i was going to write about karamoja…

…but Samuel Olara did an amazing job over at the Sub-Saharan African Round Table.

An excellent short history of the Karamojong people in the twentieth century can be found in this interview with Dr. Sandra Gray, an anthropologist who works in the region. The interview ends with the question, “Do these people have any political support within their own country?” Dr. Gray’s answer:

Everybody hates pastoralists. They’re among the last groups in the world it’s still politically OK to trash. They’re derided for letting their sheep and goats and zebu overgraze the land and turn it into desert.

That’s a lie. They did just fine for centuries.

A question for the Ministry of Works, Housing and Communications

Q: How many Ugandans does it take to get a matatu (shared minivan taxi) from Kampala to Entebbe?

A: Two to maneuver your friend’s suitcase into the front seat; another to charge her 225% of the fare because she’s bringing luggage (I’m sorry, isn’t everyone else?); three to load the back of the vehicle with bags of grain and sacks of live chickens; two to strap foam mattresses to the top; one to yell at those strapping mattresses to the top about the way in which they’re strapping mattresses to the top; six to get in, properly position (read: cram into every available nook and cranny) their baggage, get settled, then change their minds, extract their belongings and leave; one to roll his eyes at the six indecisive ones; two to press water, biscuits, handkerchiefs, newspapers and other assorted, unwanted goods on the passengers; one to beg for money as you finally roll out of the taxi park; one to run over a roadside plasticware stand two blocks from the taxi park; and three to re-pack the grain and (possibly no longer live) chickens when the back comes open after running over the plastics.

A friend and I have joked about a Frequent Matatu Rider Program. I would totally cash in my kilometers for a conductor who would adhere to the little sign painted on the side of every van that reads, “Licenced to carry 14 passengers” instead of cramming 23 people and their assorted poultry into one vehicle. A guarantee that you’ll never have to sit on the crack between the bench and the fold-down seat? What about a VIP lounge at the taxi park? Front door pick-up service? Air conditioning? Waragi-and-tonics on trips longer than thirty minutes?

The program could take its cue from KLM’s Flying Blue. I can see it now:


Riding Dirty

Do you think the government could get Jay-Z (as long as he’s on his charity kick) to convince Chamillionaire to let them his track as a theme song?

Behold, behold: the NGO spectacle

I met an American undergraduate a few weeks ago who was writing his senior thesis on the “NGO circus” in Uganda.

His point (I think — it was hard to get past his carefully cultivated skepticism and the unlit cigar he carried around in his mouth like an über-cool oral security blanket) was that the proliferation of NGOs in Uganda in the last 20 years has made it more, not less, difficult for the country to develop. He focused on international organizations, but I see the same thing happening at the local level.

I spent last week in Gulu talking to several Ugandan non-profit and community-based groups about their projects. I hoped to learn about national reconciliation from the grassroots level and to come home more informed about what needs to happen in the north for peace to become a reality. Instead, I found myself wading through a swamp of catchy development terminology that didn’t seem to make any more sense to the people I met with than it did to me.

The project leaders talked animatedly to me about microfinance and community mobilization and adult literacy programs. They all wanted to address every single problem in northern Uganda, from HIV to education to arts and sports to cultural renewal to child soldiers to agriculture. One group had a total of three volunteers but was working on eight separate multi-year, multi-district proposals, each covering a multiple aspects of rebuilding. The proposals were full of attractive phrases and energetic language, but after spending an hour with the director, I could tell he had no understanding of the economic theory, organizational principles or sheer manpower required to turn his projects into realities.

Those I spoke with clung to their CBOs and PRSPs and QUIPs as if the very letters would save them. Some seemed to think that creating a successful income-generating activity was as easy as saying “IGA.” It truly was a circus — the directors spouting acronyms like desperate ringmasters while their projects flopped around like mistreated, malnourished performance animals.

Uganda doesn’t need another project proposal from another would-be community leader with an over-inflated vocabulary and no training to back it up. These people are well-meaning, but as influenced as they are by the development industry talk in Uganda, their Big Ideas are just as much top-down (as opposed to local-level) as international initiatives. A thousand times better would be an organization that actually consulted the people around it to find out what they need and how best to achieve it, rather than succumbing to the Ringling-Bros.-esque attraction of development novelty acts.

PEPFAR contributing to spread of AIDS

The Washington Post recently reported that the AIDS rate is rising in Uganda. Peter Piot, director of UNAIDS, attributes the increase (from 5.6 to 6.5 percent in rural men and from 6.9 to 8.8 percent in rural women) to “a period of ‘decreased credibility’ of condoms, the consequence of messages by some fundamentalist groups, a run of defective condoms and then a shortage of condoms.”

This article comes on the heels of the Global Fund’s rejection of a Ugandan grant proposal for $111 million to fight HIV/AIDS. Corruption and poor management ripple throughout Uganda’s handling of its HIV/AIDS programs — the last two years have been a recurring pattern of fraud, lies and incompetence. What concerns me even more, however, is the United States’ ineffectual response to a disease that is threatening to engulf the nation yet again.

A full thirty-three percent of the money USAID spends on HIV prevention goes towards abstinence. In 2004, the number of condoms provided by USAID’s PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) dropped by 60 percent, a decrease which coincided with the Ugandan government’s confiscation of all free health-center condoms due to concerns about their quality; the condoms were tested and proven to be perfectly usable but were never re-released. These two events triggered a shortage of condoms in the country and widespread doubt of their effectiveness from which Uganda has not yet recovered.

The U.S. attitude towards condoms is frightening. In an April 2005 meeting of the International Committee of the House of Representatives to review the U.S. response to the global AIDS crisis, Ted Poe (R-TX) 25% more effective than natural family planning (the method USAID is pushing with Janet Museveni).

Still, USAID is increasingly funding abstinence-only programs to the detriment of more comprehensive, more effective organizations: in November 2004, PEPFAR overrode the recommendations of their Technical Review Committee and funded an organization deemed unsuitable for grant money. The pro-abstinence organization, Children’s Aid Fund, has close ties to both the Bush administration and to Janet Museveni, which was seen as justification enough to fund their program. Furthermore, the U.S. has been steadily decreasing the amount of money it gives to international organizations that provide reproductive health services — in 2002, the government withdrew over $36 million from the World Health Organization and the UN Population Fund.

AIDS is making a comeback in Uganda, and U.S. efforts are doing little to stop it. USAID needs to get their act together and start providing factual, practical information about STDs, STD prevention and reproductive health instead of funding misguided projects that skirt the issues at hand.

current state: mourning…

…the theft of my laptop, phone, camera, money, ID, bank card, journal (of the “response to Trial Justice” kind, not the “dear diary” kind), clothes and shoes. Oh, and a friend’s copy of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (to that friend, who doesn’t yet know about his loss: my apologies).

The loss of my beloved iBaby will set back the blogging a bit, but I’ll do my best to keep posting fairly regularly…I’m working on a couple of pieces that I hope to have up soon.

Lots of love, and remember to lock your doors.