“Nairobi called, I have to go,” I say to David, very often these days.

Sometimes, I feel like an entire city in Kenya owns me. And I guess they kind of do. When “Nairobi Calls,” it is someone from AP asking me to go somewhere, usually about twenty minutes after they call, or someone from my brand-spanking-new position at PlusNews, where they seem to have a previously unheard of appetite for HIV news. All HIV all the time.

It’s great – I’ve never been so busy and my days at Daily Monitor are finally numbered (and yes, yes they do still owe me a lot of money per contract, but no, no I don’t think they will ever actually pay me). I won’t miss the pig-pen o’ journalists also known as a news desk, with 40 people queuing for one phone, but I do miss the more leisurely pace, the time to blog, the time to respond to emails.

So yes, yes this is really an excuse disguised as a blog post. An excuse for not blogging more, and for not writing back to you, dear friends. Sorry, Nairobi called.

My latest piece is up on Global Voices, mainly based off the conversation at Ugandan Insomniac’s blog about press freedom.

Africa: Is Chinese influence eroding press freedom?

The BBC posted an interview with head of Reporters Without Borders Leonard Vincent commenting on the decline of press freedom in Africa over the past year.

Ugandan Insomniac was the first to discuss it:

Vincent’s response, in my opinion, was typical of the misunderstanding of African statehood, international affairs and democracy.

She quoted some of the interview, with special emphasis on parts she found especially difficult to swallow:

VINCENT: Two major factors for me is that first of all, is the fact that there is this sort of African pride in the culture, in the political culture, that has been renewed this year and more and more over the years makes it difficult for western countries to intervene in internal affairs of their former colonies.

Meanwhile, AfricaFlack offered another angle:

RSF Secretary-General Robert Menard knows the cure. The leaders of the so-called league of democracies and international institutions must stand up for common values. One underlying reason for this reluctance – at least for the “democracies” – is business, Menard argues. Who wants to offend China’s leaders about imprisoning cyber journalists when their market is so big? Who wants to offend Russian President Vladimir Putin when oil is so important?

Let’s get back to Africa and its dark year of 2007. One reason so many African countries became so brazen in their repression of the media: the rise of Chinese power on the continent along with the corresponding loss of legitimacy of the continent’s former colonial powers.

But back on the Insomniac’s blog, tempers – and comments – flared.

@God: Why did you make the West? Why, why, why, why? Why did you make them people who turn I into an incoherent burn-dem-downer? (27th Comrade)

…

The voyeuristic nature of western media thrives when there is trouble in nations they consider to be less civilized than their own. It reinforces their opinion that they are somehow superior to these rabid uncultured people babbling in some weird sounding language that they will never learn. (imnxtac)

…

Vincent is saying it wrong, especially up there about African pride. He also thinks wrong, putting the blame on China for instance. Even in countries where Western governments are all over the place the same thing does happen. It’s a matter of who is playing who. Eg, while Rwanda has been putting off France, they’ve been dancing with American and British money. But the media in Rwanda is one of the most repressed in the Great Lakes region, and it is only a few years from now that RWB of this world will be noticing. (Minty)

…

I think the biggest flaw of places like Reporters Without Borders is they don’t take into consideration the difficulty of local media to operate within their own countries.

IGG anyone?? (Scarlett Lion)

Discussions of media freedom – and more so what is reported about Africa – never fail to incite a plethora of opinions, though it is doubtful the RWB will respond to the voices all over the blogosphere.

Reggae band UB40 played in Kampala on Saturday to a crowd of between 30,000 and 40,000, drawing in revenue of as much as Ush 300 million for the Uganda Revenue Authority (Uganda’s IRS), and surely coming away with a pretty penny was the band itself.

I don’t really like UB40, nor do most of the people I know, but the scale of this concert alone seemed to make it worth attending. (When you consider that Kampala has about 1.2 – 1.8 million people, depending on how you count, there were a whole lot of Kampalans at the concert.)

When I approached the stadium, the line was around the block. Flashed my nifty press pass and managed to elbow my way in, and then elbow through the crowd to the front so I could get some good pictures for the AP, who had asked me to cover the show for them.

Security at the front was pretty intense. The police had taser guns they made regular use of.

They herded us media from one corral to another, pretty much as they pleased, and even took away some journalists’ cameras. After that, and when the security said we couldn’t take any more photos, I decided to make my exit. I wasn’t going to stay around to hear hits that didn’t do it for me, risk my camera and my security, or waste time when I still had to file my photos to Nairobi.

In conclusion: better than the German President, not as good as interesting to photograph as a protest, but at least I made some money and didn’t have to pay for a ticket.



I’ve been meaning to jump on the bandwagon for some time now, but hadn’t got around to blogging it yet.

SO… African Reading Challenge 2008: the idea, posted here, is to read six books about Africa. Rebekah, Pernille, Tumwijuke and others have already started, so I’ll follow suit.

(By the way, Mom, I hope this means you’ll help me out with a package from Amazon, since many of these books are not Aristock regulars.)

1. Waugh in Abyssinya: Didn’t even know that this existed until I followed a footnote in book #2, which I’m about half way through. Evelyn Waugh reported for the foreign press in Abyssinya, now Ethopia, for quite some time and I look forward to his wry observations.

2. I didn’t do it for you: Michela Wrong’s excellent piece about Eritrea. Already about half way through, so expect the review soon. (On a different note, though, the tag line for the book is “How the world betrayed a small African nation,” and a friend of mine, upon noting the cover, said, “Well, that won’t be biased at all.” But then again, bias isn’t always bad.)

3. Justice on the Grass: A book about the gacaca trials of three Rwandan journalists implicated in spreading propaganda before and during the genocide. (Fellow Columbia alum’s book, I picked it up at a bargain price while I was in New York.)

4. Che in Africa: Okay, stolen from Pernille, but sounds like a book I really really want to read. And the great thing about this challenge is other people’s lists, since I certainly didn’t know about this book.

5. Heart of Darkness: I know, I know, ridiculous that I’ve never read it. But what better time than this challenge to finally get around to it?

6. Blood River: a journalist tracks through the entire huge swathe of territory that is the Congo. Though I fear this may be some poverty porn, who am I to resist another journalist writing on Congo?

7. The Invisible Cure: A new treatise on AIDS in Africa, acclaimed by many a critic. Now that I’m going to be doing some work for PlusNews, this seems like a necessary volume.

So that’s my list. But I thought I’d also add a list of some other books about Africa that I’ve read lately if you’re looking for more fodder. (I’m not linking to all of them – my internet is way too slow – so you can do some googling.)

Emma’s War
What is the What
We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families
Aiding Violence
King Leopold’s Ghost
In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz
Shadow of the Sun
Half of a Yellow Sun
When the Crocodile eats the sun
Graceland
Machete Seasons
Freetown Ambush
Emergency Sex
The Graves Are Not Yet Full

Also, books NOT to read:

Anything by Alexander McCall Smith – stereotypical, badly written bullshit
In the Hot Zone – see my review here
The Zanzibar Chest – I should have known better than to pick up a book with an “antique” on the cover…

Reuters AlertNet link to my story
(but more pictures if you read it here…)

The gate of Mityana Prison, an hour east of Kampala, is guarded by a single khaki-clad officer with a rifle. As prisons go, it’s not large, housing just 107 inmates.

Zaini Kizire, 28, is one of two HIV-positive prisoners here. Sitting with a group of female inmates, all wearing beige smocks, untailored except for sleeves, she folds her body into the smallest space possible on the concrete floor.

Asked what they know about AIDS, no one replies. Then Kizire says: “First, you get tested, then retested, then they do a CD4 count, then you take two tabs, one white and one yellow.”

Her understanding of HIV/AIDS isn’t technical or epidemiological, but Kizire is one of the few prisoners with even a basic grasp of how the disease works.

In one of the men’s cells, measuring five by five meters (16 by 16 feet) and holding about 20 inmates, an older man says AIDS is a disease that affects the young and the aged, that you catch it through sex or sharing sharp objects like razors, and there wasn’t a cure.

Another prisoner, wearing a faded Nokia t-shirt, spoke up after a few minutes: “AIDS is a biological weapon. The only solution is that the physicians who manufactured it be kind and find medicine.”

In the next cell, similarly small and with just as little natural light, it was the inmates who asked the questions. “If someone has not been tested, what should he do?” asked one. “If I have the disease and my wife has it as well, will our child have it?”

Kizire and the other HIV-positive inmate make a trip to a local hospital once a month to collect their anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), as upcountry prisons have no health facilities. The hospital is 1.5 km (1 mile) away and the prison has no form of transportation for the inmates. She fears the day when she’s too ill to walk.

LIVING ON ARVS

In Luzira Prison on the outskirts of Kampala, the situation is different. Luzira houses 25 percent of Uganda’s 27,000 prisoners, and at least 300 are HIV-positive, although most inmates have not been tested.

Here there is a medical centre, Murchison Bay, within the prison compound that distributes ARVs and the prophylaxis Septrin (which helps prevent opportunistic infections, though it isn’t always effective.).

Unlike many African prison systems, Uganda’s recognises the threat posed by AIDS. “These walls are temporary,” says Michael Kyomya, the medical superintendent at Murchison Bay. “Prison can be an incubator for infection, and it will spread to the community.”

Though Kyomya and his staff try to serve the vast needs of the prisoners and the community – who also visit Murchison Bay as a referral clinic – he says they are grossly underfunded. Their budget of 130.5 million shillings ($77,000) per annum is about half what a centre their size usually receives.

“The UPS (Ugandan Prison Service) is working hard to scale up provisions of care,” said Megan Rock, protection coordinator for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Uganda. “There’s a lot of good will and mobilization of external partners.” Currently, the ICRC is working in active partnership with the UPS and the health ministry on a joint pilot project to address the problems of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was one of the first African leaders to acknowledge the HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping the continent, and made tackling it a priority. The country’s prevalence has dropped to about 8 percent from around 15 percent in the early 1990s. But critics say rates are on the up again due to the government’s decision to shift emphasis in AIDS education from condoms to abstinence.

Condoms are not available to prisoners, despite acknowledgement from officials that some of the inmates were having sex. “Although (homosexuality) is not culturally accepted, one cannot deny that it is there,” says Mary Caddu, prison commissioner for support services. “If infected prisoners don’t get information, they will infect others through homosexuality.”

Charles Bagenda, a prisoner in charge of AIDS-control activities in Luzira’s Upper Prison maximum security unit, says the ratio of AIDS counsellors to prisoners was one to 160. “Living with HIV in prison is different than outside,” says Bagenda. “People who are incarcerated are alienated from their families, so all the support comes from within the system.”

One of Bagenda’s duties includes running a support group for HIV-positive prisoners called the “Post Test Club,” which meets on Fridays. At a recent meeting, prisoners in yellow uniforms with thin black stripes complained about the scarcity of Septrin and a lack of proper nutrition, blankets, and other supplies.

They also shared practical tips for living on ARVs in prison. “We watch when the Muslims begin to pray to mark time to take our ARVs,” said one prisoner, who declined to give his name. He later added: “The club gives us courage and we don’t worry because you know you are not alone suffering. We get confidence and it gives us a go-ahead to tell our friends about the disease.”

But Zaini Kizire, the HIV-positive female inmate at Mityana Prison, has no such support system. Recalling how it was when she first entered prison, she said: “The other ladies feared me, didn’t want me to touch the cups and plates.”

With her next trial date approaching, she doesn’t know which would be worse – to serve more time with the disease or try to cope in the outside world. At least in prison, the government gives her ARVs once a month.

When I was leaving my compound this morning, the askari motioned for me. He had a letter for me, he said. An airmail envelope (though no postage, obviously hand delivered) was addressed to Steven and his wife.

Since the concept of “boyfriend” here is different from what we might think of in the states, any serious relationship is akin to marriage. So that makes me David’s wife. Not Steven’s. I informed the askari the letter must not be for us, since my husband’s name is David. After some back and forth in which I insisted that the letter must be for the person in the flat on the third floor, it became clear that it had been delivered for the compound’s mzungus.

So, in my official capacity as Steven’s wife, I opened the letter. It was a handwritten request from someone named Nicholas. “Studying in Uganda is a bit cheap,” he says, followed by a breakdown of school fees at a university (no indication of which university). Tuition fees $300, Meals $164, Accommodation $145.

I’m not sure who Nicholas is or why he thinks David’s name is Steven. (I am in no way surprised that he didn’t even try for my name – people in my neighborhood who have known me for ages still call me Grenna, if they call me anything at all – sometimes they just tell David, “Greet her.”)

We already pay three peoples’ school fees, all of whom are known to us. And they’re a lot less than $500. Neither David nor I make enough money to have an extra $500 just waiting for a stranger.

(BREAK: I just showed the letter to a Ugandan friend of mine sitting with me at Café Pap, who replied, “This town is filled with the biggest cons. I’m not even going to read this shit.” Then he launched into a long-winded story about another con artist he knows.)

Just yesterday, I was telling another friend of mine about a recent experience at the Uganda Prisons, where I’ve been going frequently for a story I’m working on. I told him how first, I was asking the prisoners what they knew about AIDS, and then they turned it around and asked me about AIDS. I said I wasn’t an AIDS educator, because though I certainly know the basics about AIDS, I don’t know how best to transmit the information. Then they asked me for soap, blankets, and lawyers.

The friend who I regaled with this story suggested we change the typical “Mzungu” tshirts sold at all sorts of craft fairs and tourist locations to “Mzungu: I am not an NGO.”

On Monday, I spoke to a volunteer group here in Uganda for some two weeks. I had trouble coming up with what to say, since I have such mixed feelings about people who come to Africa to “help” for two weeks, but here’s how I concluded:

You’re all here because you care, because you learn about inequality and poverty and disease and it bothers you.

In the time you’re here, you won’t eradicate any of those things. They will remain unchanged, here when you arrived and still present when you leave. You won’t change things, but instead, let the things change you.

Glenna Gordon

A friend of mine called recently because he wanted to gift a photo to a children’s museum in the USA. Did I have any pictures of African children, you know, in an African setting?

Do I have pictures of African children? Seriously. More than I can count. Everywhere I go, children love to mug for the camera. They line up in droves, my shutter finger tiring long before any of them are done with the photo shoot.

I made a folder of about 20 photos or so, just the ones that were easily accessible rather than in hidden folders in the depth of my computer. He liked them, but feared that too many of my photos, to an unknowing viewer, may perpetuate the stereotype that all African children are poor.

It was a valid point, but my knee-jerk response was to ask if he wanted me to go to Garden City and take pictures of well-dressed Ugandan children there? (Garden City is Uganda’s only mall, the epicenter of elite consumerism whose proceeds line the pockets of owner Janet Museveni.)

Or course, a bunch of elite kids wasn’t really what he was looking for either. And I realized, in the course of the conversation, that this was one of the fundamental problems in Uganda: there is hardly any middle class, and what there is isn’t visible in the same way the elites and the very poor are.

Though many would argue that for some time now the rich and the poor are growing further and further away world-wide as the entire global middle class dissipates, it had never hit me as acutely as during the course of this conversation.

Sure, there are people in Kampala who work at banks, or mobile phone companies, or as secretaries in offices and whatnot. But there are so many more looking for jobs. Uganda’s underemployment rate is as high as 18 percent, according to official Uganda Bureau of Statistics figures. In reality, it’s probably much higher. Underemployment refers to people who already have some kind of position or means of sustenance but aren’t using their skills or knowledge to the full capacity. Over 300,000 people enter the job market every year, only 100,000 of whom find jobs. Yet, the UBOS official I spoke to recently could not explain in any meaningful way the disparity between this figure and the official 3 percent unemployment rate.

My friend finally settled on this picture. I wish I could have given him a photo that wasn’t of “poor” children, but there isn’t really a middle class running in front of my lens, yelling, “Mzungu! Take my picture!”

What? Really?

Copyright Glenna Gordon/AP

At one point during German President Horst Koehler’s visit to an IDP camp just outside of Gulu, Northern Uganda, he looked to some of the IDP kids, then looked to his translator, and asked, “Do they know who I am?”

Pause.

“No.”

(I didn’t know who Kohler was until I got the assignment last week.)

To them, it was just another mzungu on parade, probably much like other bazungu on parade who troop through their camp once, never to return again.

This one came with an entourage. Along with Koehler and his staff, the German press corpe made it to Gulu for a visit. They stood around speaking German to each other, reapplying sunscreen every hour, smoking cigarettes, and generally not interacting with anyone actually Ugandan.

They were staying at the Serena, and when I told one of them it used to be the Nile Hotel where Idi Amin had people tortured, he turned pale. (Or rather, a paler shade of pale than his normally pasty Bavarian complexion.)

The German press corpe showed off their fancy Nikon D2s and Canon EOS 1s to jealous Ugandan counterparts, wore suit jackets in the Northern Ugandan heat that were discarded by midday, and came and left with only a photographic trace.