Northern Uganda is in the news these days. There is a whole series in the Washington Post about former LRA abductees returning home. And then there’s a PBS series on the same topic.

While I think it’s great that people around the world will learn more about former LRA soldiers in Northern Uganda, what about everyone else in the region?

According to research from the Survey of War Affected Youth (SWAY), at least 66,000 youth between the ages of 14 and 30 were at one point abducted. That’s a lot. But there’s a lot of people in Northern Uganda – about two million – and that means about 3 percent of people were abducted.

Former abductees certainly should have their stories told, but I personally think part of what makes it hardest for them to return is the fact that NGOs and journalists are primary interested in these stories when really, everyone in the region suffered.

This BBC special feature from 2007 shows how in one Internally Displaced Persons camp, every person, in every hut, whether or not they were abducted, was affected directly through the death of a relative or neighbor and through the harsh conditions of camp living.

Most articles like this Washington Post story seem to focus on the difficult of re-integration of abductees, but here are some direct quotes from a SWAY report:

• Relatively few (3 percent of males and 7 percent of females) report any current problems of acceptance by their families. Communities appear to have come to accept the majority of former abductees. Less than 10 percent of males and females report still having some problem with neighbors or community members.
• Such acceptance was not immediate, however. For instance, 39 percent of females reported that they were called names by their community when they returned, 35 percent said they felt the community was afraid of them, and 5 percent report that they own family was physically aggressive with them. Current reports by females of such experiences were dramatically lower, however—7 percent for insults, 1 percent for community fear, and 0.4 percent reporting family aggression.
• Women and girls who returned from the LRA with children were most likely to report problems with their families and communities upon return, although the vast majority now say they are accepted into their families. An important minority of these young women do seem to have more persistent problems with family and community members than other female returnees, however. For instance, 14 percent of these females report that their families sometimes say hurtful things to them—far more than that reported by other long-term abductees. The reasons for such challenges seem to vary from case to case, however, suggesting that targeted conflict resolution or mediation may be the most appropriate intervention.

I’ve done a lot of reporting about Northern Uganda, and more recently did photos for one magazine feature about a former abductee which will be published in a women’s magazine next month. I have concerns generally about women’s magazines, but an assignment is an assignment and I accepted it.

Too often, editors on the other side of the world decide what should be reported here and my options are to accept the assignment or not accept it – not to dictate the kind of content published. And if I don’t accept the assignment, someone else will.

While working on this story, I found everyone in the community treated the woman and her daughter very well. Until, that is, I started taking loads and loads of photos of the two of them alone. When I was taking photos of everyone in the community, no problem, when it was just the woman and her daughter, the taunts began.

People in the community thought that maybe the other journalist and I had given this woman and her daughter presents, money, or help with school fees. And I think it was this attention, and this suspicion, that led to the biggest problems for this woman and her daughter.

So, I took pictures of all the kids playing together as much as I could, and then did what I needed to do for the magazine feature. Here’s a photo that won’t be published in the magazine, but one I really like, of a bunch of the kids in the area playing together.

Can you tell which child here is the daughter of an LRA commander and former abductee? I hope not.

I’d love to see mainstream media stories about how communities are accepting former abductees back into the fold. Or how a lot of the problems former abductees have are exacerbated by attention to individual stories when everyone has suffered.

But, I’m not going to hold my breath.

After I had received a bunch of inquires from people around the globe about Citizen Media in Uganda, I thought it best that I start a list of all the people I know who are or may be interested in such things. I don’t want to be the only one speaking about the topic since one principle of Citizen Media, as I understand it, is that many people should be able to participate in a dialogue.

I have no aims or objectives for this group other than the idea that if a bunch of people had a better forum to discuss things and get things started, then maybe more things will be discussed and more things will be started.

So, let the dialogue begin! Email me at glennagordon [at] gmail dot com for more information.

My very first Google Group: Citizen Media and ICT in Uganda.

When I returned to Uganda this Sunday after two weeks of visiting family and sleeping on my grandmother’s couch, a copy of the previous day’s Saturday Monitor rested on my coffee table. I opened it and flipped through, keen to read more about these Mengo arrests and to see what else didn’t make the RSS feed.

About a quarter of the way through the paper, a story on fisherman in Jinja using dead bodies as bait caught my eye. I pulled out the page, thinking I would save it, possibly to look into doing a story on this at a later date, which is actually unlikely, and more likely just because it would fit well with my ever-expanding pile of quirky and unbelievable news clips from local Ugandan papers.

I checked what was on the other side of the newsprint. It was a story by Dennis Muhumuza, aka, Country Boy, which began with a quote from a story I wrote about a year ago on women writers in Uganda:

When Monica Arac de Nyeko won the Caine Prize for Literature in 2007, a Daily Monitor reporter then, Glenna Gordon, drew on other women writers celebrated internationally who are members of the Uganda women writers’ association (Femrite) – the Uganda women writers association, and wrapped up her argument: “For once, the women are at the head of the pack and the men are limping behind, manuscripts in hand.”

I hadn’t read a Ugandan daily in two weeks and when I did pick one up, and pulled out a random page, something I’d written almost exactly a year ago was on the other side.

I thought about the original story and the response it got – both on this blog and other places. I looked through my archive and found this extended post dedicated to responding to Ernest Bazanye. I thought about how I would have responded differently now than I did a year ago, and how I would have started the process differently as well.

There were things I know now that I didn’t know then – like that many people don’t take Austin Ejiet all that seriously and that quoting him only discredited me. Or that I really dislike Moses Isegawa’s writing and wouldn’t have mentioned him at all since I think he’s not a very good writer, just the writer from Uganda that most people outside of Africa have heard of the most often.

Mostly, I laughed a bit about how seriously I took myself then and how I thought I knew so much about Uganda. I’d lived here for almost a year at that point, after all, I was no two-week tourist.

Now, another year later, ready to clock my two years in Uganda this fall, I still think I know a lot and I still take myself too seriously. I get angry when the mainstream media writes about Uganda but excludes things I know to be true (see today’s Washington Post cover story, which completely neglects important research on the re-integration of child soliders), or when friends back home ask me if I wash my clothes in the river (I don’t, but I also don’t live near a river).

Encountering the article on a day filled with the kind of reflections that only coming and going can evoke, I thought about how much more I might know in another year, or another year after that, and how I’ll look back at the work I’m now doing and see the holes and shortcomings, as much as I see these things in the work of other people.

I thought about how what I write contributes to a public record, and to Google, and though I will never know as much as I will a year later, I wondered if any of the pieces I’m working on now might be quoted in a year and how I might feel about it then.

I wrote a 100th post that felt monumental. This post feels somehow important and reflective, but maybe in a I-know-how-much-I-don’t-know way and in a less monumental, more human-remains-oriented way.

Thanks to Random Shutterings for my inclusion in this edition of the Carnival of Photojournalism for my work in the Kireka quarry.  I’m in some pretty good company in this carnival so check them all out if you’re in the mood for some photo watching.

Copyright Glenna Gordon. The walls at the Jinja Road Roundabout were painted with political empowerment slogans and murals just weeks before Chogm in November 2007.

I posted a few days ago, asking, where have all the Ugandan political bloggers gone?

First off, my post elicited a directly political post from Ugandan Insomniac, which includes a bunch of newspaper covers (something most people out of Uganda don’t get to see even if they check the Vision and Monitor websites every day) and had some much needed commentary on Andrew Mwenda’s new enterprise – which may be losing its edge, as more than one person has said to me. (Which makes me think back to my original comment on self censorship, but that’s another can of worms for a another post.)

Next, a great commnet from Antipop on why there might not be more political bloggers:

To be honest with you most of us come to blogger to escape from it all. The fires, the term limits, the land wrangles, GAVI funds, presidential jet, potholes, fuel prices, press freedom, FDC, NRM,…it is everywhere you turn. the papers, the radio, tv, in the bar, even the woman that sells cassava roots in the market will have something to say about how the soaring prices have everything to do with a MUNYANKOLE president. the last thing you wnat to do is come to blogger and find it. I guess we are just tired. There is only so much whinning we can do.

And while I am particularly fond of whinning, of both the political and nonpolitical types, Jackfruity blogs to point out that Citizen Media doesn’t have to be about politics:

One of the most important things to come of out last month’s
Global Voices Summit is that the political voices aren’t the only ones that need to be amplified. Cultural and social voices are equally important to an understanding of other places, and several recent posts attempt to present readers with a more nuanced view of countries that are only discussed internationally when a crisis brings them to our attention.

Meanwhile, another expat in Uganda laments the difficulties of trying to get more Citizen Media started. She asks, Can Citizen Media Change Uganda?

In short, no. During Elizabeth Kameo’s training on writing and gathering news, it became apparent that some of the participants were not convinced of the changes citizen journalism can incur. Most in the crowd did not believe that writing a blog post would motivate the Ugandan government into action. They’re probably right. Chances are the Ugandan government will pay little attention to a scattering of blogs – many left stagnant for long periods of time. There is a slim probability that someone posting about Kampala’s man-holes – pot holes that can engulf a man, more often a small child, that are found on sidewalks and other obscure places – will be filled once an MP reads about it. Chances are the government will not pass the domestic relations bill into an act. Or will they train policemen to respect recently passed legislation on rape, domestic abuse and circumcision.

Though people aren’t blogging much about the things listed above here, perhpas that’s because the need is less urgent than for people in other countries who do write more political blogs. (This is a statement with no empircal evidence, just a conjecture I’d be happy to abandon in the face of any such evidence.) An Associated Press article here showed how Zimbabweans are using blogs and text messages as a source of information. The article implies that people are using these means because there aren’t other means avaliable.

Maybe all of us living in Uganda should be glad that blogs have not yet had to serve this kind of function and that leisure and a relatively stable situtation in this country allows for putting up photos of kittens (which, by the way, ARE SO CUTE) and bashing Facebook groups.

After all, I love kittens and bashing Facebook almost as much as whining, of both the political and nonpolitical kind.

In my previous post, I didn’t mention that Google is hiring in Africa.

I don’t have one for you, sorry. But I have suggestions for where you can look for a job:

Find a job in Africa

Uganda Jobs Online

Pambazuka’s job listings

Africa Loft’s jobs

Relief Web’s list of vacancies

United Nations Galaxy

United Nations Galaxy by region

Jobs at the American Embassy in Kampala

Also, always best to target different organizations and send them a CV even if they don’t have current openings.

A widely read blog based in New York called Jezebel linked to my post on African Woman magazine yesterday. The Jezebel post, as of now, has 113 comments and 7,034 views. That’s a lot.

They range from a lack of understanding of fistula, to a desire to help, to a desire to blame George Bush, all the way to making fun of magazine editors for their insistence on inopportune alliteration. Someone finally googled Sylvia Owori, the magazine’s founder, and found an article about her on the MS Uganda site.

It’s really too bad that AW doesn’t have any sort of web presence, because almost no one who read the post on Jezebel has probably ever seen the magazine. I wish these 7000+ readers (and counting) had this kind of context. Readers on my site may have heard of, seen, read, or even own issues of AW, but when the readership changes from people-interested-in-Africa to people-interested-in-celebrity-gossip, the difference is palpable. The discussion changes from what a magazine for African women should look like to the dangers of a society without Planned Parenthood.

I’m glad that 113 commenters, and 7,034 viewers now might be a little more aware of Lovinsa, but I’m not sure that being aware of the flaws of a Ugandan glossy are the same as really being aware of fistula. Maybe some awareness is better than none, but maybe that’s the same kind of logic that leads one to say giving a fistula survivor a makeover is better than giving her nothing.

The Ugandan blogosphere is vibrant – lots of blogs, lots of ideas, lots of contributors, lots of words, lots of posts, lots of comments.

But where have all the political blogs gone? There’s this one, but that’s also a newspaper column, or this one, not updated frequently, or this one that’s not by a Ugandan, and some others that are more general to Africa and not specific to Uganda.

Or were polticial blogs never there in the first place? There’s plenty of thoughts on boda bodas, Big Brother Africa, the bad weather Kampala’s been having lately, being broke, and other aspects of life in Uganda that certainly aren’t apolitical, but they aren’t exactly government budgets and school fires either.

Here’s an email I got from a reader recently:

I’m wondering if you could suggest a site for me. I’ve been searching for a while for an online forum re: Uganda news and politics. It’s been tough finding more than news sites or sites that compile various news sources. I’m really looking for critical discussion on current events in UG and/or E Africa. For example, where are people posting about and discussing term limits, failed/successful development projects, UG economics, etc? NV and Monitor perspectives are so narrow and the discussion is lost after a day.

Where do you go for these sorts of discussions? Where might you suggest one goes for this?

And this one came to a list on I’m for Global Voices from a popular expat blogger, Jackfruity:

How about a cross-Africa post on the ICC‘s charges? Uganda has a couple of contributions (hopefully we’ll have more soon, but not a lot of people are blogging about it right now). What do you think? I’d be happy to put it together if people want to send me links.

I never really saw much from the Ugandan blogosphere about the ICC charges, though I’d be happy if I was wrong and there’s something I wasn’t reading. Omar al-Bashir’s indictement could have some serious repercussions on what’s going on with Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the ICC, and therefore what’s going on with an entire region of this country – millions of people.

But maybe they aren’t the people with blogspot addresses?

I’m technically an author for Global Voices, though I’ve done about four posts in the past year. Though I love the window into people’s lives (I’m thinking of you, and you, and you and everyone else) it’s not the kind of citizen media stuff that I find exciting – the kind that fills the gap between what the newspapers are saying and what people are really thinking.

Or maybe I’m looking in all the wrong places? I’d love to hear what readers think about this and basically just about anything else as well.

I want to know what people think about the structures that affect their lives, but I’m wondering if maybe the internet in Uganda is not the space to express them? Though there’s not a very heavy hand of government involved in internet censorship, maybe self censorship is so strong the government doesn’t have to be heavy handed?

Women’s magazines in the west tell you to suck in your stomach, buy some new heels, and you too will have the job/man/apartment of your dreams.

What happens when you take Cosmo and publish it in Africa without altering the formula?

From Fistula to Fab!

Basically, a staffer at AW went to Mulago and found a woman who was recovering from a fistula. They dressed her up in clothes with a sum total price tag of about half a million shillings ($300). Considering that this woman couldn’t previously afford transport from Wakiso to Kampala (UGX 2000 or $1.50), those are some pretty pricey clothes.

There isn’t much in the way of quoting this woman, or discussing what she might want for her future or her children, just how she likes having her hair done and how nice she looks when she smiles.

The makeover genre is popular in the likes of Cosmo and Marie Claire, but usually the subject is a quiet secretary or former band geek or some other social pariah ready to join a stiletto-ed consumer army. Taking this trope, and applying it to a woman recovering from a fistula repair surgery seems callous. Though the African Woman article focuses on obstetric fistula (those caused by problems during childbirth), a lot of fistula cases are caused by gang rape, violent rape, or foreign objects used during sexual violation.

It seems to me like someone who has had a fistula probably needs more than a makeover. Sure, someone might argue, providing more information and humanizing fistula is important, but I can’t help but wonder how this woman felt during the process. And moreover, how did she feel afterward, when the journalists, stylists, and photographers made a rapid exit for the next story, probably taking the fancy clothes with them?

Instead of a headline like, From Flabby to Fab! or from Yellow Teeth to Sparkling White! or some other you might find within the glossy pages of a Hearst Publication, From Fistula to Fab! trivializes a very serious problem without offering meaningful commentary or insight into things like medical advances, or people who are working to stop discrimination or incidence, or the voices of survivors themselves.

It would be great if African women had a magazine they could call their own. But they don’t. African Woman is just a transplant of the Western version, all the more problematic for ignoring the difference between yellow teeth and fistula.