government gambling with the lives of IDPs

Coming into Kampala this morning, I saw on one of the ubiquitous Daily Monitor signposts that the government is shutting down all IDP camps by the end of the year, making their inhabitants return home. Ugandan Minister of Relief and Disaster Preparedness Tarsis Kabwegyere claims that the dismantlement of the overcrowded camps will improve the plight of nearly 2 million Internally Displaced Persons who currently face extreme shortages of food and water and exceedingly high rates of cholera, AIDS and malaria. Kabwegyere also threatened anyone who would try to delay the process.

The government claims that it is prepared to help IDPs return to their homes, but residents of camps in both Lira and Teso have expressed serious concerns that the pledged resettlement packages may come too late or not at all. The challenge of resettlement is an enormous one — people who have been away from their homes for two decades need homes, agricultural supplies, schools, boreholes and medical facilities in addition to counseling and reintegration assistance.

Disputes over land are sure to arise — after 20 years, familiar landmarks separating properties have changed, and some returnees are bound to lay claim to land that is not theirs in the general confusion of the process. The issue of security has also yet to be resolved. The LRA conflict is one of 22 armed rebellions that have taken place in the country in the last 20 years. Sending IDPs home without providing protection — especially in northeastern Uganda, where the United Nations estimates that 40,000 guns are circulating — is no better than originally herding them into camps where they have been victim to LRA attacks.

The government’s showy closing of the IDP camps as proof that northern Uganda is finally safe is a dangerous move, with the potential to further damage the lives of millions of conflict-affected people. Though LRA attacks have dramatically reduced since the beginning of the peace talks in Juba, a better system for resettlement needs to be firmly in place before IDPs are forced to return.

National Novel Writing Month

I’ve been out of commission this past week, enjoying the outlying edges of Uganda. Sipi Falls. I highly recommend it.

I’m back and looking forward to honing my writing skills by participating in National Novel Writing Month. Fifty thousand words in thirty days, mostly composed by candlelight during my long, lonely nights in the bush. I’m still not sure what I’ll write about, but I have a hunch it will involve Aga Khan. Jay-Z should also feature heavily.

Want to join me? Go to NaNoWriMo.org and sign up. Then go to my page and be my buddy so we can poke and prod each other to the finish line.

romance in k’la city

After six weeks in Kampala, I’ve come to the conclusion that those involved in public transportation – namely boda drivers and matatu conductors – learn basic English questions in the following order:

1. You, where are you going?
2. Muzungu, how are you?
3. Do you have a boyfriend?
4. What’s your phone number?

This phenomenon often extends beyond drivers and conductors to other passengers, who frequently inquire about your marital status before even learning your name. These men have no shame – even if your hair is a mess and your eyes are bloodshot and you’re stumbling through the taxi park at six in the morning, they still see something desirable in you and give it their best shot. It both appeals to your vanity and disgusts you. If you happen to be a single white woman in Kampala, it also leads to the creation of a wide variety of excuses to avoid sharing any actual personal information with them, which can range from “I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten my own number,” to “Yes, my husband is a professional Norwegian lumberjack, and we raise pit bulls together with our three lovely children” — both of which have come in handy.

Living in Kampala as a white female requires a certain amount of humor and resilience to deal with the constant barrage of redundant pick-up lines. And then there are the times you fail, your mind falters and all excuses desert you, and you’re left having given your phone number to a blue-helmeted boda driver named Edward who will call you every thirty minutes between 6:30 AM and 8:00 PM for the next three weeks.

Edward and I spent a miserable 90 minutes on a boda one drizzly Tuesday morning in a sorely misguided attempt to return to my village from southeastern Kampala. Despite my frantic arm-waving and my emphatic commands to “Stop. This is Bad. We turn around. We go back,” Edward sojourned on to Kawempe, a good 10 km from where I live. When we finally reached my home, he was so apologetic that he knocked 2000 shillings off the price and offered to give me a ride whenever I needed it. Finding a boda willing to take you cross-town and then some for a reasonable price at 6:00 AM can be a challenge, so I accepted and we exchanged numbers. Mistake number one.

Though I’d done my best to explain to him when I needed rides, he began calling me just a few short hours after dropping me off to ask if I could use his services. I answered the first time he called out of curiousity (perhaps I’d left something on his bike?), and the second out of pity and mild frustration (“Thank you, I’m sorry you don’t have any other riders, but I’m not going anywhere at the moment.”). Mistakes numbers two and three.

Though I stopped picking up, Edward kept calling, and the situation grew so dire that I began keeping my phone constantly on silent. Rather than daunting his persistence, my refusal to acknowledge his attentions seemed to increase his determination to reach me. He began sending text messages of the sort that only romance-stricken boda drivers can send: “U wher r u I havnt seen u in so long plz call Edward” and “Hopping u r not sick want 2 see u call me plz.”

The messages eventually slowed and then, one blissful day, stopped entirely, and Edward faded from my consciousness until a couple of days ago, when I made the mistake of picking up another boda from the same stage. Immediately after hopping on the bike, I noticed Edward hunched sulkily over his handlebars, staring at the two of us. As we pulled away, he straightened up and yelled, as only boda drivers can, “MUZUNGU WHY YOU NOT LOVE ME?”

I’m sorry, Edward. My heart already belongs to a Norwegian lumberjack.

plastic beads as birth control? how Janet missed the mark

Last week Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni introduced a system of birth control called Moon Beads. Designed to help women track their menstrual cycles and, by doing so, avoid sex when fertile, the beads are part of a five-year family planning program sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development. Museveni encourages women to “work selflessly” to use the beads.

The Ugandan birth control system desperately needs a revision. Uganda is currently the fastest-growing country in the world, with a population that could exceed that of Russia or Japan by 2050. This population explosion threatens to permanently mire the nation in poverty, increasing conflicts over land and resources in an already unstable environment. One half of all pregnancies in Uganda are unintended, and one in four results in an abortion — almost twice the abortion rate in East Africa as a whole.

Over one third of all women have expressed their desire for contraception, but only one in five married women actually has access to it. Oral contraceptives cost approximately 8 cents per month — a price affordable for much of the Uganda population — but clinics are few and generally inaccessible, making this option unavailable to most women. Condoms are theoretically free — to men only — in clinics, but they are often poorly stored, causing them to expire before they can be distributed. In 2004 the government recalled all free health clinic condoms, citing concerns about their quality. The condoms were checked and determined to be fine, but the government did not redistribute them, causing a shortage that has raised prices for the remaining stock to nearly 20 cents per condom.

Though Mrs. Museveni’s plan recognizes the need for better family planning in Uganda, it is sorely misguided. The natural family planning method is intended for monogamous couples and requires the women to carefully observe her periods for three to six months before implementing the system (the Moon Beads are intended to be used immediately and do not account for varying menstrual cycles). Even then, the method is only 75-90% effective, as compared to 95-99% for oral contraceptives and 86-98% for condoms.

Furthermore, the reality is that over 25% of men and 13% of women in Uganda admit to having sex with more than one partner (this does not include rape statistics, which are especially high in the north). Moon Beads and other methods of natural family planning do nothing to prevent the spread of HIV and other STDs. What Uganda needs if it is to avoid unwanted pregnancies, further lower the prevalence of AIDS, curb its wild population growth and prevent the medical complications that over 80,000 women face each year as a result of abortions is not a string of colored beads but better access to both information about birth control methods and to the methods themselves. Instead of encouraging women to use a method that is often ineffective and can contribute to the spread of disease, Mrs. Museveni should campaign to open more clinics throughout the country and to make both condoms and oral contraceptives widely and easily available to women.

the United Nations of this rap shit, at it again

While on his combination concert/water crisis awareness tour in Tanzania, Jay-Z found time to play a little dress-up with his girlfriend Beyoncé:


picture via My Africa

The rags-to-riches rapper claims, “I wanted to go to these [new places] to just tour and play music. Of course, I can’t go to any place without touching the culture and seeing what’s going on…I’m not a politician — I’m just a regular person with a heart.”

A heart that compels you to dress up like the Maasai.