who Googled "black and white photo of a woman sitting by a lion," why was it my archive from February 2007 that got your attention?

And you, who visited my blog for 13 minutes and 14 seconds from Cambodia, with the aim of learning "how to make a lot of money in development," did my blog answer your question?

And you, "show me photos of Uganda city," you left my blog quickly. Not what you were looking for? Yet, I have these photos. Or, "photos of Ugandan prisons," there aren't very many places on the Internet with such photos, yet you too left my blog

But, thank you, Scarlett Johansson, for your new album, which is boosting my reader statistics. Even though they Google you, they end up reading me.

And finally, you, "buying Viagra in Uganda," sorry, but this lion sex is still waiting for a procurement contact.

Sincerely,

Scarlett Lion

Watching African movies in Africa

Ugandan Insomniac raves aboutWar Dance. She got to see it today at the Amakula festival. Unfortunately, I was busy. I've wanted to see War Dance for some time, ever since I heard about it months ago, sometime circa the Oscars.

It's the story of some kids in Pader, lives torn apart by decades of conflict with the Lord's Resistance Army, finding hope in a dance competition held in Kampala.

I've seen many a live Acholi dance. In Kampala and elsewhere. Conference organizers tend to have a bunch of Acholis perform at places like the Serena, in the front of lots of foreigners attending plenary sessions in rooms filled with identical chairs.

Seeing a dance, especially like the one I have photographed here, somewhere outside Kitgum, is pretty amazing. (Seeing it in the conference hall at the Serena is less amazing.) But there's something that is it's own kind of amazing about a film. And there's something that's an even greater kind of amazing about seeing a film taking place somewhere you've been.



But it seems that films about Africa rarely screen in Africa. And I've missed my chance to see this film, captured in Uganda, in Uganda. The film festival continues, and I'll have the chance to see some other mediocre hits like The Science of Sleep, and maybe another flick or two.

Meanwhile, at Garden City, Kampala's shopping mall courtesy of Janet Museveni, the Cineplex currently is playing Iron Man. While we get most American movies here a few months late, big production companies are starting to realize they lose revenue from ripped DVDs when they delay international releases.

(Cineplex has a website - last updated in December of 2007)

I'm excited about seeing a comic book figure on big screen, but I'd rather see an Acholi.

And forget about me, what about an Acholi seeing an Acholi on the big screen? I'm no film studies expert (I have a very useful degree in Art History) but there's something about seeing a movie about your group that is somehow a meaningful experience. It's a trace, proof that you're there and people know about you and what's happening to you. They can see you, and you can see yourself anew through their sight.

I'm glad for festivals like Amakula. But the chance for Africans to see Africans on screen shouldn't be limited to a week a year through a festival sponsored by donors.

Food riots, Laptops, Sudanese Returnees and Acholi IDPs

A picture post for today. Some by me, some by others.


Laptops distributed in Nepal.


Food riots in Mogadishu. (AFP)




Sudanese who have been living in neighboring countries including Chad, Uganda, Congo and CAR are returning to South Sudan for a census, which looked promising but has had more than a few hitches. I took a bunch of photos for this story but they never ran on the wire. So unlike my other AP photos, I actually own these and can use them as I'd like, ie, for your photo copying purposes, dear reader.





When I wrote about the Acholi women living in in Kireka, I first hung out with them at an NGO called Meeting Point for lots of singing and dancing. I've been to many a singing and dancing session, but this is the first one where they put a hollowed out gourd on my head during the festivities. Unfortunately, since there was a gourd on my head, I wasn't able to properly use my zoom lens and capture the event for posterity.

Uganda's press freedom and the opposition

This an editorial in today's Sunday Monitor by Emmanuel Gyezaho, a former colleague and generally very nice guy, about the role of press freedom and how it relates to a weak opposition party.

In defense of press freedom

Agang of mean looking goons (read security operatives) besieged the premises of the new fortnightly, The Independent, arresting three journalists; celebrated critic Andrew Mwenda, the richly experienced Odobbo Bichachi and young turk John Njoroge over stories the trio published relating to alleged atrocities committed by the UPDF during the northern Uganda insurgency.

Daily Monitor photojournalist. Joseph Kiggundu, was dispatched to cover the story. Duty called and he dashed to Kanjokya Street in Kamwokya, a Kampala suburb, totally oblivious of what calamity lay ahead of him.

He gets to the news scene, armed with his camera, to capture these barbaric moments of a broad-daylight onslaught on the media. It was last weekend, ironically, seven days before the world marked the World Press Freedom Day. It fell yesterday.

Click, click, click, Mr Kiggundu went about his business. Moments later, the messenger got hunted. Blindfolded, camera whisked away, Mr Kiggundu, was detained, along with the trio of journalists, but later released by the police.
To many, it wasn’t such a shocker.

The consistency with which the State is prying into the affairs of journalists and increasingly restricting the space in which we can freely execute our jobs is well documented.

From upcountry radio journalists and commentators, to acclaimed investigative reporters in the heart of the country, the NRM regime has not shied away from enriching its account of brazen attacks on the Fourth Estate.

This episode offers us fresh evidence of a repressive government frightened by fear of what the truth may reveal.
For the reporters whose job it is to point out the flaws in government, the gross abuse of power by our political leadership, human rights violations, and offer a platform to the minority to speak out and be heard, our reward has been; intimidation, arrest, interrogation, detention and charges in court.

About three months ago, at a closed meeting of executive members of the Uganda Parliamentary Press Association, our vice president, Ms Julian Amutuhaire, an industrious reporter with KFM, who has defied masculine engineered odds to emerge as an excellent female journalist, mooted the idea of celebrating the World Press Freedom Day, by highlighting the plight of journalists in the country.

We discussed, at length and agreed it was necessary we petition Parliament making a strong demand for comprehensive media law reform.

That petition is now currently before the House and the onus is upon the legislature to protect the media as we stand for our all important values of truth and independence, fairness and balance, accuracy and integrity, and ensure we operate with all the freedom we deserve to ably keep a watchful eye on the government.

Journalists in Uganda are in such a predicament (as they are like world over). We have been attacked by the opposition for allegedly being under the armpit of the NRM whenever we write stories that praise the regime or criticise the opposition.

And when we report similarly about the regime, we are harassed. But more importantly, it is necessary to ask why reporters are now increasingly in the line of fire with the State.

It is understood that President Museveni no longer takes the opposition seriously. In retrospect, he never has besides the exception when Dr Kizza Besigye, an insider, broke all the rules of loyalty and gunned for his throne.
The opposition is weak enough not to launch any formidable threat on his grip onto power, apart from tickling him at the polls.

As a matter of fact, the opposition has been a blessing to Mr Museveni because they legitimise his undemocratic tendencies as they offer no real challenge, alternative or threat to his kleptocracy.

Filling that void has been independent media, of which the Monitor Publications Ltd has steered the cause. Holding the government to account by exposing its excesses and ineptitude, independent media has been at loggerheads with the State.

As we marshalled support and prepared for a peaceful walk in the city to highlight the plight of reporters in the country ahead of the World Press Freedom Day, a colleague said he was appalled by the conspicuous silence of the opposition.

It became very apparent that no condemnation of the recent attacks on the press had been issued. He said that if Dr Besigye, the Forum for Democratic Change leader, the Democratic Party, the Uganda Peoples Congress and whatever is left of an opposition, are unwilling to recognise that the attacks on independent press reduces the space of freedom of expression, and their space to be heard, they would only be fools.

The inherent freedom to speak openly, speak for the voiceless and demand for equitable rights is that which can only sustain the opposition. Without it, they are dead, buried.

And because you are weak, the government considers us the genuine opposition. The State has got a lot of ground to control and influence public opinion, so when it attacks the little left for alternative voices, the characters (in the opposition) who claim to be defenders of these rights, ought to stand up. Otherwise, they just become political opportunists.

We have rightly reported about the millions getting a lousy education through the Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education, but have you seen the opposition seriously mobilise around such a cause to marshal real support and demand for change or offer the alternative solution? No, and a big one.

We report almost daily about the pathetic state of our hospitals but the Besigyes (and Musevenis) will go for treatment abroad. When has the opposition crusaded for the rights of medical workers and made any headway? Don’t remember!

But until the State shuts down all avenues for us to openly say that Besigye’s ambition and that of Museveni is all but the same, to be president, we can boldly say that.

Let’s set the reporters free and remember what former United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) said: “Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged.”

Tribal Wars Online During Kenyan Election Aftermath

There's a really interesting piece up on Frontline by Edwin Okong'o, a member of the Kenyan diaspora living in California and working as a journalist.

Okong'o tells the story of how during the election aftermath, the website Mashada, an online discussion forum, received inflammatory hate speech. Several comments were filed under the screen named "Man R," which someone online, through some misleading googling, decided was Okong'o. Then hateful messages were directed towards him.

Mashada stopped accepting comments temporarily, but Okong'o's name was nonetheless sullied.

I'd like to make some sweeping comments about the dangers of hate speech on the Internet or the role of online media during the Kenyan election aftermath, but I'll leave that to Mr. Okong'o and just use this space as a chance to mention his work.

Urban IDPs: Acholis from the North come to Kampla

New stories I've written for PlusNews.

Hard labor for HIV-positive IDPs in Kampala
KIREKA, 1 May 2008 (PlusNews) - Melia Alanyo, 46, left northern Uganda for the capital city, Kampala, in the late 1980s when the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) started abducting, attacking and killing people in her village.

She has spent the last 20 years in Kireka, a low-income suburb on the city's outskirts, collecting and breaking rocks into chips at a local quarry. For every 20-litre jerry can she fills, she earns 100 Ugandan shillings (US$0.06). On a good day, when she is feeling strong and can take the sun beating down on her back as she chips away at the rocks, she takes home about 1,000 Ugandan shillings (US$0.60). (MORE...)



Hear Our Voices: I tell everyone I'm HIV positive
KIREKA, Carmela Acen fled her home in northern Uganda when the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) began its insurgency campaign in 1986. She told IRIN/PlusNews about her life in Kireka, a poor township in the capital, Kampala.

"I couldn't stay longer in Kitgum [district in northern Uganda]. Two uncles and two relatives were killed. I couldn't stay in my village, Lukung.

"I went to Kampala and stayed with a sister in Kibuli [suburb of Kampala], and then moved to Kireka. I am caring for 28 children left behind by my brothers and sisters and in-laws. Most of the parents have died of AIDS, one of cholera and the others in the war. (MORE...)