Thursday morning, Dec. 2nd, I jumped on a boda boda with my backpacks and attempted to balance all of the weight so that I wouldn't tip too far back when the boda accelerated or too far to any one side when we turned. Reminded of Jim's words just before I left the Conservation International office in San Jose, Costa Rica one day some 3.5 years ago - Don't let yourself become another statistic - I told the driver to ride safely. I had a keen interest in reaching my destination and not just becoming another one of those 50 lives sacrificed to the boda gods every day here in Uganda.
I was destined for the UWA office and a green pick-up truck maneuvered by Geoffrey, originally from the far east now married to a girl from the far west and settled in her village. Geoffrey took us across kilometers of tarmacked, poorly tarmacked and untarmacked roads between Kampala and Bwindi-Buhoma. We would spend hours in Kampala before even hitting the Northern Bypass. First there were road tests for the funny sound the car had been making, then we had to pick up his wife and son, and finally to the Park chief's house to pick up a blanket (no offense, but that was kind of ridiculous....he made us drive an extra hour or so through traffic to pick up a blanket for him at his house to take to Bwindi with us when he could oh so easily throw that in his vehicle when he goes to Bwindi himself).
There were stops along the road for roasted cassava, cold bottles of water, and market days (which you can spot from a distance as a colorful conglomeration of peoples along the side of a road with foods, wares and old clothes piled between them). Geoffrey knows all the shortcuts through town that avoid traffic and can move the vehicle across any terrain no matter how potholed or torn up by rains, but ultimately darkness wins all. After almost taking out a grown man walking along the side of the road in opaque darkness with the car's side-view mirror, we stopped in Fort Portal for the night.
We parked along the main drag and asked for lodging, went to the first place we were told and took the first two rooms they showed us. We sat down at the motel restaurant to order food, but it turned out there was nothing I could eat. On the entire menu that was listed on the wall, there were really only two items to choose from - fish or cow. I chose to leave. Geoffrey and I walked around the town through three restaurants before we found one that offered rice and beans with no meat in it. Rice and beans have gotten me through Latin America, I suppose they'll do here in Africa as well. Geoffrey ended up eating kalo, a mixture of ground millet and cassava with water and steamed to form a sticky thick paste that you pinch with your fingers and dip into sauces. It's too bad the sauce had lamb in it because I really wanted to try the kalo. Foods you eat with your fingers are endlessly fun.
The next morning we rose with the sun and hit the road sans breakfast, stopping in Kasese for tea. The waitress asked us if we wanted chapati with our tea and we all said yes. Less than a few minutes later she would return to tell us that there was no chapati. Food industry in this country is such a tease. They're constantly supplying you with menus of dishes and things that they don't have. Oftentimes I don't even ask to see the menu, I just ask what they have that day. Then I sift out the vegetarian options and choose. Usually this means either beans or gnut sauce.
What followed Kasese would blow my mind. We were driving through Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP) and so close to the Congolese border. You could see trucks and taxis loaded up with people and things crossing back and forth across the border busting down this road that slices straight through QE. Meanwhile, all around you is wildlife en vivo. Elephants, water buffalo, cobs, baboons, bush buck, rabbits, warthogs and hippos. I was exuberant at the sight of every one. This was the first time I'd seen such animals in the wild (minus rabbits I guess). I deliriously texted Joe my excitement since I knew that he was somewhere in QE at that very moment too. Was he seeing what I was seeing?!? I was so glad I'd left Kampala and was finally here where the wild things roam.
After QE, we weren't far. A long stretch of bad dirt road later we finally reached Buhoma. I wasn't going to be making it to Ruhija where the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC) is and where I had originally planned to go. But it was okay, a free ride is a free ride. I was dropped at the ranger station, registered with the park people and met the man in charge - John Justice. JJ as I'm going to call him for now is the Community Conservation Warden, but since the Conservation Area Manager (presumably the man with the blanket) is on leave, he's in charge. I sat in front of him for some minutes, awkwardly aware of all the dust and sweat that had coated my skin over the last two days on the road, as he read through the letters that I'd so bureaucratically collected in Kampala until he looked up at me and said, "So you're doing research?" I nodded.
After explaining who I am, what I'm doing and what I plan to do in the next days and year, we set up an appointment to do an interview the next morning and I was deposited in the care of Alison, a ranger from their Rushamba outpost now on leave and hanging around Buhoma, his home village. I had been hooked up with a banda at Bwindi View Rest Camp for the next few days until Monday morning when I could catch a ride to ITFC in Ruhija with JJ.
Alison would be my guide for the rest of the day, taking me around town, showing me the community hospital set up by some Californian (Dr. Scott they call him) and the trading centers where I could buy things, introducing me to the Local Council Chairman, who we did an interview with as the sun was setting over the green mountains, and the local primary school (where many of the children's school fees are paid for by international sponsors, tourists who had come through Buhoma to see the gorillas, saw the "children in need" and offered to cover some of their educational costs). The whole town is filled with community development projects sponsored by outsiders, many of them ex-gorilla tourists with a bleeding heart.
I spent the next day interviewing JJ about park management and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) in the context of the greater Central Albertine Rift Transfrontier Protected Area Network, community participation in park management, community development and community relations with the park. Then later I met with the Communications Officer of the Bwindi Community Hospital, returning to my banda in the darkness, crossing many curious locals on the dirt road up. I greeted them with the one word in rukiga that I had learned, "agandi," and listened to them respond "nige" as smiles of amusement spread across their faces at the discovery that the muzungu speaks in familiar tongue.
Sunday, I decided, would be a day of rest....which means, I was determined to hike into the forest. I found Godfrey, the tourism warden, in his office and asked to do a hike. You can't just walk into the forest here, you've got to go with a guide (aka armed rangers), someone who can protect you from whatever it is that you might come across....mountain gorilla, forest elephant, poacher, etc. Usually they carry old Russian hand-me-downs, but I'm not so sure who they actually get them from. Probably a whole mixture of countries from the so-called North or West, pick your cardinal direction, who've moved on to more advanced mechanisms of death and maiming. Firearms: conserving for generations.
2pm, I met David and a couple from Switzerland? by the information kiosk and we set off with 2 other armed rangers into the forest and up the mountain toward a 3-tiered waterfall. In other words, one water way with three falls and a nice little pool at the top. It was nice to be hiking in the jungles again, shake off Kampala and to be reminded of all my days in the forests of Central America. The beautiful thing about rainforests is that you don't actually have to walk anywhere to find yourself surrounded by such a diversity of life and species that sometimes I find myself in one spot for ages before I turn around to go home in the waning light.
This wasn't one of those days, I had to get back to Bwindi View. I had promised Phenny (the owner) that I would help show him some things online, places where he might be able to advertise his rest camp and tourism services, and to try and connect him with the Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) coordinator so that he might be able to get a PCV to help him develop a sustainable ecotourism business here in Bwindi. We went to the Gorilla Research Clinic owned by Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), an organization started by wildlife veterinarians hoping to better protect the gorillas from zoonosis by improving the health of local communities. One of the founders, Gladys Kalema, is a bit of a female veterinary celebrity. I first heard about her through the WWF in Washington D.C. and then here and there from other organizations. I had spoken to her earlier that day on the phone and CTPH just happened to be doing a couple workshops in the Bwindi area, so I was put in touch with one of their other founders so that we could meet up.
I missed Stephen in Buhoma, but caught up with him just in time to catch the tail end of a workshop on employee health and wildlife protection that Tuesday when I was in Ruhija. JJ had dropped me at ITFC on Monday afternoon while on his way to Kasese for a regional meeting. ITFC is a research center on the top of another gorgeous mountain on the edge of BINP. Douglas and Miriam are the bossman and bosswoman; both seem like really nice and interesting people. They met here in Uganda years ago, but have spent loads of time working in Indonesia and other parts of the world with forests and communities. Douglas had supported my Fulbright application twice, so I was happy to finally meet him.
I also met a bunch of other researchers living at ITFC doing all kinds of different projects from Max Planck Institute mountain gorilla research to studies on sustainable takes of multiple use resources and field work on rodents as vectors of disease between wildlife and human communities. I was put in the girl's room at the student dormitory, which I shared with Saada, and in the other rooms were Patrick (rodent study) and Joseph (multi-use research). That first night I joined Emmanuel and Joseph at the local cantine, the restaurant at the Ruhija Community Rest Camp. Apparently the cantine is where it's at. It's a small community of researchers in Ruhija, so during the day everyone works and at night, we get together for dinner at someone's house or drinks at the cantine. It's a good group of people and after 4 days mostly alone in a banda in Buhoma, I was happy for the company.
I would only have a handful of days in Ruhija before I moved on from there as well. Basically, I caught the first ride out on Friday morning. Douglas and Miriam were a bit shocked at the shortness of my stay, but I explained that this is just a preliminary trip to do some scoping and that I wanted to make it to Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (MGNP) and QENP before I return to Kampala with a friend on the 16th. In other words, I had to make tracks if I was going to squeeze everything in. The ITFC vehicle made the trip into Kabale on Friday morning, taking me and my bags with it. I spent a few hours in Kabale meeting with people at International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP - an alliance of three NGOs, WWF, AWF and FFI, and sort of the Oz behind the whole transboundary PA network) and Bwindi-Mgahinga Conservation Trust (BMCT - the organization through which a lot of international money has been funneled into Bwindi-Mgahinga to avoid government graft) before squeezing myself into a saloon car to make the 2-hour trip between Kabale and Kisoro.
A saloon car is your regular old 4-door sedan but used as a means of supremely uncomfortable public transit. Literally, there were 4 in the front of the car, 4 in the back plus bags and a baby, and the trunk door had to be tied down just to keep everything inside of it in. The driver was half hanging out the window and half sitting in another man's lap. Two were squeezed into the passenger seat and I was somewhere in the middle in the back, each of us with our bags on our laps...we're all strangers, but in this situation, the personal comfort zone is 0mm. The last to get into the car was a woman with her baby, which she immediately passed off to the guy on my right despite the fact that he was a complete stranger. For almost the entire ride, I thought it was his baby. When they got out of the car at different places, her taking the baby with her and with little display of any kind of personal relationship, I realized that they were as new to each other as I was to them. To my left was a Ugandan soldier stationed somewhere near Mt. Sabinyo (the volcano whose very pinnacle is what I like to call the African Crown of the Continent, meeting point of Rwanda, DRC and Uganda). Through him, I tried to get a feel for security in the DRC just west of the Ugandan border, because on my next trip I'll be headed that way. Upon reaching Kisoro, we each slowly and achingly managed to move our cramped bodies out of the car and on to our final destinations. Mine: UWA information office.
At the UWA information office I met with Yonah, who I had warned via mobile phone the day earlier that I'd be coming through. Through him I met the Tourism Warden, Chemonges, who was the current man in charge since all of the other senior wardens were on leave. I spent a few hours with them and the bathroom - something in the pizza or chapati that I'd bought in Kabale was out to get me. Through Yonah's urging I finally took an herbal med, although he was convinced that I should go to the pharmacy and buy "black charcoal," some sort of medication for upset stomachs. I skipped dinner that night.
The next day up at Mgahinga, I did an interview with Chemo and the Community Conservation Ranger (also conveniently a Local Council chairman), had lunch and caught a ride with Chemo back into Kisoro town. I stayed the night in Kisoro, catching the first bus out in the morning to Mbarara. From Mbarara I would hop on another bus up to Katunguru where Joe and the others picked me up at the roadside intersection. Along the way I met people and tried to learn different words in different languages. About 10 minutes before Joe picked me up, I experienced my 3rd marriage proposal since arriving here in Uganda. The man works for UWA and wanted to know what it would take for me to take his proposal seriously so that I would go with him to his village, meet his family, meet his neighbors and friends, and of course, the clincher, when would I take him with me to the US? That day I learned how to say "I don't want to get married" in rukiga, which unfortunately, I forgot how to say moments later.
In QE, I stayed in Mweya with Joe, Lu and Yafit at a research house. Lu is a wildlife veterinarian who also teaches at Makerere University in Kampala. He's German but has been here for decades and knows loads about the human-wildlife conflict around QE and the political ecology of conservation in Africa in general. Yafit is a biology student who came here to work with Lu because of her interest in big cats. Joe was in QE setting up and checking wildlife camera traps. I would spend the next few days rolling through the savannah with them and James (an expert with the radio collar tracking devices and a savannah 4x4 race car driver...not really, but he drives like a madman), checking camera traps, tracking wildlife (saw my first lion and leopards in the wild) and visiting a farm where a lion had devoured a calf in the middle of the night and a hippo had destroyed a corral. The presence of large predators in this area made all of the human-wildlife conflict scenarios that I was learning about in Bwindi-Mgahinga that much more contentious.
Out here, many local community members see things as My Life or Wildlife. Human-wildlife conflict is a daily battle, full blown warfare in my opinion, which means that the tension between humans and protected areas is sky high. UWA and the NGOs struggle daily to try and show people the benefits of the protected areas, setting up revenue sharing schemes (which is probably mostly lost to corruption because of its district-based distribution mechanism) and educating on the values of wildlife and ecotourism. But the villagers, whose gardens (aka farms) patch every inch of land all the way up to the park's borders, often face constant crop/livestock-raids by animals coming out of the parks to feast on the cultivated delicacies of their neighbors.
UWA and the NGOs who are charged with dealing with human-wildlife conflict often don't even show up when locals report animal raids and do little if anything to help. Villagers are left to their own means, which include setting all kinds of animal traps, sending their children out to guard the gardens instead of going to school and killing endangered animals out of revenge. Poaching is a whole other hairy story and I have only superficially begun to delve into the issues of oil extraction and mining in the region.
I'm back in Kampala now with these and others issues swimming around in my brain. I have chosen the topic that I'm going to write on while I'm here and many of these things will not be highlighted in that paper, but I know that if I don't focus my research, I will be lost in this place studying socio-ecological dynamics for years on end. What I'm worried about is that despite all the studies and the people actually trying to do something, nature will lose and with that, humans too. All those stunning animals and dense tropical mountain forests that I have seen in the last couple weeks or so are so perilously threatened and the forces are so much greater than even just the livelihoods of the villagers who live around their peripheries. The driving causes of all of the environmental endangerment and extreme poverty comes from places like where I grew up, the U.S., Canada, Europe, etc. The resources we demand, the arms that we supply, the colonial infrastructure that remains...it's like Yoshimi and the Pink Robots.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Rearing to Go!
Monday (29Nov), I finally received all of my research letters and identity card from the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, which means that I was immediately on the phone trying to find out how I could get myself to Bwindi as quickly as possible. Turns out the directors of the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation in Bwindi-Ruhija were just coming back from leave and on their way there, maybe Wednesday morning, but they would have to stay in Mbarara for administrative meetings and things. I was welcome to join if I wanted. Then I met Festo at the Uganda Wildlife Authority, he's the Transport Officer....a.k.a. the guy who knows where all the UWA cars are going...and he told me that a car just happened to be in for repairs and that as soon as it's done, I'm on it and off to Bwindi. So, I was stoked...I had a ride! And with UWA! Maybe I could even get loads of delicious information about conservation in Uganda and protected areas issues in the region.
So the next day I went to Immigrations with my stack of documents and a wad of cash (costs $100 for a Pupil's Pass....aka the research visa). What I thought would take months of bureaucratic administrative paper pushing, mostly with papers going nowhere, took only 2.5 hours. I think I just got supremely lucky though and asked the right guy where the copy machine is. He ended up taking my documents, making the photocopies, submitting them to the immigrations people and 2 hours later, I had a visa. I walked out with a visa!! This is unheard of. So many people had told me that this would be such a difficult process....that it would take 2, maybe 3 months even. A lot of Fulbrighters never even make it through the process. They just exit the country every 3 months and deal with paying tourist visa fees every single time. I really didn't want to do that, especially if my research might take me across to DRC and Rwanda more than once or twice. Single-entry tourist visas could really rack up the bills. I don't know who in Immigrations slipped who what, but somehow the visa thing worked out all too easily.
Crazy thing happened right after I left the building though. I was there on the street negotiating with a boda boda man for a ride to UWA where I was meeting Dada for lunch and the guy wanted about 2x what I wanted to pay. So, some haggling later, he drove off.....and not 20 feet away, he hit another boda boda with a passenger on it, a rather large woman. All three went flying to the ground, bodas on their sides, woman looked really painfully unhappy. Her shirt had flown up and the rolls of skin scraped across the neither smooth nor clean asphalt, her facial expression oozed hurt. A small crowd gathered round, picked them all up and set them right again, so not much later, they were actually all on their way again. I was a bit dazed though....I mean, if I hadn't stopped him, he wouldn't have been in that exact place at that unfortunate time and maybe there would be no accident. I couldn't help but ask myself if it was my fault. Or, we could have settled a price and I could have been on it...on the ground, like that woman, maybe worse. Someway, somehow, I was a part of it....although to any outsider, I was just another spectator on the side of the road. Just the day before, the security guy at the Embassy had given me a small fatherly talk on buying a motorcycle helmet if I'm going to be engaging in risky boda boda riding. And of course, ABSOLUTELY NO BODAS AT NIGHT, strict Embassy rule. Yessah. Eh, so now I'm seriously contemplating getting a motorcycle helmet. Of course, I'm still also contemplating getting a motorcycle....but you know, just to make my field work easier. Anyway, I ended up taking the slow/long way to UWA....2 taxis (aka matatus).
Wednesday, I got a phone call from Festo that the UWA truck would be leaving on Thursday morning.....so get ready, I was going to Bwindi!!
So the next day I went to Immigrations with my stack of documents and a wad of cash (costs $100 for a Pupil's Pass....aka the research visa). What I thought would take months of bureaucratic administrative paper pushing, mostly with papers going nowhere, took only 2.5 hours. I think I just got supremely lucky though and asked the right guy where the copy machine is. He ended up taking my documents, making the photocopies, submitting them to the immigrations people and 2 hours later, I had a visa. I walked out with a visa!! This is unheard of. So many people had told me that this would be such a difficult process....that it would take 2, maybe 3 months even. A lot of Fulbrighters never even make it through the process. They just exit the country every 3 months and deal with paying tourist visa fees every single time. I really didn't want to do that, especially if my research might take me across to DRC and Rwanda more than once or twice. Single-entry tourist visas could really rack up the bills. I don't know who in Immigrations slipped who what, but somehow the visa thing worked out all too easily.
Crazy thing happened right after I left the building though. I was there on the street negotiating with a boda boda man for a ride to UWA where I was meeting Dada for lunch and the guy wanted about 2x what I wanted to pay. So, some haggling later, he drove off.....and not 20 feet away, he hit another boda boda with a passenger on it, a rather large woman. All three went flying to the ground, bodas on their sides, woman looked really painfully unhappy. Her shirt had flown up and the rolls of skin scraped across the neither smooth nor clean asphalt, her facial expression oozed hurt. A small crowd gathered round, picked them all up and set them right again, so not much later, they were actually all on their way again. I was a bit dazed though....I mean, if I hadn't stopped him, he wouldn't have been in that exact place at that unfortunate time and maybe there would be no accident. I couldn't help but ask myself if it was my fault. Or, we could have settled a price and I could have been on it...on the ground, like that woman, maybe worse. Someway, somehow, I was a part of it....although to any outsider, I was just another spectator on the side of the road. Just the day before, the security guy at the Embassy had given me a small fatherly talk on buying a motorcycle helmet if I'm going to be engaging in risky boda boda riding. And of course, ABSOLUTELY NO BODAS AT NIGHT, strict Embassy rule. Yessah. Eh, so now I'm seriously contemplating getting a motorcycle helmet. Of course, I'm still also contemplating getting a motorcycle....but you know, just to make my field work easier. Anyway, I ended up taking the slow/long way to UWA....2 taxis (aka matatus).
Wednesday, I got a phone call from Festo that the UWA truck would be leaving on Thursday morning.....so get ready, I was going to Bwindi!!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Into the Impenetrable Forest
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. It used to be the Bwindi Impenetrable National Forest before they upped its protection. Impenetrable forest definitely has a sweeter ring to it, but I guess NP is stronger legal status, so we give and we take.
Bwindi is one of 8 national parks in the Central Albertine Rift Transfrontier Protected Area Network. Of the 8 NPs that form the CAR TFPA Network, 6 are in Uganda....hence, my current country of residence. The CAR TFPA Network started out as an initiative being promoted largely by the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, an alliance of three INGOs (the World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society and Flora & Fauna International) created specifically for the purpose of protecting the trinational habitat of the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei).
What started out as cross-border collaboration on the ground between the park wardens, rangers and other NGO or research staff, was signed into some formality through a trilateral Memorandum of Understanding between the three protected areas authorities (Uganda Wildlife Authority, Office Rwandais de Tourisme et des Parcs Nationaux (I wonder if it will be translating its name into English now that it's made English an official language) and the Institute Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature. They're now in the process of drafting a treaty between the three governments.
I enquired about this treaty. The CAR TFPA Network has been proposed as a possible peace park, but the peace element is not currently being considered in this treaty. The focus is wildlife, peace would only confuse and complicate. Of course, I have to respectfully disagree, a peace mandate for an area like this would be instrumental. Not only is it a place that has a history of conflict, but it is still suffering from different forms of warfare.
Communities living on the border of the parks are literally in a battle against the wildlife and protected areas. Just heard a story yesterday of how a Ugandan woman had a baby child in a village near Queen Elizabeth NP (usually called Queen or QE for short) and one day a hyena came in and snatched her baby, ate it I presume. Ever since then, the villagers have been poisoning the hyenas. There are now maybe 200 or so individuals left. What used to be a common species in the region has become critically endangered. Joe was glad to have photos of the now rare encounter.
Just across the border in the DRC they are still fighting a twisted version of the Rwandan genocide mixed in with ethno-political battles of their own, with wildlife, natural resources and the environment paying for the petty tiffs that arise between the egos of men. As the East African saying goes, "When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." I won't drag on about the rapes, tree slaughter for charcoal, conflict timber, conflict diamonds, coltan for cell phones, or the number of displaced peoples pushed into already highly populated lands or even the protected areas themselves....there are enough reports to indicate that there's a problem. It's not proof that I'm seeking, it's answers.
I've just started to read a book that my friend Hana gave to me in Eastham, MA when Robby and I passed through on our roadtrip this summer - Blue Clay People. It's about this guy who went to Liberia in the middle of Charles Taylors' maniacal reign to run the largest food aid program in the country.
*Side note: speaking of food aid, Atsuko recently told me that Moroto the village she is working in, has just been put on a 40-year food programme by the UN. For 40 years, the people of Moroto will want not and need not in terms of basic alimental sustenance. I'm horrified at the thought. The next two generations of Moroto will grow up completely dependent on the UN, with little motivation to do anything. The development/aid community used to think that if you could supply for the basic needs of a community, it would free them up to do other things, like education, which will help them elevate their economies out of subsistence agriculture where their lives are at risk to the whims of clouds and rains. So food aid programs proliferated and yes, while it might save lives today, it does nothing to build the future....at least, not a more sustainable future. What it does is build dependency...what I call "disabled communities." They cannot function without assistance.
So anyway, Blue Clay People....I'm at the very beginning, where the guys has just arrived with all his ideals and visions of living with the poor, "fighting poverty while saving rainforests," but instead finds himself swept up in the expat life of serious luxury (not just relative luxury, but crazy luxury by any European or North American standards.....big houses in gated compounds, servants, maids, drivers, SUVs, etc.), where with words, "Do it," he can distribute food to villages he's never seen before.
I am not living anywhere near those means nor am I in charge of any kind of programme with that kind of backing, but I do live in a nice flat and Christine comes and does my laundry and cleaning for me once a week. I've also been here one month (2 days shy) and have yet to go out "into the field." I can't help but feel trapped in the city; I really didn't come here to live it up expat style with all my research coming from libraries and the internet.
Thankfully, I'm leaving tomorrow. I've introduced myself to the Transport Officer at the Uganda Wildlife Authority and he tells me that a car from Bwindi is here now for repairs. It's supposed to be done today at about 1pm, which means that it'll be off super early tomorrow morning and taking me with it to Bwindi! Conveniently, I have also just reached the part in the book where food aid man (can't remember his name) leaves the capitol for the bush. I'm not exactly heading upcountry through checkpoints guarded by child soldiers, but I also have little idea of what to expect. A la PILA, "you never know until you go."
Bwindi is one of 8 national parks in the Central Albertine Rift Transfrontier Protected Area Network. Of the 8 NPs that form the CAR TFPA Network, 6 are in Uganda....hence, my current country of residence. The CAR TFPA Network started out as an initiative being promoted largely by the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, an alliance of three INGOs (the World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society and Flora & Fauna International) created specifically for the purpose of protecting the trinational habitat of the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei).
What started out as cross-border collaboration on the ground between the park wardens, rangers and other NGO or research staff, was signed into some formality through a trilateral Memorandum of Understanding between the three protected areas authorities (Uganda Wildlife Authority, Office Rwandais de Tourisme et des Parcs Nationaux (I wonder if it will be translating its name into English now that it's made English an official language) and the Institute Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature. They're now in the process of drafting a treaty between the three governments.
I enquired about this treaty. The CAR TFPA Network has been proposed as a possible peace park, but the peace element is not currently being considered in this treaty. The focus is wildlife, peace would only confuse and complicate. Of course, I have to respectfully disagree, a peace mandate for an area like this would be instrumental. Not only is it a place that has a history of conflict, but it is still suffering from different forms of warfare.
Communities living on the border of the parks are literally in a battle against the wildlife and protected areas. Just heard a story yesterday of how a Ugandan woman had a baby child in a village near Queen Elizabeth NP (usually called Queen or QE for short) and one day a hyena came in and snatched her baby, ate it I presume. Ever since then, the villagers have been poisoning the hyenas. There are now maybe 200 or so individuals left. What used to be a common species in the region has become critically endangered. Joe was glad to have photos of the now rare encounter.
Just across the border in the DRC they are still fighting a twisted version of the Rwandan genocide mixed in with ethno-political battles of their own, with wildlife, natural resources and the environment paying for the petty tiffs that arise between the egos of men. As the East African saying goes, "When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers." I won't drag on about the rapes, tree slaughter for charcoal, conflict timber, conflict diamonds, coltan for cell phones, or the number of displaced peoples pushed into already highly populated lands or even the protected areas themselves....there are enough reports to indicate that there's a problem. It's not proof that I'm seeking, it's answers.
I've just started to read a book that my friend Hana gave to me in Eastham, MA when Robby and I passed through on our roadtrip this summer - Blue Clay People. It's about this guy who went to Liberia in the middle of Charles Taylors' maniacal reign to run the largest food aid program in the country.
*Side note: speaking of food aid, Atsuko recently told me that Moroto the village she is working in, has just been put on a 40-year food programme by the UN. For 40 years, the people of Moroto will want not and need not in terms of basic alimental sustenance. I'm horrified at the thought. The next two generations of Moroto will grow up completely dependent on the UN, with little motivation to do anything. The development/aid community used to think that if you could supply for the basic needs of a community, it would free them up to do other things, like education, which will help them elevate their economies out of subsistence agriculture where their lives are at risk to the whims of clouds and rains. So food aid programs proliferated and yes, while it might save lives today, it does nothing to build the future....at least, not a more sustainable future. What it does is build dependency...what I call "disabled communities." They cannot function without assistance.
So anyway, Blue Clay People....I'm at the very beginning, where the guys has just arrived with all his ideals and visions of living with the poor, "fighting poverty while saving rainforests," but instead finds himself swept up in the expat life of serious luxury (not just relative luxury, but crazy luxury by any European or North American standards.....big houses in gated compounds, servants, maids, drivers, SUVs, etc.), where with words, "Do it," he can distribute food to villages he's never seen before.
I am not living anywhere near those means nor am I in charge of any kind of programme with that kind of backing, but I do live in a nice flat and Christine comes and does my laundry and cleaning for me once a week. I've also been here one month (2 days shy) and have yet to go out "into the field." I can't help but feel trapped in the city; I really didn't come here to live it up expat style with all my research coming from libraries and the internet.
Thankfully, I'm leaving tomorrow. I've introduced myself to the Transport Officer at the Uganda Wildlife Authority and he tells me that a car from Bwindi is here now for repairs. It's supposed to be done today at about 1pm, which means that it'll be off super early tomorrow morning and taking me with it to Bwindi! Conveniently, I have also just reached the part in the book where food aid man (can't remember his name) leaves the capitol for the bush. I'm not exactly heading upcountry through checkpoints guarded by child soldiers, but I also have little idea of what to expect. A la PILA, "you never know until you go."
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Life, Lately....
For anyone on a carb-free or protein-free diet, Uganda is not the place to go to satiate your culinary desires. Traditional food is all about carbs and protein. I hardly ever leave a meal not feeling super stuffed and heavy. Let me describe what a typical meal for me is (note: I don't eat animals, but if you do, add something like fish, chicken or goat to the combo)......
1. a plate of carbs consisting of rice, sweet potato, "Irish" potatoes (a.k.a. regular old Russet potatoes, which were brought by the Spanish conquistadors to Europe from Latin America and spread to places like Ireland, where blight caused famine, and was taken by the British colonialists to Africa, where they became nationally identified as "Irish"), matooke (boiled and mashed bananas/plantains) and posho (cassava flour mixed with hot water and solidified into a white thick blob)
and
2. one or two "sauces", usually groundnut (a.k.a. peanut) sauce, peas in a sauce, or beans.
Usually the carb portion of the meal will have at least two of those things, or in a restaurant it could easily contain ALL of those things. The peanut sauce is also nothing like a Thai peanut sauce, it's a light greyish brown sauce made from peanuts. I think they roast the peanuts first in a saucepan and then mash and boil or boil and mash....not really sure. You can buy the paste in the markets, so all you have to do is add water and heat.
Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get some greens. They have collared greens which camouflage under a totally different name here, and some other type of red and green leafy plant that I don't think I've ever seen before. These are usually boiled to death and not really seasoned. But no worries, just smother it in groundnut sauce or beans. Oh, and there's also cabbage. Although, I wonder why they don't call the cabbage "Irish"?
This meal will cost you about $1USD. Maybe it's more if you want meat.
---
Now that I've moved into my own flat, I cook more for myself. I've been going (as in, I've gone twice) to the market in Wandegeya. For about 10,000 UGX (Ugandan shillings) I'm loaded with produce for at least a week....that's roughly $4USD. Staples that you can find in the market: tomatoes, red onions, avocados, collared greens, the mystery greens, green beans, potatoes, cabbage, garlic, pineapple, bananas, passion fruit, beans, lentils and eggs (usually the most expensive part of my groceries, running about 6,500 UGX for more than 2 dozen). That means that for less than $2 I can buy a load of veggies.....AWESOME!
A nice thing about the market is that the ladies there may laugh at my Muzungu-ness, but they never try to rip me off with their prices. The prices are what the prices are....muzungu or mubuntu (human) or muganda (person of the Baganda tribe).
---
I'm still trying to understand the Ugandan sense of humour. One of the things that I've noticed is that they laugh at everything. I mean, I'm someone who laughs a lot at just about any thing and sometimes totally inappropriately, but this is a whole new level of stomach exercising laughter that I don't really follow. Maybe it's just an expression of agreeableness?
For example, I walk into the office (the Law Faculty at Makerere) and greet Gillian in Luganda and they all laugh, then they ask me how I am and I say Ndi Bulungi (I'm good) and they laugh. Then they ask me about my bracelet and I say, it's just a string with safety pins and a key on it. They laugh. They ask me where I got it. I say I made it. They laugh. They ask me what I've eaten since I've been here, so I list the foods. They laugh. They ask me if I like it. I say it's okay and they laugh. I don't understand yet why they're laughing or what's so funny about seemingly quotidian language, so I just kind of smile in confusion.
---
Wandegeya is what I call the student ghetto. It's the neighborhood just east of Makerere University, so loads of students live there and hang out there, shop there and eat there. It's a ton of little shops and markets with all kinds of little corridors and pathways that wreak of unheavenly smells at times and can get super gnarly in the rains, but is fun to wander through on a nice dry day. The people are friendly and will talk to you, ask you what you're looking for and where you're going. They're super helpful about telling you where you can find things....which is crucial because the place is like a medina filled with bazaars.
Supposedly almost all of the land is owned by one guy (no idea who, but in my mind he's a slumlord with a fancy car with dark tinted windows and super polished black shoes), who rents out the little shacks and buildings. This is partly why the place is so run down and never really improves. Some of the land he's given away to his people and some he's sold, probably also to people he knows. In some ways, I feel like it's a microcosm of greater Uganda. Ruled by a slumlord who owns nearly all the principal assets, which he shares with his family and close friends, although most of it he hoards and won't let go of. The place is run down and he does nothing to fix it even though he completely profits off of it, and the people live their lives and accept things as they are; so as it goes, life goes on. This is my new barrio by way of domicile.
---
My new apartment is nice. It's got two bedrooms and is fully furnished. I had to get some kitchen things, sheets and towels and things, but for the most part...it's got what a body needs. Best of all, it's RENT-FREE!!!! I can't believe how lucky I got. Christine is the lady who comes and cleans it once a week. I pay her something like $10/week, which for the laundry alone is almost worth it. You know you have to hand wash your clothes here yeah? I HATE doing the laundry as it is with machines and all, which means hand washing is a whole other level of torture. So, Christine is like my new best friend.
Christine is the single parent of Kristabela (no idea how to spell it), a young quiet child. For some reason I thought she was 4 years old, but I must be wrong because she's already in school. Christine is hoping that she can find someone to sponsor Kristabela's education. I want to tell her that I'm not like the other Fulbrighters that have come through this apartment in the past (all lecturers int he U.S. with real salaries and publications to their name)....I'm a recent graduate of my 2nd law degree and have made a whopping oh, maybe $500 max, in the last 5 years. I'm not exactly in a position to fund a child's education. I'm not even in a position to fund my own education! But I know that Christine wants a different life for Kristabela. So, originally I was going to say that I didn't need a maid or that maybe she could come just every other week...but then I realized that she needs this job and I'm not paying rent, so what am I doing being such a stinge. So deal is, I'm an expat living in a sweet apartment with a maid who cleans and does my laundry for me every week. Bizarre.
---
Yesterday, I met the neighbors...went around to the three other flats and introduced myself. "Hi, my name is Elaine, I just moved into A2." They'd all noticed that there was someone new and were going to come by and introduce themselves as well. These are university flats, so most of the people are university employees, lecturers or staff, married to or the child of one of those people. The woman on the top floor, Ann, is new this year, she teaches entymology in the zoology department. Then there's Steven and Anni with their two children Cindy and Michael(?) and the dog, who's currently sick, who have a little garden in the backyard that I'm hoping to start a composting pile in. Below us is Joy and her two nephews, Robert and don't know the other one yet. Joy is the matriarch of the apartment building, she's the eldest and has been here the longest. Steven and Anni have been here 13 years, so I can only imagine how long Joy has resided here and how many people she's seen come in and out of these flats.
It's been a year and a half or so since the last Fulbrighter, Tavis and his wife Arshiya, lived here (I know this because I met them at orientation and they told us about this place), so I think the neighbors are happy to see someone here. There is one simple rule....everyone cleans the area in front of their door and the stairs directly below. The other neighbors keep the front area clean and there is a whole routine with hallway lights and locking the front gate that I'm just beginning to learn.
I came home at nearly 11pm on Saturday night because I'd gone to Jinja with Shaima and her brother, who's visiting and then traveling back with her through Turkey to the U.S., and we had dinner there so it was late when we got back and the front gate was locked. I knew there was a padlock on the gate but all the other times it just hung there and the gate was always open. Not this time and I had no key. Of the 4 keys they gave me, two work....one for the top lock of my front door and one for the balcony padlock. The other two keys are useless....I've tried them on both the main gate and the second lock on my door. So, actually, the only way to keep my front door closed is to lock it with the key hanging in the keyhole....otherwise it just pops open and stays there about 6 inches ajar. Joy said she'd cut me a key for the front gate, so hopefully I won't have to be banging on the padlock late in the night much longer.
---
There's something in the water. Seriously, I see it. I've been boiling my water here.....not just like, take the water to a boil and turn the heat off, but like boil for minutes straight until I'm convinced that most things in it are dead. Then I turn off the element and let it cool and move it into a glass pitcher in my fridge. I swear it tastes slightly better when it's cool. Thing is though that it's never really a nice clear water color, it's always got a colored tinge to it and there's always this light film of something floating on the top with little bits of who knows what floating around inside. It's a little unsettling for someone who's grown up with water potable from the tap; fresh, clean and clear.....even fluorided (I might've made that word up) for our dental well-being. I've been drinking it and feel okay so far and I've asked Ugandans and they say it's fine as long as you boil it....so I know that this is totally psychological, I'm sure the water's safe. But, I'm telling you....something's in the water.
A couple people have suggested that I just buy the bottled water in the stores. It's so cheap here, I think you can get a liter for less than a quarter sometimes. Thing is, I've got this thing against bottled water and it's not just about the plastic bottle, although that's a serious nightmare in and of itself. It's everything about clean freshwater. Think about how many lawyers, activists and citizens have struggled for potable free public water in the U.S. For what, when you turn around and buy privatized water that's not even of comparable quality? It's sad enough that our water has to be so heavily treated these days. I remember when I used to take my bottle and fill it up off the springs of Yosemite and the water trickling off the rocks on the side of the trail. Now they say we can't do that anymore.
And what about here in Uganda? I'm taken back to the Greening of Water Law in Africa conference that I went to a week or so ago. Most of this country is water rich, but not even here in the capital is there potable water running out of the taps. Lots of people don't even have taps....they carry the yellow jerrycans daily to fetch water from the wells or a neighbor's spigot (and don't be confused that this is just your generous friendly neighborhood humanitarian, they are selling this water for money). And I'm talking about Kampala, forget about upcountry in the villages where most of the people still live. Even the rich people with their own wells find them poisoned or contaminated sometimes because fact is, world's waters are all connected. You can build the nicest house you want with the best view in town and the highest wall and the scariest armed gunmen to keep all the rifraff out, but in the end, the rich and the poor drink from the same source.
I guess we could take the "bandaid the problem" approach and purify and treat all our waters....but wouldn't it be nice if we could still drink the water straight off the mountain? If our waters were clean from the source and not just from the tap? But here, I'd be so happy if the water was just clean from the tap....
---
Today I met Sophia, the pro-bono lawyer for AMANI. AMANI means "peace" in Swahili. It's the name of the company that Lutale, Jamal, Robinson and friends want to start to create a local peace park and peace center (research institute, interpretation center, cultural center, community center, etc.). Lutale at some point was put in touch with Todd, who founded International Peace Park Expeditions and came down to Costa Rica and Panama with me on my field research trip to Parque Internacional La Amistad, that will soon become an experiential learning course at UPeace (just to pimp Cory's awesome new video: http://www.vimeo.com/16940715 and the upcoming course, check out the website, http://www.peaceparkexpeditions.org/)...and Todd put him in touch with me, since I was coming out here to Uganda.
Sophia and I are working on the Memorandum for AMANI and the Articles of Incorporation and I may also recruit her as a research assistant, looking up the environmental laws of Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC. This is actually an idea from a former Fulbright student here in Uganda. He made a comment at orientation about how the Fulbright grant money is for people to do research, but a lot of people end up kind of saving a lot of it for themselves to use afterwards. So, he thought the ethical thing to do was to spend the entire grant in-country on research related things....like research assistants and a research manager. It makes such sense to me, plus it's kind of like the Christine situation. You can live off of so little here that for a period of 10 months, I actually have relative wealth. So, why not turn some of it around and channel it through people, especially when they're helping me out anyway (whether it's laundry or research)? It's kind of like I get a grant and turn around and parcel out a bunch of microgrants. I may not walk out of here with anything in the bank, but at least I will have done the work and research that I want to accomplish here and maybe even have helped some other people along the way.
1. a plate of carbs consisting of rice, sweet potato, "Irish" potatoes (a.k.a. regular old Russet potatoes, which were brought by the Spanish conquistadors to Europe from Latin America and spread to places like Ireland, where blight caused famine, and was taken by the British colonialists to Africa, where they became nationally identified as "Irish"), matooke (boiled and mashed bananas/plantains) and posho (cassava flour mixed with hot water and solidified into a white thick blob)
and
2. one or two "sauces", usually groundnut (a.k.a. peanut) sauce, peas in a sauce, or beans.
Usually the carb portion of the meal will have at least two of those things, or in a restaurant it could easily contain ALL of those things. The peanut sauce is also nothing like a Thai peanut sauce, it's a light greyish brown sauce made from peanuts. I think they roast the peanuts first in a saucepan and then mash and boil or boil and mash....not really sure. You can buy the paste in the markets, so all you have to do is add water and heat.
Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get some greens. They have collared greens which camouflage under a totally different name here, and some other type of red and green leafy plant that I don't think I've ever seen before. These are usually boiled to death and not really seasoned. But no worries, just smother it in groundnut sauce or beans. Oh, and there's also cabbage. Although, I wonder why they don't call the cabbage "Irish"?
This meal will cost you about $1USD. Maybe it's more if you want meat.
---
Now that I've moved into my own flat, I cook more for myself. I've been going (as in, I've gone twice) to the market in Wandegeya. For about 10,000 UGX (Ugandan shillings) I'm loaded with produce for at least a week....that's roughly $4USD. Staples that you can find in the market: tomatoes, red onions, avocados, collared greens, the mystery greens, green beans, potatoes, cabbage, garlic, pineapple, bananas, passion fruit, beans, lentils and eggs (usually the most expensive part of my groceries, running about 6,500 UGX for more than 2 dozen). That means that for less than $2 I can buy a load of veggies.....AWESOME!
A nice thing about the market is that the ladies there may laugh at my Muzungu-ness, but they never try to rip me off with their prices. The prices are what the prices are....muzungu or mubuntu (human) or muganda (person of the Baganda tribe).
---
I'm still trying to understand the Ugandan sense of humour. One of the things that I've noticed is that they laugh at everything. I mean, I'm someone who laughs a lot at just about any thing and sometimes totally inappropriately, but this is a whole new level of stomach exercising laughter that I don't really follow. Maybe it's just an expression of agreeableness?
For example, I walk into the office (the Law Faculty at Makerere) and greet Gillian in Luganda and they all laugh, then they ask me how I am and I say Ndi Bulungi (I'm good) and they laugh. Then they ask me about my bracelet and I say, it's just a string with safety pins and a key on it. They laugh. They ask me where I got it. I say I made it. They laugh. They ask me what I've eaten since I've been here, so I list the foods. They laugh. They ask me if I like it. I say it's okay and they laugh. I don't understand yet why they're laughing or what's so funny about seemingly quotidian language, so I just kind of smile in confusion.
---
Wandegeya is what I call the student ghetto. It's the neighborhood just east of Makerere University, so loads of students live there and hang out there, shop there and eat there. It's a ton of little shops and markets with all kinds of little corridors and pathways that wreak of unheavenly smells at times and can get super gnarly in the rains, but is fun to wander through on a nice dry day. The people are friendly and will talk to you, ask you what you're looking for and where you're going. They're super helpful about telling you where you can find things....which is crucial because the place is like a medina filled with bazaars.
Supposedly almost all of the land is owned by one guy (no idea who, but in my mind he's a slumlord with a fancy car with dark tinted windows and super polished black shoes), who rents out the little shacks and buildings. This is partly why the place is so run down and never really improves. Some of the land he's given away to his people and some he's sold, probably also to people he knows. In some ways, I feel like it's a microcosm of greater Uganda. Ruled by a slumlord who owns nearly all the principal assets, which he shares with his family and close friends, although most of it he hoards and won't let go of. The place is run down and he does nothing to fix it even though he completely profits off of it, and the people live their lives and accept things as they are; so as it goes, life goes on. This is my new barrio by way of domicile.
---
My new apartment is nice. It's got two bedrooms and is fully furnished. I had to get some kitchen things, sheets and towels and things, but for the most part...it's got what a body needs. Best of all, it's RENT-FREE!!!! I can't believe how lucky I got. Christine is the lady who comes and cleans it once a week. I pay her something like $10/week, which for the laundry alone is almost worth it. You know you have to hand wash your clothes here yeah? I HATE doing the laundry as it is with machines and all, which means hand washing is a whole other level of torture. So, Christine is like my new best friend.
Christine is the single parent of Kristabela (no idea how to spell it), a young quiet child. For some reason I thought she was 4 years old, but I must be wrong because she's already in school. Christine is hoping that she can find someone to sponsor Kristabela's education. I want to tell her that I'm not like the other Fulbrighters that have come through this apartment in the past (all lecturers int he U.S. with real salaries and publications to their name)....I'm a recent graduate of my 2nd law degree and have made a whopping oh, maybe $500 max, in the last 5 years. I'm not exactly in a position to fund a child's education. I'm not even in a position to fund my own education! But I know that Christine wants a different life for Kristabela. So, originally I was going to say that I didn't need a maid or that maybe she could come just every other week...but then I realized that she needs this job and I'm not paying rent, so what am I doing being such a stinge. So deal is, I'm an expat living in a sweet apartment with a maid who cleans and does my laundry for me every week. Bizarre.
---
Yesterday, I met the neighbors...went around to the three other flats and introduced myself. "Hi, my name is Elaine, I just moved into A2." They'd all noticed that there was someone new and were going to come by and introduce themselves as well. These are university flats, so most of the people are university employees, lecturers or staff, married to or the child of one of those people. The woman on the top floor, Ann, is new this year, she teaches entymology in the zoology department. Then there's Steven and Anni with their two children Cindy and Michael(?) and the dog, who's currently sick, who have a little garden in the backyard that I'm hoping to start a composting pile in. Below us is Joy and her two nephews, Robert and don't know the other one yet. Joy is the matriarch of the apartment building, she's the eldest and has been here the longest. Steven and Anni have been here 13 years, so I can only imagine how long Joy has resided here and how many people she's seen come in and out of these flats.
It's been a year and a half or so since the last Fulbrighter, Tavis and his wife Arshiya, lived here (I know this because I met them at orientation and they told us about this place), so I think the neighbors are happy to see someone here. There is one simple rule....everyone cleans the area in front of their door and the stairs directly below. The other neighbors keep the front area clean and there is a whole routine with hallway lights and locking the front gate that I'm just beginning to learn.
I came home at nearly 11pm on Saturday night because I'd gone to Jinja with Shaima and her brother, who's visiting and then traveling back with her through Turkey to the U.S., and we had dinner there so it was late when we got back and the front gate was locked. I knew there was a padlock on the gate but all the other times it just hung there and the gate was always open. Not this time and I had no key. Of the 4 keys they gave me, two work....one for the top lock of my front door and one for the balcony padlock. The other two keys are useless....I've tried them on both the main gate and the second lock on my door. So, actually, the only way to keep my front door closed is to lock it with the key hanging in the keyhole....otherwise it just pops open and stays there about 6 inches ajar. Joy said she'd cut me a key for the front gate, so hopefully I won't have to be banging on the padlock late in the night much longer.
---
There's something in the water. Seriously, I see it. I've been boiling my water here.....not just like, take the water to a boil and turn the heat off, but like boil for minutes straight until I'm convinced that most things in it are dead. Then I turn off the element and let it cool and move it into a glass pitcher in my fridge. I swear it tastes slightly better when it's cool. Thing is though that it's never really a nice clear water color, it's always got a colored tinge to it and there's always this light film of something floating on the top with little bits of who knows what floating around inside. It's a little unsettling for someone who's grown up with water potable from the tap; fresh, clean and clear.....even fluorided (I might've made that word up) for our dental well-being. I've been drinking it and feel okay so far and I've asked Ugandans and they say it's fine as long as you boil it....so I know that this is totally psychological, I'm sure the water's safe. But, I'm telling you....something's in the water.
A couple people have suggested that I just buy the bottled water in the stores. It's so cheap here, I think you can get a liter for less than a quarter sometimes. Thing is, I've got this thing against bottled water and it's not just about the plastic bottle, although that's a serious nightmare in and of itself. It's everything about clean freshwater. Think about how many lawyers, activists and citizens have struggled for potable free public water in the U.S. For what, when you turn around and buy privatized water that's not even of comparable quality? It's sad enough that our water has to be so heavily treated these days. I remember when I used to take my bottle and fill it up off the springs of Yosemite and the water trickling off the rocks on the side of the trail. Now they say we can't do that anymore.
And what about here in Uganda? I'm taken back to the Greening of Water Law in Africa conference that I went to a week or so ago. Most of this country is water rich, but not even here in the capital is there potable water running out of the taps. Lots of people don't even have taps....they carry the yellow jerrycans daily to fetch water from the wells or a neighbor's spigot (and don't be confused that this is just your generous friendly neighborhood humanitarian, they are selling this water for money). And I'm talking about Kampala, forget about upcountry in the villages where most of the people still live. Even the rich people with their own wells find them poisoned or contaminated sometimes because fact is, world's waters are all connected. You can build the nicest house you want with the best view in town and the highest wall and the scariest armed gunmen to keep all the rifraff out, but in the end, the rich and the poor drink from the same source.
I guess we could take the "bandaid the problem" approach and purify and treat all our waters....but wouldn't it be nice if we could still drink the water straight off the mountain? If our waters were clean from the source and not just from the tap? But here, I'd be so happy if the water was just clean from the tap....
---
Today I met Sophia, the pro-bono lawyer for AMANI. AMANI means "peace" in Swahili. It's the name of the company that Lutale, Jamal, Robinson and friends want to start to create a local peace park and peace center (research institute, interpretation center, cultural center, community center, etc.). Lutale at some point was put in touch with Todd, who founded International Peace Park Expeditions and came down to Costa Rica and Panama with me on my field research trip to Parque Internacional La Amistad, that will soon become an experiential learning course at UPeace (just to pimp Cory's awesome new video: http://www.vimeo.com/16940715 and the upcoming course, check out the website, http://www.peaceparkexpeditions.org/)...and Todd put him in touch with me, since I was coming out here to Uganda.
Sophia and I are working on the Memorandum for AMANI and the Articles of Incorporation and I may also recruit her as a research assistant, looking up the environmental laws of Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC. This is actually an idea from a former Fulbright student here in Uganda. He made a comment at orientation about how the Fulbright grant money is for people to do research, but a lot of people end up kind of saving a lot of it for themselves to use afterwards. So, he thought the ethical thing to do was to spend the entire grant in-country on research related things....like research assistants and a research manager. It makes such sense to me, plus it's kind of like the Christine situation. You can live off of so little here that for a period of 10 months, I actually have relative wealth. So, why not turn some of it around and channel it through people, especially when they're helping me out anyway (whether it's laundry or research)? It's kind of like I get a grant and turn around and parcel out a bunch of microgrants. I may not walk out of here with anything in the bank, but at least I will have done the work and research that I want to accomplish here and maybe even have helped some other people along the way.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Greening of Water Law in Africa
UNEP and the Government of Uganda just sponsored a two day conference here in Kampala on "Greening Water Law in Africa". My supervisor at Makerere (currently on sabbatical with the Nile Basin Initiative in Addis ababa) has been here the last half week for this conference and got me in. I was probably the youngest person there and definitely the one with the least expertise on African water issues. But, I'm thinking about focusing my research here on transboundary protected areas (or peace parks) for transboundary watershed conservation and looking at issues like community conservation (community-based watershed management committees like what we're trying to do in Honduras-Nicaragua), water and peacebuilding (as an alternative to water and conflict) and transboundary collaborative environmental governance frameworks for dealing with environmental change and insecurity (including socio-political instabilities) with an eye towards how community-level transboundary collaborative conservation can strengthen resilience to environmental change, socio-political insecurity and armed conflict. So, I was hoping that this conference would provide some insights that would stimulate some paper ideas.
It was definitely an interesting conference and I met many people who will be very helpful resources for my research here in Uganda. One of the women I cited in my thesis in the case study on the Central Albertine Rift Transfrontier Protected Area Network, which is my research focus area here, and at least a few others are environmental lawyers working in water and environmental issues across Afrca. I even met the environmental legal counsel to the Government of the Union of Comoros, the Government I used to work for at their UN Permanent Mission in NY. Hassan and I took a couple photos together and I have emailed them back to the Ambassador and my other supervisors there; I just wish I could see the surprise on their faces when they discover that we have met here in Kampala of all places. Another Comorian! I was so excited. Hassan even gave a great speech on the special plight of SIDS - how they have some great environmental laws, but they can't enforce them because they can't offer their people any other alternatives. For example, if they can't remove sand from the beaches to build their homes....what do they use? If they can't cut the few trees on the islands for firewood....what do they use? If the water surrounding their islands and flowing through their rivers is not potable....what do they use? Answer to that one is....they import from Tanzania. Can you imagine....importing water from a nation with its own water problems? How long can we depend on that? How much worse will it get with climate change?
One of the purposes of this conference that I really enjoyed is the link that it was trying to make between environmental conservation and water management. Water laws have typically treated water as a commodity or a public good, something for human use and consumption, industrialization and economic growth. As with all natural resources, they forget that it is degradable and in many ways diminishable. We forget that other Earthlings and the environment itself need water too in order to continue providing us with the environmental goods and services that we rely on. Through our water laws, we have tried to sort out how to allocate water resources for humans - riparian users, first-come-first-serve users, industrial uses, agricultural uses, etc. - following a purely anthropocentric paradigm. But we have forgotten the needs of other living organisms and Earth systems and our water and other natural resources are dwindling and degrading as result.
They say one should not bite the hand that feeds it....and yet when it comes to the environment, it's somehow too abstract for us to understand that the environment is the hand that feeds us. We deteriorate it, despoil it, diminish it, defile it, destroy it....and for what ends? Some economic or material gain for the few at the exploitation and poverty of the vast majority, not to mention the health detriment of all? Global well-being is on the decline, global economies...not much better. I'm failing to see the pros to all the cons.
As this conference's title argues, water laws need to be "greened". Ecological considerations must be figured in to legal frameworks for water management so that this essential resource for all life on Earth is sustainable in quality and quantity today and into the future. Brilliant, this is exactly what we need.
But there was one thing that was missing. The conference participants spoke so much about water conflicts, water scarcity, water insecurity.....and yet no one mentioned peace. That is, not until the last hour or so of the conference when I felt that it was time the quiet inexperienced young muzungu should speak. With surprise written across many faces, I took the mic and said that I think we should consider the issue of water and peace. We understand all the elements of water issues that contribute to non-peace, but how do we transform that? As the Rio Declaration notes, there can't be conservation and sustainable development without peace.
Rio Declaration Principle 24:
Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.
Rio Declaration Principle 25:
Peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible.
To me, it seems so straightforward and obvious. To the conference members, I was an alien. Why was I talking about something as abstract as peace in a meeting of policymakers and water experts trying to figure out tangible ways to make water laws more green? I don't know, am I so far off? I hope not. And if I'm not, then I can see that whatever research I do here will have to address some of these seemingly ambiguous links so that even the experts will not be confused.
I'm currently thinking three words: gorillas, water and peace. I think that's what my research here will be about.
It was definitely an interesting conference and I met many people who will be very helpful resources for my research here in Uganda. One of the women I cited in my thesis in the case study on the Central Albertine Rift Transfrontier Protected Area Network, which is my research focus area here, and at least a few others are environmental lawyers working in water and environmental issues across Afrca. I even met the environmental legal counsel to the Government of the Union of Comoros, the Government I used to work for at their UN Permanent Mission in NY. Hassan and I took a couple photos together and I have emailed them back to the Ambassador and my other supervisors there; I just wish I could see the surprise on their faces when they discover that we have met here in Kampala of all places. Another Comorian! I was so excited. Hassan even gave a great speech on the special plight of SIDS - how they have some great environmental laws, but they can't enforce them because they can't offer their people any other alternatives. For example, if they can't remove sand from the beaches to build their homes....what do they use? If they can't cut the few trees on the islands for firewood....what do they use? If the water surrounding their islands and flowing through their rivers is not potable....what do they use? Answer to that one is....they import from Tanzania. Can you imagine....importing water from a nation with its own water problems? How long can we depend on that? How much worse will it get with climate change?
One of the purposes of this conference that I really enjoyed is the link that it was trying to make between environmental conservation and water management. Water laws have typically treated water as a commodity or a public good, something for human use and consumption, industrialization and economic growth. As with all natural resources, they forget that it is degradable and in many ways diminishable. We forget that other Earthlings and the environment itself need water too in order to continue providing us with the environmental goods and services that we rely on. Through our water laws, we have tried to sort out how to allocate water resources for humans - riparian users, first-come-first-serve users, industrial uses, agricultural uses, etc. - following a purely anthropocentric paradigm. But we have forgotten the needs of other living organisms and Earth systems and our water and other natural resources are dwindling and degrading as result.
They say one should not bite the hand that feeds it....and yet when it comes to the environment, it's somehow too abstract for us to understand that the environment is the hand that feeds us. We deteriorate it, despoil it, diminish it, defile it, destroy it....and for what ends? Some economic or material gain for the few at the exploitation and poverty of the vast majority, not to mention the health detriment of all? Global well-being is on the decline, global economies...not much better. I'm failing to see the pros to all the cons.
As this conference's title argues, water laws need to be "greened". Ecological considerations must be figured in to legal frameworks for water management so that this essential resource for all life on Earth is sustainable in quality and quantity today and into the future. Brilliant, this is exactly what we need.
But there was one thing that was missing. The conference participants spoke so much about water conflicts, water scarcity, water insecurity.....and yet no one mentioned peace. That is, not until the last hour or so of the conference when I felt that it was time the quiet inexperienced young muzungu should speak. With surprise written across many faces, I took the mic and said that I think we should consider the issue of water and peace. We understand all the elements of water issues that contribute to non-peace, but how do we transform that? As the Rio Declaration notes, there can't be conservation and sustainable development without peace.
Rio Declaration Principle 24:
Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development. States shall therefore respect international law providing protection for the environment in times of armed conflict and cooperate in its further development, as necessary.
Rio Declaration Principle 25:
Peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible.
To me, it seems so straightforward and obvious. To the conference members, I was an alien. Why was I talking about something as abstract as peace in a meeting of policymakers and water experts trying to figure out tangible ways to make water laws more green? I don't know, am I so far off? I hope not. And if I'm not, then I can see that whatever research I do here will have to address some of these seemingly ambiguous links so that even the experts will not be confused.
I'm currently thinking three words: gorillas, water and peace. I think that's what my research here will be about.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
When Worlds Divide
Ex-pats in Uganda live a wholly different lifestyle than most Ugandans and a wholly different lifestyle than they might in their own home-countries. I think that I knew this in theory, but it didn't become a reality for me until this week. Maybe I was slow to realize this because I came here knowing a handful or so people, all of whom are Ugandans. I've yet to see another Muzungu in the neighborhood that I'm staying in. And I have yet to see a Muzungu in a taxi or in the car park.
This Monday, I went for my orientation briefing at the U.S. Embassy and I have yet to see so many foreigners in one place.
Going to the Embassy was my first venture out on my own. Joseph got one of the boda boda (motorcycle) drivers that he knows to come by the house and take me there, Mr. Kigozi (pronounced Chi-gozi) is his name. He drives nice and safely, no crazy weaving through traffic or speeding recklessly on bumpy potholed muddy roads, just nice and safe. It was sprinkling a little bit and I was wearing a dress, so I had to sit sideways, but I probably didn't even need to hold on, it was such a steady ride. Mr. Kigozi is also one of my Luganda teachers now. From him I learned how to say, "How are you?", "I'm good," and "goat." Well, I learned goat because he wanted to know what the animal is called in English, so naturally, I had to learn what it's called in Luganda.
The funny thing is that in both my orientation briefing and my security briefing, I was strongly advised to never take boda bodas. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I had arrived in a boda boda and was planning on taking one home. Apparently, the boda bodas are so dangerous that we're never supposed to take them at night and if we absolutely have to, we can maybe take them during the day. Thing is, unless you have a car in Kampala, you're going to need to take a boda boda at some point. There are many places that the taxis (minibuses or matatus) just don't go. So you either get on the back of a bicycle.....or the back of a motorcycle. If you're looking for some speed or are carrying anything even kind of heavy, I'd recommend the second option.
Thing is, many of the ex-pats that I've met here have cars...hence, they are not commonly found in taxis. Everyone at the Embassy that I spoke to drives themselves around. I didn't ask what kind of cars they drive, but I'm guessing parecida a (similar to) Barney. Barney is the big purple dinosaur that Robby and I were driving around in this summer. The one that John in Maine totally called me out on when he said, "Elaine, I didn't expect to see you driving an SUV. I thought you'd have one of those little environmentally friendly cars or something." All I could say in my defense was, "Well, I don't have a car. This one was offered to us for the roadtrip, so we took it." But John was right.
Another thing that I'm learning is that ex-pats tend to hang out with ex-pats. This is obviously coming from the limited experience or small sampling of ex-pats that I've come across in the past week and couple days, but even the people at the Embassy mentioned that a lot of U.S. citizens who come here to do Peace Corps or other programs find that they make very few Ugandan friends. Money is a dividing issue that has repeatedly been cited as a reason.
---
Kampala (and maybe this is one of those generalizations that you can appropriately make about all of the African continent) is one of those places where you really see development/aid as an invidious globalized industry. There may be some ex-pats here for business, but a large number of them are here working with an NGO or some international organization. I've been in places in Central America where there are a good number of international organizations driving around their giant shiny SUVs with the organizational logo painted on the sides and signs up everywhere lauding the work of whatever whatever organization funded by whatever whatever donor in whatever whatever North Atlantic nation doing whatever whatever great thing in this whatever whatever poor town. But Africa....
Africa is a whole other level of development/aid intervention. It's the epitome of everything about international development/aid that I detest deep down from the marrow of my bones. That book "Dead Aid" by Dambisa Moyo is something I really want to read, because I have a feeling she's going to say all the things that I think about aid and development in a much more eloquent and coherent way. I just see so much more bad than good coming out of this stuff that telling me that the intentions are good, just doesn't fly. I'm sorry (not really), but the ends do not justify the means.
When a person gets involved in some job that poisons the Earth, exploits people and natural resources, perpetuates some harmful institution or system and then tries to buy back their soul by "giving back" through charity....I'm sorry mubuntu, but it's just not the same. You can't expect to repay the damage that you never should've done and think that the universe is going to be right again.
I wouldn't be so quick to write it all off....because there are movements like Anti-Development, New Development or Alternative Development, maybe even Integrated Development that hold some promise. The ones that talk about what I call "Local and Organic" development. Problem is.....good examples are few and far between. When I was working on my thesis, I was really struggling to find examples of community development that did not involve a single external intervention.....no outside organization or expert trying to tell a community what they think is good for them. All of the professors and practitioners that I quizzed for examples were at a loss to come up with examples themselves. Most of us are meddlers.
I'm currently involved in the development of a proposal to facilitate the organization of community-based transboundary watershed management committees in the peace park area of Honduras and Nicaragua. I'm worried. I'll tell you why. Key is, they want the big dollars (a.k.a. WB/IMF kinda shady deals) so they claim that this means you need the big int'l experts who are used to dealing with big bank money and handling big scale projects instead of trying to promote the capacity-building of local actors and leaders who really know the situation on the ground and are used to getting things done there but no big bank would trust to manage a project or believes could do anything at the level of intelligence, efficiency and professionalism of a North Atlantic suit.
I can't help but feel all kinds of against it and have tried to promote local people, named a bunch of more-than-capable and deserving individuals, but instead, they want to bring in a bunch of North Atlantic experts who have never been to this place (the proposed peace park territory on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua) and don't speak the language or know anything about the local dynamics except for maybe what they've been briefed on. Every attempt I've made to have indigenous peoples mentioned explicitly has failed to make its way into the text. I'm sure that these experts are wonderful, genuinely nice, intelligent people with great expanses of experience in doing this kind of work.....but sometimes, it's nice to give someone else a chance, especially when so many of the problems of widespread and pervasive poverty are linked to limited access to opportunities.
What's even more disturbing is that I know that it can be done without all that fancy shmancy external aid. I did the field research last semester, I know how the systems work and I believe that they can work. The social and political mechanisms already exist for village-based transboundary conservation (including for watershed management and protection)....the patronatos, gabinetes del poder ciudadano, alcaldias and asociaciones de municipios, mambocaures, etc. All they need is a small amount of financial support - food at the meetings and transportation for the people to go. Maybe they already have all that available in their budgets already. When I spoke to the municipalities, no one said they needed a $5 million WB loan to start work on this. They just asked for a date and contact info. They could begin the organization so easily on their own. When they begin targeting technical issues beyond the scope of their knowledge, I'm convinced that in-country experts exist....and those are the people who we must support. Otherwise, why would in-country experts in "developing" nations ever have the incentive to stay in-country.....they would have such better career opportunities if they just abandoned their communities and moved "North".
If community-based means the communities themselves get together and discuss the issues and pinpoint actions or ways forward on their own, why is a whole team of international experts necessary for any of that? Maybe they will need to access international funds to execute the actions they want to take, but if that's something they can't do on their own, then it's the development banks that are failing to provide the services they were created to provide. There is no reason why a middle-person broker type must be coerced into the equation for "poor" people to get access to money set aside to help develop "poor" communities. I refuse to believe that international experts are the only people capable of doing these jobs. Every one of those international experts was at one point an uninformed inexperienced non-expert. Somehow, they were trained, taught, informed and given opportunities. Why should the local people of the Choluteca and Madriz mountain forests be any different?
I rant.....I meddle
This Monday, I went for my orientation briefing at the U.S. Embassy and I have yet to see so many foreigners in one place.
Going to the Embassy was my first venture out on my own. Joseph got one of the boda boda (motorcycle) drivers that he knows to come by the house and take me there, Mr. Kigozi (pronounced Chi-gozi) is his name. He drives nice and safely, no crazy weaving through traffic or speeding recklessly on bumpy potholed muddy roads, just nice and safe. It was sprinkling a little bit and I was wearing a dress, so I had to sit sideways, but I probably didn't even need to hold on, it was such a steady ride. Mr. Kigozi is also one of my Luganda teachers now. From him I learned how to say, "How are you?", "I'm good," and "goat." Well, I learned goat because he wanted to know what the animal is called in English, so naturally, I had to learn what it's called in Luganda.
The funny thing is that in both my orientation briefing and my security briefing, I was strongly advised to never take boda bodas. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I had arrived in a boda boda and was planning on taking one home. Apparently, the boda bodas are so dangerous that we're never supposed to take them at night and if we absolutely have to, we can maybe take them during the day. Thing is, unless you have a car in Kampala, you're going to need to take a boda boda at some point. There are many places that the taxis (minibuses or matatus) just don't go. So you either get on the back of a bicycle.....or the back of a motorcycle. If you're looking for some speed or are carrying anything even kind of heavy, I'd recommend the second option.
Thing is, many of the ex-pats that I've met here have cars...hence, they are not commonly found in taxis. Everyone at the Embassy that I spoke to drives themselves around. I didn't ask what kind of cars they drive, but I'm guessing parecida a (similar to) Barney. Barney is the big purple dinosaur that Robby and I were driving around in this summer. The one that John in Maine totally called me out on when he said, "Elaine, I didn't expect to see you driving an SUV. I thought you'd have one of those little environmentally friendly cars or something." All I could say in my defense was, "Well, I don't have a car. This one was offered to us for the roadtrip, so we took it." But John was right.
Another thing that I'm learning is that ex-pats tend to hang out with ex-pats. This is obviously coming from the limited experience or small sampling of ex-pats that I've come across in the past week and couple days, but even the people at the Embassy mentioned that a lot of U.S. citizens who come here to do Peace Corps or other programs find that they make very few Ugandan friends. Money is a dividing issue that has repeatedly been cited as a reason.
---
Kampala (and maybe this is one of those generalizations that you can appropriately make about all of the African continent) is one of those places where you really see development/aid as an invidious globalized industry. There may be some ex-pats here for business, but a large number of them are here working with an NGO or some international organization. I've been in places in Central America where there are a good number of international organizations driving around their giant shiny SUVs with the organizational logo painted on the sides and signs up everywhere lauding the work of whatever whatever organization funded by whatever whatever donor in whatever whatever North Atlantic nation doing whatever whatever great thing in this whatever whatever poor town. But Africa....
Africa is a whole other level of development/aid intervention. It's the epitome of everything about international development/aid that I detest deep down from the marrow of my bones. That book "Dead Aid" by Dambisa Moyo is something I really want to read, because I have a feeling she's going to say all the things that I think about aid and development in a much more eloquent and coherent way. I just see so much more bad than good coming out of this stuff that telling me that the intentions are good, just doesn't fly. I'm sorry (not really), but the ends do not justify the means.
When a person gets involved in some job that poisons the Earth, exploits people and natural resources, perpetuates some harmful institution or system and then tries to buy back their soul by "giving back" through charity....I'm sorry mubuntu, but it's just not the same. You can't expect to repay the damage that you never should've done and think that the universe is going to be right again.
I wouldn't be so quick to write it all off....because there are movements like Anti-Development, New Development or Alternative Development, maybe even Integrated Development that hold some promise. The ones that talk about what I call "Local and Organic" development. Problem is.....good examples are few and far between. When I was working on my thesis, I was really struggling to find examples of community development that did not involve a single external intervention.....no outside organization or expert trying to tell a community what they think is good for them. All of the professors and practitioners that I quizzed for examples were at a loss to come up with examples themselves. Most of us are meddlers.
I'm currently involved in the development of a proposal to facilitate the organization of community-based transboundary watershed management committees in the peace park area of Honduras and Nicaragua. I'm worried. I'll tell you why. Key is, they want the big dollars (a.k.a. WB/IMF kinda shady deals) so they claim that this means you need the big int'l experts who are used to dealing with big bank money and handling big scale projects instead of trying to promote the capacity-building of local actors and leaders who really know the situation on the ground and are used to getting things done there but no big bank would trust to manage a project or believes could do anything at the level of intelligence, efficiency and professionalism of a North Atlantic suit.
I can't help but feel all kinds of against it and have tried to promote local people, named a bunch of more-than-capable and deserving individuals, but instead, they want to bring in a bunch of North Atlantic experts who have never been to this place (the proposed peace park territory on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua) and don't speak the language or know anything about the local dynamics except for maybe what they've been briefed on. Every attempt I've made to have indigenous peoples mentioned explicitly has failed to make its way into the text. I'm sure that these experts are wonderful, genuinely nice, intelligent people with great expanses of experience in doing this kind of work.....but sometimes, it's nice to give someone else a chance, especially when so many of the problems of widespread and pervasive poverty are linked to limited access to opportunities.
What's even more disturbing is that I know that it can be done without all that fancy shmancy external aid. I did the field research last semester, I know how the systems work and I believe that they can work. The social and political mechanisms already exist for village-based transboundary conservation (including for watershed management and protection)....the patronatos, gabinetes del poder ciudadano, alcaldias and asociaciones de municipios, mambocaures, etc. All they need is a small amount of financial support - food at the meetings and transportation for the people to go. Maybe they already have all that available in their budgets already. When I spoke to the municipalities, no one said they needed a $5 million WB loan to start work on this. They just asked for a date and contact info. They could begin the organization so easily on their own. When they begin targeting technical issues beyond the scope of their knowledge, I'm convinced that in-country experts exist....and those are the people who we must support. Otherwise, why would in-country experts in "developing" nations ever have the incentive to stay in-country.....they would have such better career opportunities if they just abandoned their communities and moved "North".
If community-based means the communities themselves get together and discuss the issues and pinpoint actions or ways forward on their own, why is a whole team of international experts necessary for any of that? Maybe they will need to access international funds to execute the actions they want to take, but if that's something they can't do on their own, then it's the development banks that are failing to provide the services they were created to provide. There is no reason why a middle-person broker type must be coerced into the equation for "poor" people to get access to money set aside to help develop "poor" communities. I refuse to believe that international experts are the only people capable of doing these jobs. Every one of those international experts was at one point an uninformed inexperienced non-expert. Somehow, they were trained, taught, informed and given opportunities. Why should the local people of the Choluteca and Madriz mountain forests be any different?
I rant.....I meddle
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Hi Muzungu!!
The kids shout at me in the red dirt roads as I carefully place each foot to avoid ditches, mud puddles and rubbish. No need to draw more attention to myself than I already do by mere visage. Even in the darkness of night they know. I am different.
Hi Muzungu! Bye Muzungu!!!
This is the greeting I get from a neighbour child of ours, but when I go over to greet him, his chin gapes open and the words are evaporated into air. He has no voice. Just paralysis bulging through wide-eyed surprise that the Muzungu speaks and is so near.
It's funny really. Took me awhile to even realize that they were talking to me. The languages are all unknown to me, so my senses are slow to pick out words. It was relative ages before the voices had any coherence and I exclaimed to Joseph, "they're talking to me!" Who else.
I've never been called a White Person before.
On more than one occasion I've even been told that I don't look like an American, to which all I can say really is that Americans come in all shapes, sizes and colors. If anything, I think I look more like the first Americans than any of those from later diaspora that have brought peoples to the Americas, even if these more recent migrants have prejudicially been identified as the prevailing American aesthetic. I don't have numbers of course, but I'm inclined to think that from North to South in the Americas, there are more people with dark hair, dark skin and brown eyes than not. These are genetically dominant traits anyway. So, I don't look American, but here I am White.
I think I've just instilled fear in the hearts of White Supremacists everywhere.
---
It has taken me two and a half weeks to reach the land of Red Earth that people endearingly call the Pearl of Africa. I left Los Angeles October 14th on an overnight flight where I was seated next to Gary, a drummer who has played all over the world. It helped that conversation was easy because sleep wasn't.
The next morning I rolled into London Heathrow, where an old African American man walked up beside me and began to ask me about my guitar and whether I play for money. Anyone who knows me, knows the answer to that. This man, apparently, used to play quite a bit though. He then proceeded to tell me "Honey, you're too young to know my band, but I sing with a group called the Temptations." Ehh?! I may be young, but who doesn't know the Temptations?!
London was cold. I was confined to essentially two outfits over the two weeks I was there. Hardly different variations of the same layering on of everything long sleeved I'd brought with me, altering only the sweater I wore (my black sweater from Taiwan or the navy blue sweater contributed to the cause of keeping me warm from Hamish). It's a good thing we don't sweat much in the cold and smells are muted. Two weeks of the same clothes day after day in tropical climes of heat and humidity would be treacherous.
After London came Addis Ababa, home of the Ark of the Covenant and the alleged origin of our hominid predecessors. I had only three days there: one day spent planning my research schedule with Emmanuel (my supervisor from Makerere, who is now on Sabbatical and working with the Nile Basin Initiative in Addis), one day at the University for Peace's Africa Programme, and one day at Addis Ababa University (its library is a former palace of Haile Selassie) and a shopping tour around town with Tigist and two Danish scholars here for a seminar on peace and security.
On my last night, Golda took Emmanuel, Tony, Ayten and me to a nearby restaurant for injara and live traditional dances. Ethiopian dances are a wholly other dimension of physiological movement that I can only explain as a complete disjunct between shoulders, limbs and joints. How they move like that to those rhythms is beyond me. Mind-blowing really, and so fun to watch.
---
Kampala has been a different sort of experience. In comparison to the cool and uber dry highlands of Ethiopia, Kampala is more than warm, low-lying and fairly humid.
My flight landed half an hour early and I was let into the country for $50USD on a tourist visa to be renewed in three months time. A cab driver helped me locate my friend Moses and his brother Boaz who were stuck at the airport entry check point, but such great faces to see upon arrival in my residence country of the next ten months. Thankfully Boaz knew his way to Joseph's house because I would not have found it on my own. Once you depart Entebbe Road, which connects the airport in Entebbe to Kampala central and is allegedly the best road in the nation, it is a maze of red dirt paths and unplanned housing developments.
At Joseph's, I have my very own room and thankfully I see few mosquitoes around. I was stubborn about anti-malarial drugs at first, but just days before leaving the U.S., buckled to social pressure and bought a year's supply of doxycycline as prescribed by the Medicaid doctor I saw in New York. I should have trusted my instincts and waited until I arrived here to do some investigative work - ask what the local people and clinics recommend and then buy the meds here, if at all. Really though, who wants to voluntarily and proactively put something so poisonous into their body?
The first morning, I took the doxycycline as prescribed - on an empty stomach one hour before food and with plenty of water. Half an hour later, I told Joseph and Prossy (his niece) that they should eat first, the medicine was making me nauseous. Seconds later, I stood up abruptly and rushed to the side door where I relieved my stomach of all the water I had drunk and probably a good portion of the doxycycline as well. I felt terrible for the next hour and was so embarrassed that less than 24 hours upon arrival, I had returned Joseph's hospitality by throwing up on his side doorstep. That can't be appropriate in any culture.
That evening we consulted a local pharmacist, who expressed surprise that I had even been prescribed doxycycline, an antibiotic that apparently destroys your body's natural flora (for which I am taking a probiotic), is not nearly as effective as mefloquine which is an actual anti-malarial drug that you take only once a week instead of daily, and stains your teeth yellow.
Last night I actually dreamt about that - yellow teeth. I had become Girl With Yellow Teeth over just a few days time; not Muzungu, just Girl With Yellow Teeth. When I checked in the mirror, it was true....in my dream, my teeth were all a long-time coffee drinker smoker yellow. They say dreams of teeth have something to do with feelings of insecurity. Does that only apply to teeth falling out? What do the psychoanalysts say about yellow teeth?
Names here have meaning. In the Baganda tradition (the people of Buganda, who are the majority in Uganda) or Kiganda, children are given a name that describes events or circumstances of their birth. Later, they are given a Christian name, probably the local saint celebrated on their date of birth, which typically becomes their official name (you know, the one that goes on all the documents). A name can say much about who you are and who you will become.
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Smells are wafting into the room from the cooking area. In the house, Prossy cooks almost entirely on two small charcoal stoves. It's the cheapest way to heat foods, other alternatives being electric or gas stoves and appliances. Every day, trucks loaded with large sacks of charcoal parade the windy roads sprinkling black ash along the way. Where this comes from, I'm afraid to know.
The charcoal trade is pervasive and invidious in the Kivus, the southeastern region of the DR Congo, part of my research area. Trees are illegally logged, burned in smothered pits in the rainforest and trucked out to places like Rwanda, where a charcoal production ban was instituted in an attempt to mitigate illegal logging. Greater effect: the illegality is outsourced and allegedly funding a dark and complicated war between so many factions they say the combatants themselves can't even follow who's fighting for what and whose allied with whom. There was a great article on charcoal and gorillas a couple years back in National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/07/virunga/jenkins-text
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In London, we watched a play about a British researcher in Cambodia trying to interview survivors of the mass killings in a small town. Everywhere, she was told to go first to the temples. Only then could she understand. Here, the temples are like the stories of the peoples of this Red Earth. Only through the stories, can we understand the cultures. Culture across Africa: I can't explain it yet (if ever), but it seems to be a powerful thing.
They should have a word for story-learners, like the word story-tellers. Maybe that could be my name.
Hi Muzungu! Bye Muzungu!!!
This is the greeting I get from a neighbour child of ours, but when I go over to greet him, his chin gapes open and the words are evaporated into air. He has no voice. Just paralysis bulging through wide-eyed surprise that the Muzungu speaks and is so near.
It's funny really. Took me awhile to even realize that they were talking to me. The languages are all unknown to me, so my senses are slow to pick out words. It was relative ages before the voices had any coherence and I exclaimed to Joseph, "they're talking to me!" Who else.
I've never been called a White Person before.
On more than one occasion I've even been told that I don't look like an American, to which all I can say really is that Americans come in all shapes, sizes and colors. If anything, I think I look more like the first Americans than any of those from later diaspora that have brought peoples to the Americas, even if these more recent migrants have prejudicially been identified as the prevailing American aesthetic. I don't have numbers of course, but I'm inclined to think that from North to South in the Americas, there are more people with dark hair, dark skin and brown eyes than not. These are genetically dominant traits anyway. So, I don't look American, but here I am White.
I think I've just instilled fear in the hearts of White Supremacists everywhere.
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It has taken me two and a half weeks to reach the land of Red Earth that people endearingly call the Pearl of Africa. I left Los Angeles October 14th on an overnight flight where I was seated next to Gary, a drummer who has played all over the world. It helped that conversation was easy because sleep wasn't.
The next morning I rolled into London Heathrow, where an old African American man walked up beside me and began to ask me about my guitar and whether I play for money. Anyone who knows me, knows the answer to that. This man, apparently, used to play quite a bit though. He then proceeded to tell me "Honey, you're too young to know my band, but I sing with a group called the Temptations." Ehh?! I may be young, but who doesn't know the Temptations?!
London was cold. I was confined to essentially two outfits over the two weeks I was there. Hardly different variations of the same layering on of everything long sleeved I'd brought with me, altering only the sweater I wore (my black sweater from Taiwan or the navy blue sweater contributed to the cause of keeping me warm from Hamish). It's a good thing we don't sweat much in the cold and smells are muted. Two weeks of the same clothes day after day in tropical climes of heat and humidity would be treacherous.
After London came Addis Ababa, home of the Ark of the Covenant and the alleged origin of our hominid predecessors. I had only three days there: one day spent planning my research schedule with Emmanuel (my supervisor from Makerere, who is now on Sabbatical and working with the Nile Basin Initiative in Addis), one day at the University for Peace's Africa Programme, and one day at Addis Ababa University (its library is a former palace of Haile Selassie) and a shopping tour around town with Tigist and two Danish scholars here for a seminar on peace and security.
On my last night, Golda took Emmanuel, Tony, Ayten and me to a nearby restaurant for injara and live traditional dances. Ethiopian dances are a wholly other dimension of physiological movement that I can only explain as a complete disjunct between shoulders, limbs and joints. How they move like that to those rhythms is beyond me. Mind-blowing really, and so fun to watch.
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Kampala has been a different sort of experience. In comparison to the cool and uber dry highlands of Ethiopia, Kampala is more than warm, low-lying and fairly humid.
My flight landed half an hour early and I was let into the country for $50USD on a tourist visa to be renewed in three months time. A cab driver helped me locate my friend Moses and his brother Boaz who were stuck at the airport entry check point, but such great faces to see upon arrival in my residence country of the next ten months. Thankfully Boaz knew his way to Joseph's house because I would not have found it on my own. Once you depart Entebbe Road, which connects the airport in Entebbe to Kampala central and is allegedly the best road in the nation, it is a maze of red dirt paths and unplanned housing developments.
At Joseph's, I have my very own room and thankfully I see few mosquitoes around. I was stubborn about anti-malarial drugs at first, but just days before leaving the U.S., buckled to social pressure and bought a year's supply of doxycycline as prescribed by the Medicaid doctor I saw in New York. I should have trusted my instincts and waited until I arrived here to do some investigative work - ask what the local people and clinics recommend and then buy the meds here, if at all. Really though, who wants to voluntarily and proactively put something so poisonous into their body?
The first morning, I took the doxycycline as prescribed - on an empty stomach one hour before food and with plenty of water. Half an hour later, I told Joseph and Prossy (his niece) that they should eat first, the medicine was making me nauseous. Seconds later, I stood up abruptly and rushed to the side door where I relieved my stomach of all the water I had drunk and probably a good portion of the doxycycline as well. I felt terrible for the next hour and was so embarrassed that less than 24 hours upon arrival, I had returned Joseph's hospitality by throwing up on his side doorstep. That can't be appropriate in any culture.
That evening we consulted a local pharmacist, who expressed surprise that I had even been prescribed doxycycline, an antibiotic that apparently destroys your body's natural flora (for which I am taking a probiotic), is not nearly as effective as mefloquine which is an actual anti-malarial drug that you take only once a week instead of daily, and stains your teeth yellow.
Last night I actually dreamt about that - yellow teeth. I had become Girl With Yellow Teeth over just a few days time; not Muzungu, just Girl With Yellow Teeth. When I checked in the mirror, it was true....in my dream, my teeth were all a long-time coffee drinker smoker yellow. They say dreams of teeth have something to do with feelings of insecurity. Does that only apply to teeth falling out? What do the psychoanalysts say about yellow teeth?
Names here have meaning. In the Baganda tradition (the people of Buganda, who are the majority in Uganda) or Kiganda, children are given a name that describes events or circumstances of their birth. Later, they are given a Christian name, probably the local saint celebrated on their date of birth, which typically becomes their official name (you know, the one that goes on all the documents). A name can say much about who you are and who you will become.
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Smells are wafting into the room from the cooking area. In the house, Prossy cooks almost entirely on two small charcoal stoves. It's the cheapest way to heat foods, other alternatives being electric or gas stoves and appliances. Every day, trucks loaded with large sacks of charcoal parade the windy roads sprinkling black ash along the way. Where this comes from, I'm afraid to know.
The charcoal trade is pervasive and invidious in the Kivus, the southeastern region of the DR Congo, part of my research area. Trees are illegally logged, burned in smothered pits in the rainforest and trucked out to places like Rwanda, where a charcoal production ban was instituted in an attempt to mitigate illegal logging. Greater effect: the illegality is outsourced and allegedly funding a dark and complicated war between so many factions they say the combatants themselves can't even follow who's fighting for what and whose allied with whom. There was a great article on charcoal and gorillas a couple years back in National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/07/virunga/jenkins-text
---
In London, we watched a play about a British researcher in Cambodia trying to interview survivors of the mass killings in a small town. Everywhere, she was told to go first to the temples. Only then could she understand. Here, the temples are like the stories of the peoples of this Red Earth. Only through the stories, can we understand the cultures. Culture across Africa: I can't explain it yet (if ever), but it seems to be a powerful thing.
They should have a word for story-learners, like the word story-tellers. Maybe that could be my name.
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