The Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative is a local Ugandan non-profit that uses digital technology, including a blog, SMS and online forums and audio files in English and local languages, to help farmers in Uganda share information about health, agriculture and education. Check it out:
via Kabissa
Glenna at Uganda’s Scarlett Lion posted yesterday, wondering why the majority of Ugandan bloggers write about things other than politics:
But where have all the political blogs gone? There’s this one, but that’s also a newspaper column, or this one, not updated frequently, or this one that’s not by a Ugandan, and some others that are more general to Africa and not specific to Uganda.
Or were polticial blogs never there in the first place? There’s plenty of thoughts on boda bodas, Big Brother Africa, the bad weather Kampala’s been having lately, being broke, and other aspects of life in Uganda that certainly aren’t apolitical, but they aren’t exactly government budgets and school fires either.
My experience in Uganda has been that expat bloggers are the ones writing about politics, while Ugandan bloggers write more about their daily lives. As Glenna pointed out, this isn’t always true — in addition to the bloggers she mentioned, Tumwijuke at Ugandan Insomniac often writes about current events. But for the most part, for every political post you find, there will be fifty more about romantic escapades or beautiful Sunday mornings in Kampala. Commenting on Glenna’s post, Antipop explains:
To be honest with you most of us come to blogger to escape from it all. The fires, the term limits, the land wrangles, GAVI funds, presidential jet, potholes, fuel prices, press freedom, FDC, NRM,…it is everywhere you turn. the papers, the radio, tv, in the bar, even the woman that sells cassava roots in the market will have something to say about how the soaring prices have everything to do with a MUNYANKOLE president. the last thing you wnat to do is come to blogger and find it. I guess we are just tired. There is only so much whinning we can do.
As an author for Global Voices, a site that aims to “aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online,” I admit to getting frustrated when something (like the ICC charges against Sudanese president al-Bashir) happens and Ugandans — who, as Glenna points out, are among the most affected, given that what happens in Sudan could have major repercussions for the case against Joseph Kony and his commanders — say nothing.
At the same time, the mission of GV isn’t to aggregate, curate and amplify just the political conversation online. As I understand it, GV is a bridge between the part of the world that’s constantly connected to BBC and CNN and the part of the world that’s not. If that bridge only includes politics, which often means stories of violence, corruption and election fraud, GV and its readers are missing out on a huge part of life in the countries we claim to represent.
One of the most important things to come of out last month’s
Global Voices Summit is that the political voices aren’t the only ones that need to be amplified. Cultural and social voices are equally important to an understanding of other places, and several recent posts attempt to present readers with a more nuanced view of countries that are only discussed internationally when a crisis brings them to our attention. I still get frustrated when something of political importance goes unnoticed by the blogren, but I think the bloggers who are using their blogs to write novellas or talk about public transportation play an valuable role in transmitting information about Uganda to the rest of the world.
My next post is up at Global Voices Online:
A little over a year ago, Ugandan blogger Country Boyi wondered why Ugandans weren’t blogging in local languages. He wrote:
The power of indigenous languages to infiltrate the thinking of the local people cannot be underestimated.
[…]Do bloggers, like other writers, have a major stake in the development of writing and reading materials in the local languages, and what is in it for them considering the Ugandan society pays little attention to the written word?
The majority of Ugandan bloggers have yet to write in languages other than English, perhaps because four distinct language families, each with multiple languages, are represented in the country. Over the last year, however, several of Uganda’s blogren have forayed into the world of local-language blogging via Luglish, a blend of English and Luganda. Luganda is the local language most commonly spoken in central Uganda, including the capital city Kampala.
Featured in this post are Dennis of Country Boyi, Tumwi of Ugandan Insomniac, Seamless, Fresh Apples, Buttercookie, Paige and Phil of AndersonBowen and Chris Mason of Caked in Red Clay.
In my efforts to pay more regular attention to the ongoing conflict in northern Uganda, I’ve been spending a lot of time on these web sites:
The Uganda Conflict Action Network has been posting near-daily updates about the conflict since June 2005.
A month-by-month description of the peace talk process and of the status of peace and reconciliation (these overlap a lot; anyone know why they aren’t merged?) can be found at USAID’s Virtual Presence Post: Northern Uganda.
The Beyond Juba Project looks beyond the peace talks and the conflict in northern Uganda to address larger issues of sustainable national reconciliation. It is a joint initiative of the Refugee Law Project, the Human Rights and Peace Center and the Makerere University Faculty of Law.
A photo essay about the six days photographer Erin Baines spent with the LRA in Nabanga, Sudan in August 2006: “How does one prepare to meet the world’s most wanted man? Should I have at least brushed my hair that day? He told me it was nice to meet me. I think I smiled stupidly the whole time. It hardly seemed appropriate.”
I also wrote earlier about my northern Uganda reading list. If a book and a cup of coffee are more your style, this is a good place to start.
One of my strongest memories from Uganda is riding the bus between Kampala and Gulu, watching the land — green, thick, damp and hilly in Kampala, at times stifling and claustrophobic — flatten out to meet the bright, open sky. It always felt good, no matter what meetings I had ahead of me or what I had left behind in Kampala.
Earlier this month, DeTamble and Gay Uganda both linked to BBC’s special feature on the war, an interactive map of the destruction the conflict has wrought in a single village near Lira, Uganda.
On another note, tonight I’ve been listening to Exile, an album by northern Ugandan musician Geoffrey Oryema. Oryema’s father was a cabinet minister who was murdered by Ugandan security forces during Idi Amin’s reign. Exile, at least according to Wikipedia, chronicles the singer’s subsequent flight from Uganda in 1977. As I’ve listened and read through the BBC feature I’ve been wondering what landscapes Oryema remembers from Uganda.