08/15
2008
2008
I just put up a new post on the Walrus about Karamoja, “If some Africans die in some bush, does anyone care?” And here are some extra non-famine related photos.
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.
This blog is named after a found object — a plastic lion that was in a crate of discarded items a friend and a few other artists had gathered. I sat on their roof in Nakasero, Kampala sorting through the crate. On that day, I was looking for something. “You are lost!” a Uganda might say. But, I’d found this discarded kid’s toy, made in China on the cheap, that somehow ended up in 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.
... on Why Invisible Children can’t explain away this photo I just put up a new post on the Walrus about Karamoja, “If some Africans die in some bush, does anyone care?” And here are some extra non-famine related photos.
I’m not sure if, at the end of the day, it’s about caring, or doing, or knowing, or some combination of those things. But I wanted to write here that I’m touched by the many encouraging emails I’ve received about my last post.
I also received a few inquires about the feeding center. So, it’s Matany Hospital, Pediatric Feeding Center, about one hour from Moroto town in Karamoja, run by Dr. James Lemukol.
His email is available upon request – just drop me a line rather than putting it in the comments.
Chances seem slim that my photos will be published, so I’m putting up more here. More to come as well…
And for those of you who inquired about me personally, I’m doing okay, thanks, just frustrated at times. Usually, I hide the frustration in a veneer of cynicism and crude jokes, but even that armor seems to be wearing this these days. It’s been awhile since a vacation, but I’m about to go and visit some family in a bit, lay on the beach and regain some sanity. I’m aware of just how lucky I am to get to go on vacation – to have the privilege to leave this, not think about it for awhile, and return, ready and recharged.
Kevin Carter was a South African photographer who originally made his name covering the violence in Johannesburg townships during the drawn-out ending to apartheid. He and three other male South African photographers pounded the pavement every day for years.
Only two of the four survived.
It was during a brief lull during the ongoing violence in South Africa that Carter took a trip to Sudan. At that phase of the conflict, few images existed to show the magnitude of suffering and misery.
When his photo was eventually published in the New York Times, there was a public out pour: what happened to this little girl? So close to the feeding center, did she make it? Carter sat back down under the tree and the little girl, with a burst of energy, crawled to the feeding center.
The NYT called him to ask what happened – they needed to address their readers’ questions. Carter admitted that he hadn’t helped the girl, but insisted he was sure she had made it to the center. Eventually, for some reason explained by neither the book The Bang Bang Club nor the magazine article in Time, the NYT editorial said that it was unknown whether the girl made it to the center. People were outraged at Carter’s callousness.
Fourteen months after he took the now famous photo, Carter won the Pulitzer. Two months after that, he was dead – suicide, when he was only 33 years old.
Carter didn’t kill himself because of strangers’ judgment. He had plenty of his own problems. But feeling the appraisal of strangers, when it’s all you can manage to get out of bed and face things again the next day, is overwhelming. It takes a psychological toll to be out there, every day, doing this. I haven’t done war photography or conflict photography, but I don’t know that the kind of structural violence inflicted by poverty and famine, which I have covered, is so distant from the frontlines.
Carter’s suicide note was a garbled list of money problems and nightmares of violence.
The lingering memories of what I have witnessed, often incomprehensible to others, keep me up at night. I’m not going to do anything drastic, but Carter’s dilemmas remind me of Stephen at quarry just outside Kampala. In the quarry, Stephen and hundreds of others, mainly urban refugees who at one point fled the violence in Northern Uganda, pound away at piles of rocks for pennies a day with almost no opportunities for education, health care or advancement. At the quarry, it seems as if people have crushed rocks there for an eternity, and will crush rocks for another eternity.
I posted on this blog about how sad I felt about Stephen, how I wanted to do something to help, but what would I do? And would it be sustainable? A few people wrote in comments chastising me: I could pay his school fees easily, after all, what is $50 to me?
I responded a bit, posting here about ways people could help Stephen and the community.
But honestly, I felt bitter about these comments. I don’t know who these people were telling me that I should do more. Where do they live? What do they do?
If they haven’t been here, what they don’t understand is that right next to Stephen is another kid, equally desperate, also crushing rocks for pennies a day.
Yes, I can afford Stephen’s school fees – for a term, or even a few terms. But I probably won’t always be in Uganda. And then what? And what about the boy next to Stephen? And the little girl next to that little boy?
Some of the replies here were more thoughtful than just a base criticism – maybe my part, after all, is to take the photos that can tell people about suffering in a corner of the world they couldn’t find on a map. Maybe that was enough. Or, if I, or someone else, were to help Stephen, then that’s enough. We don’t have to save everyone, and helping Stephen is important too.
But Stephen is just one story. I haven’t yet written here about the pediatric feeding center in Karamoja. I’m still trying to sell the photos, publish a story, but the truth is, most people don’t care about some Africans dying in some remote corner of the some bush.
To me, this part is devastating. If my part is to take the photos and inform readers and interested parties, if I can’t even get my work published, then I’m not doing my share. It’s not for lack of trying, or because of some failing in the quality of my work, but because even the people who do care have a limit for this kind of devastating tragedy.
I sent an SMS from the feeding center to a photo editor. “At pediatric feeding center outside a town in Karamoja. Malnutrition rampant, children dying. Have pix.”
He texted back: “No thanks. We just did famine in Ethiopia.”
Ultimately, whether or not I get my photos and stories from Karamoja published, it probably won’t matter that much. After all, Carter’s photo was seen all around the world, and little has changed between when he took the photo in 1993 and now, 15 full years later.
In other related news, an American couple emailed me recently to tell me that they adopted Stephen’s little sister.
Stephen, however, despite photos, despite many inquires, remains in the quarry.
And the famine continues in Karamoja.
And the violence continues in Sudan.
Tomorrow morning, I will wake up, take more pictures, and write more stories, despite all evidence pointing to the futility of such work.
After all, it’s more futile not to try.
Insecurity affecting HIV funding in Karamoja
KOTIDO, 3 June 2008 (PlusNews) – Frances Otim, living in Kotido, an urban centre in Uganda’s northeastern Karamoja region, doesn’t use condoms because he doesn’t know how, and doesn’t use a mosquito net because the one he has is ripped.
For most adults, malaria isn’t life threatening, but for people living with HIV, acute malaria causes a spike in viral load – the amount of the virus present in the body. This in turn heightens a sexual partner’s risk of contracting the virus. “I had malaria last week,” Otim, who is HIV-positive, told IRIN/PlusNews at the Church of Uganda Health Centre in Kotido.
“We need to teach about condoms,” said Patience Ajok, the centre’s programme coordinator. She would like to do this, as well as a lot of other activities related to HIV prevention and treatment, but is limited by a tiny budget and having very few staff members. “The number of [HIV-positive] clients is increasing, but personnel and funding is not.”
Insecurity affecting HIV funding in Karamoja
KOTIDO, 3 June 2008 (PlusNews) – Frances Otim, living in Kotido, an urban centre in Uganda’s northeastern Karamoja region, doesn’t use condoms because he doesn’t know how, and doesn’t use a mosquito net because the one he has is ripped.
For most adults, malaria isn’t life threatening, but for people living with HIV, acute malaria causes a spike in viral load – the amount of the virus present in the body. This in turn heightens a sexual partner’s risk of contracting the virus. “I had malaria last week,” Otim, who is HIV-positive, told IRIN/PlusNews at the Church of Uganda Health Centre in Kotido.
“We need to teach about condoms,” said Patience Ajok, the centre’s programme coordinator. She would like to do this, as well as a lot of other activities related to HIV prevention and treatment, but is limited by a tiny budget and having very few staff members. “The number of [HIV-positive] clients is increasing, but personnel and funding is not.”
My material on Karamoja is going up, slowly slowly, so I thought I would put the first two pieces here. More is following, and I’m still hoping to get more done before I post a bunch of pictures and general reflections next week.
KARAMOJA, The Ik are one of several ethnic communities in Uganda’s northeastern region of Karamoja, near the border with Kenya.
Culturally and linguistically distinct from the rest of Uganda, Karamoja has often been marginalised and lacks the kind of services and infrastructure found in the rest of the country. While most ethnic groups in Uganda are Bantu, the Karamojong are Nilotic – they are taller than most Bantu people, speak a dissimilar language, and still dress in traditional clothes. (More…)
MATANY, Namoe Aisha, an HIV-positive widow with four children, is currently undergoing treatment for tuberculosis at the Matany Hospital in Moroto district, a remote region of Karamoja in northeastern Uganda. She told IRIN/PlusNews about the difficulties she has encountered since being diagnosed with the virus two years ago.
“When I was still young I went to Soroti [a district in eastern Uganda] for school, and there I married a Musoga [ethnic group in eastern Uganda] man. We had four children. Two years ago he became very ill and he died.
“I was also sick and I went to test and found that I have HIV. My co-wife [her husband's other wife] was also sick with AIDS and she died soon after our husband. She had refused to be admitted to hospital even though she was coughing with blood. (More…)
Because of their small numbers – around 5,000, most people guess – the Ik are marginalized even within Karamoja. As the tribe has shrunk, most of their cattle has been stolen by neighboring Kenyan tribe the Turkana who live directly across a mountain range that serves as a border. The Ik have abandoned traditional cattle-keeping ways and turned to agriculture. However, their lack of agricultural experience as well as last year’s floods, followed by this year’s droughts, means that most people don’t have enough food to feed their families. The increasing price of food worldwide also means that, even in this remote region, food purchased from neighboring tribes has also gone up in price.
I’ve just returned from Karamoja, an impoverished region in the north-east of Uganda, bordering Kenya and Sudan. The people who live there are culturally dissimilar from the rest of Uganda, and partially as a result of this, marginalized politically and economically, with almost no existing infrastructure or opportunities for people who call the arid region home. They are traditional cattle-herders, with the modern twist of abundant AK-47s that make raids on neighboring tribes deadly.
Last fall, there was a flood. This spring, there’s been a drought. Things are much worse than they were when I visited last year. Or maybe I know better to recognize how bad things are.
Sometimes, I feel like at least once every few weeks, I come home and say, “That was the worst/poorest/saddest place I’ve ever been.” But only one place can truly take the superlative.
I hope that I don’t see anywhere worse/sadder/poorer anytime soon, because this was pretty bad/sad/poor. It will take me awhile to decompress from watching a famine unfold and children die. It will take me awhile to sort through all of the material I’ve gathered and try and form a coherent narrative.
In the meantime, here are some photos I took of a few little boys from the Ik tribe. They were so cute, laughing and smiling and running around and being kids. The distended belly is a tell-tale sign of malnutrition, but more subtly, the orange tinge at the hair line is indicative of Kwashiorkor.
Three…
Two…
One!
Karamoja disarmament campaign triggers violence
PHOTO: Glenna Gordon” name=”mainimage” border=”" height=”289″ width=”193″>PHOTO: Glenna Gordon
