I’m Glenna Gordon, an American photographer and journalist, presently commuting between West Africa and Brooklyn. Previously, I lived in Liberia. And before that, I lived in Uganda. I’ve traveled and worked in over a dozen countries in Africa.
I found the scarlett lion on the roof of a friend’s house in Kampala back in 2006 when I went through a crate of discarded items he and a few other artists had gathered. On that day, I was looking for something and I found the lion: a discarded kid’s toy made in China on the cheap, that somehow found it’s way to East Africa. Something about the hollowed out, paint chipped figurine appealed to my understanding of this place: I’d never seen a real lion, after all.
While purchasing a scarf for my mother with my boyfriend at the posh New York store ABC Home and Carpet, I noticed Uganda’s infamous (at least in my family where they’ve been gifted too many times) newspaper beads. A quick check on their website did indeed prove they buy from Beads for Life, except that when you buy them in Uganda they cost about 3,000 Ush, or about $1.80, and at ABC, they cost about $20 bucks. Nice mark up.
Now my family should think they’re getting better presents.
The New York Times has several interesting stories that talk about the problems of HIV/AIDS support given my global networks.
The first, by a journalist turned public health worker, discusses the correlation between food and ARVS:
Western donors have increased the distribution of antiretroviral drugs in sub-Saharan Africa. But they have done little to make sure that the recipients do not starve to death or have to choose between paying for transportation to the clinic and feeding their children. Studies like this one seek to demonstrate that packaging food aid with H.I.V. drugs or reimbursing patients for travel can actually improve health and save lives.
A second article, with similar themes, focuses on Rwanda:
Matsepang Nyoba, a Lesotho woman with AIDS who was undoubtedly saved by programs funded by the Gates Foundation. However, when she gave birth, her daughter Mankuebe couldn’t breathe and asphyxiated for want of a $35 oxygen tank valve the health center just didn’t have. The Gates Foundation has given $650 million to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, but the oxygen valve fell outside the priorities of the fund’s grants to Lesotho.
The first article highlights the problems of food security in families with HIV, and the second, with the distribution of funds to health clinics for HIV.
Both agree, however, that some aid is better than no aid. The Rwanda article states:
If Global Fund resources had not been available, tens of thousands more would be dead from AIDS, and hundreds of thousands would not know their HIV status.
While this is of course true, it seems that many programs are (mis)guided about the way to go about distributing funding and ensuring that ARVs are effectively used.
So I obviously haven’t been blogging a lot during my interlude in the USA, but after catching up on 2000+ google reader feeds, here are some of the more interesting tidbits.
Museveni to get $48 million jet which he calls a “national asset.”
An article that clearly links Congo’s current conflict with Rwanda’s genocide.
Year’s most underreported stories. And another list. (Not that I totally agree since there’s a lot of other happenings that don’t make the papers.
Andrew Mwenda’s new paper held up by government. (And here is the paper if you want to view.)
Luzira prison starts university.
World’s top executioners.
Interesting take on dictatorship and democracy.
50 Cent performs in Kosovo.
David being, well, philosophical.
The projects look pretty.
Don’t you want to take this subway?
This from the Monitor
“We cannot rule out that Chogm could have influenced the [late Ebola alert],” Dr Apollo Nyangasi, National Chairman of the 20,000-member Uganda Medical Worker’s Union, told Sunday Monitor on Thursday at his offices in Kampala.
And as a consequence, Dr Nyangasi said, uninformed health workers continued to handle patients without protective gear like hand gloves, face masks, gumboots and gowns – thus endangering their lives.
Another article says this,
The outbreak began on Aug. 20, but the disease was not confirmed as Ebola until Nov. 29.
Meanwhile, Museveni says,
“Ebola spreads through contact. For the time being, people should resort to jambo (waving),” Museveni was quoted in the state-owned newspaper New Vision as saying. “If I don’t shake your hand, it doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”
I’m sure that will stop the spread of Ebola….
There are now 93 cases of Ebola with 22 dead.
Good thing I’m going to the States tomorrow! (First time in a long year….)
Posting will be infrequent, but do check back from time to time. I’m gonna try and do another post today or tomorrow, hopefully reflective, but packing and last minute gift shopping may interrupt.
Time will tell. And time will pass. I’ll be back in Uganda January 3.
Dave Eggers just scored $100,000 from TED.
What is the What (a really good book according to me, but disliked by some), his most recent book, tells the story of a young Sudanese boy fleeing violence, sent to a refugee camp in Kenya, and eventually resettled in the USA. See my review of it here.
Wonder if the Sudanese boy he collaborated with will see any of the money….
I know they need more money for advertising, but really, an ad for Fun Lingerie?
Wish I could get the picture here, but I’m not that technologically advanced. But just go to www.monitor.co.ug and wait for the crotch!
This article in Guardian asks some crude questions.
Sudan suffers from rather bad press, tourism-wise. All we hear is civil war; all we see is thornbushes and desert. Hence the scepticism, in some quarters, when schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons disembarked at Heathrow and informed journalists that she hoped her brief imprisonment and narrow escape from 40 lashes would not put anyone off going there. “I am very sorry to leave Sudan,” she said. “It is a beautiful place. The Sudanese people I found to be extremely kind and generous and until this happened I only had a good experience.”
It goes on to say…
just because some bits of the largest country in Africa are scary doesn’t mean that all of it is. Imagine the absurdity of a ban on travelling to the Hebrides because of the July 7 bombs in London – then remember that Sudan is more than 10 times the size of the UK. It is true that the Foreign Office’s advice on travel to Sudan is a veritable litany of bans (avoid the Eritrean border, avoid the Congolese border, avoid Darfur). There is also “a high threat from terrorism. Attacks could be indiscriminate,including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers” – but isn’t that rather like what the head of MI5 said of Britain just the other day?
Yeah, Sudan is just like Britain…. I’m not going on holiday in Sudan or Britain anytime soon, but I do believe there’s a qualitative difference.
