may UBHH

uganda bloggers happy hourThe May Uganda Bloggers Happy Hour is coming up next week: Thursday, May 17, 6:30 PM at Mateo’s* on Kampala Road. Mark your calendars, enter it into your Blackberries and set your cell phone reminders.

In describing UBHH to the non-initiated, I’ve realized that “we hang out and talk” is perhaps not the most alluring way to portray who we are and what we do. This, in combination with suggestions from several UBHH regulars that we make things a little more formal, has led me to designate May as Generic Blog Question Month. I’m curious to what goes on in the Ugandan blogosphere besides posting and commenting.

Some things to think about:

  • What blogs do you read regularly?
  • What’s most likely to make you return to a blog (pictures, design, writing, a personal connection to the author)?
  • Do you use blogs more as a source of information about specific topics — politics, current events, pop culture, Turkish cooking — or as a way to stay in touch with your friends and family?

Get ready — I plan to go discussion-facilitator-mode on you guys, partly so that I can tell other people that we talk about specific things, but mostly because I just want to know. Who’s reading an awesome Estonian knitting blog or gets all of their political news from a handful of bloggers? Come on, spill: what intriguing, sparkly blogtreasures are you hiding?

Also, depending on how tired they are after 36 hours of travel, there’s a chance I’ll be bringing two very special guests with me: my mom and my aunt, who are jointly responsible for my current knowledge of English grammar, how to format a term paper and what happens when you jam a finger covered in Vick’s Vapo-Rub up someone’s nose.

*Sorry for the earlier confusion — I’m terrible with dates.

the appropriate apparatus for the activity

My father, in addition to being our family’s designated Finder of Lost Objects, is also a master of logical sayings. These range from “that’ll feel better when it stops hurting” (when I injure myself) to “you make a better door than a window” (when I stand in front of the television) to “you just don’t have the right tool for the job.”

This last invariably follows a complaint that I can’t open a jar (square rubbery thing) or hang up a picture (special hooks) or wow my third grade classmates on Special Hat Day (foil-covered baseball cap with blinking LED lights — Dad never fails), and it is the first thing I thought of when I saw this guy:

I’m not sure of his job title, but I would imagine it to be something like “Professional Sharpener of Sharp Objects That Could Be Sharper Using a Splendid and Astounding Multipurpose Mode of Transportation-Slash-Sharpening Device.” Only, you know, in Langi/Luo, because he lives in Apac.

He would so be on my dad’s good side.

your devoted fan

I’m feeling guilty. Martin Ssempa comments on my blog and gets an eleven-paragraph response, but Tom Bissell and Michael Maren get nothing.

It’s not that I don’t nurture a vast writercrush on admire you both. It’s more…well, what do you say to someone you idolize think highly of?

I could say, I guess, that the mid-airmail disappearance of Chasing the Sea, a gift from a like-minded friend in the States, hurled me into a week of literary despair, during which I read nothing but John Grisham novels and rarely brushed my hair. I could mention that I’ve been pushing The Road to Hell onto all of my friends and coworkers, as well as several strangers, as required reading. I might even reveal that your comments provoked several exclamation-point-riddled e-mails home and at least one change in Facebook status (Rebekah is…beside herself).

But that would ruin the elegant, mature, worldly self-image I’ve so painstakingly constructed, in which all my interactions with celebrities consist of witty remarks (on my part), offers of book deals (on theirs) and frequent consumption of designer sushi (mutual).

Lacking all of the above, I’m just going to say wow, and promise that if you ever happen to visit Lawrence, Kansas, I will a) place myself at your disposal as a tour guide, personal shopper, and/or dinner companion and b) try my best to keep the volume of my screams of excitement at a level that’s more “strangled” than “raucous.”

decoding NGO-speak

As I was putting together my Hiphop for a Cause review on Monday, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was, despite my best efforts and enthusiastic use of words like “brilliant” and “cool,” a bit…dreary. Limp. Uninspiring, even.

Part of this is undoubtedly due to my complete lack of meaningful knowledge concerning hiphop, breakdancing and the art of writing about such things, but I don’t think it’s all my fault. Take, for example, this paragraph:

Breakdance Project Uganda was founded by Ugandan hiphop artist Abramz several years ago to empower street kids, formerly abducted child soldiers and other disadvantaged children throughout Uganda using hiphop and breakdance. BPU offers free breakdancing classes to these children, giving them a positive means of expressing themselves and encouraging them to become future BPU teachers.

I’d wager a fistful of shillings that 98% of all developing-nation NGO mission statements sound vaguely similar. Replace “disadvantaged children” with “widows” or “the unemployed” and “hiphop” with “well-digging” or “brownie-baking,” and you have what is meant to be a rousing, passionate declaration of How To Change Lives. But what does it mean? Empower them to do what? Express what, exactly? For a statement that’s supposed to save the world, it’s pretty bland.

I propose we get rid of the vapid euphemisms and talk about what these NGOs really do. Striving to give people “something constructive” to do means attempting to distract them from destructive alternatives — violence, drugs, prostitution, lethargy. Providing “outlets for expression” means letting them blow off anger, frustration, sadness or sheer boredom without robbing, assaulting or seducing the next person they see.

Bowing to a politically correct notion of what they Can and Cannot say neutralizes the immense value of these organizations. I understand that labeling their clients as potential bullies, welfare cases or criminals may come off as patronizing and imperialistic, which isn’t great for business. At the same time, they wouldn’t exist in a perfect world, and shrowding their goals in drab, dispassionate NGO-speak makes them seem like nothing more than part of the nonprofit bandwagon, with a clip-art logo and a cookie-cutter mission statement. There has to be a better way.

I’m not talking about late-night television appeals to lift child mothers out of poverty with only 10 cents a day or histrionic threats that a teenage gang will take over the inner city unless someone donates a new arts center. I’m talking about stripping off a little of the sugarcoating, employing a little more precision in their vocabulary, revealing a little of the rawness that exists in their spheres of influence without giving in to a showy, maudlin kind of despair.

Breakdance Project Uganda teaches street kids how to breakdance so they have a way to prove their social superiority that doesn’t include beating the shit out of each other. To their credit, this is basically how they introduced the first breakdance battle on Sunday: “these kids used to fight, but now they dance.”

I should have just said that.

hiphop makes me happy

Last night I left the house (goodbye, Scrubs, I’ll miss you so) and went to the Sharing Youth Center in Nsambya for Breakdance Project Uganda’s Hiphop For a Cause show.

I say this as only a white girl from the midwest can: How. Cool.

Breakdance Project Uganda was founded by Ugandan hiphop artist Abramz several years ago to empower street kids, formerly abducted child soldiers and other disadvantaged children throughout Uganda using hiphop and breakdance. BPU offers free breakdancing classes to these children, giving them a positive means of expressing themselves and encouraging them to become future BPU teachers.

The Hiphop For a Cause performers ranged from Lyrical G, the hiphop winner of the 2006 Pearl of Africa Music awards, to a group of children from HEALS, an afterschool program in Gulu, to kids from the Kingship Orphanage in Kampala who had been training with LA-based hiphop choreographer Jessica Dexter.

Over 100 people attended the show, all proceeds from which will go into further Breakdance Project Uganda programming.

Abramz and his crew of mouthwateringly talented dancers offer classes at the Sharing Youth Center every Monday and Wednesday from around 5:00 to 9:00 PM. Classes are free and open to anyone who wants to learn.