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 Two publishes so far…
Uganda: Heavy Rains Mean Less Conflict in Karamoja
The more they travel with their cattle for water, the more likely they are to enter their neighbours’ territories
Disarming Karamoja; the pitfalls
Some parts of Karamoja have changed in the very recent past, and no one calls the conflict there a war. Yet, the armed Karimojong men are referred to as warriors: they carry guns, open fire at each other and the UPDF, and UPDF responds
Storm clouds loomed just above the air strip a few kilometers from Moroto town in the remote Karamoja region of
The Karamojong are just as tall, skinny and sparse in the meagerly populated area and it seemed that they too might topple should the wind blow any harder.
I stood nearby the airstrip waiting for the United Nations plane that would fly us back to Kampala, along with a few UN workers, a driver, some boys from town they’d brought along to help lift a heavy generator they were taking along on the flight, and a few Karamojong kids who didn’t have anything better to do than sit by our car and wait with us. They looked eight or nine, but they could have been as old as sixteen. Puberty comes late when malnutrition is rampant.
They chatted with the UN staff in a combination of Swahili and Karamojong.
“They are saying they are hungry and they want a coin. I’m saying I’m hungry too,” the UN lady said when I asked what they were saying.
Though she may have skipped lunch, she surely wasn’t hungry the way these kids were. But she spent every day while we were in Moroto working on a project to benefit kids just like them. Or that you can’t give everyone a hundred shillings, because that’s a lot of shillings.
An old man with a long tree branch for a walking stick hobbled by. Just the way lack made the kids look younger than they were, it made the old men look older. The bottom half of his left leg was curved into a semicircle from an injury sustained long ago. Men here herd cattle, and other men try and steal their cattle, and every man is armed with an AK-47. Things are starting to change with a UPDF program for disarmament. But change comes slowly. Even now, they shoot one another in the leg so as to immobilize the other and steal his cattle, or just kill him.
The man said he’d broken his leg in a fall, but that seemed unlikely. He said he had malaria, and asked for 100 shillings, and shuffled away towards the sunflowers, titling this way and that with every step as much as flowers quivered in with the coming storm. It wasn’t clear which was more likely to weather the storm standing.
Not much posting this week since I’m in Karamoja….
Last week, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting abuses by the Ugandan Army (UPDF) in Karamoja, Northeastern Uganda. The report is here. I wrote an article about it for Monitor which you can find on AllAfrica here.
This is what the New Vision article quoted the Defense Minister as saying:
“Their report is abusive and provocative,” Kiyonga told journalists. They seem to be working as someone’s agents.Human Rights Watch seems to be looking for something to use against the army,” said the minister, who was flanked by his colleague for Karamoja, Aston Kajara.
Okay, so the post doesn’t have my name on it, but here it is – my inaugural I’ve-made-contact-with-Reuters post.
Uganda Dispatch: Karamojong attack begs tough questions
On May 29, Richard Achuka drove a United Nations World Food Programme truck across the arid and impoverished landscape of Uganda’s northeastern Karamoja region. His car sped ahead of three others in a convoy that included a Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF) army escort. It was already dark out. The day had been a long one – filled with delivering food to schools, homes and various organisations. The caravan had many stops, which is hardly surprising given that 70 percent of the population of Karamoja benefits from WFP programmes. While the Karamoja, a minority group of semi-nomadic pastoralists, are accustomed to arid conditions, their already precarious food security has been shaken by the uncommon frequency and severity of recent droughts. Three droughts in six years mean that few people have enough to eat and malnutrition is the leading cause of death, according to the WFP. The road Achuka drove down was known for ambushes in a region where banditry and insecurity are widespread. But no WFP trucks had been ambushed in Karamoja since 2003, and no WFP drivers had been killed since an attack in a different corner of the north, Arua, in 1998. That all changed on May 29. Achuka’s truck was ambushed by three or possibly more Karamojong men who shot him in the neck and shoulder. The Karamojong have traditionally made a living from cattle, and attacks on neighbouring tribes to acquire more steer have long been common. What has changed is the means of attack. Automatic weapons are rife in Karamoja, and some experts estimate there are upwards of 30,000 guns in the region. Cattle rustlers tote AK-47s that are smuggled over the porous border with neighbouring Kenya and bought on the cheap. (An AK-47 used to change hands for about $210, although the price has recently risen to around $570.) Since May 2006, the UPDF has been trying to disarm the cattle-rustlers, but critics say the disarmament programme has sparked more violence than it has stopped by creating animosity and conflict between the Karamoja and the UPDF. More than 20 people were killed, including 16 UPDF soldiers, during a clash in October. There’s also said to be a connection between disarmament and road ambushes because of the increased tension and hostility. It was dark at the time of this most recent ambush, but the logos of the WFP are easily recognised, says James Feeney, WFP head for the Karamoja region. The consequences of the attack were immediate and severe. A life was lost and other officials feared for their own safety. The food distribution programme was halted immediately. Within days, 30 Karamojong died of malnutrition. That may not be surprising when you consider that Karamoja has the highest rate of people eating only once per day, if that often. The Ugandan media covered the story, as did international news wires like the United Nations’ IRIN news service and Reuters. With the exception of IRIN, no media outlets mentioned possible motivations, catalysts or causes of the attack. The IRIN story quoted a Uganda army captain, Henry Obbo, as saying: “We can attribute (the ambush) to the reopening of schools because some children have not returned to school for lack of school fees so they engage in lawlessness in a belief that they will rob some money and pay school fees.” But he now says the ambush was unrelated to school fees. “We still have to investigate to find the motive,” Obbo said. Asked about a possible motive for the attack, the WFP’s Feeney said: “They were probably looking for the food or to steal the driver’s phone. That’s the motive for all ambushes in Karamoja. Normally they ambush trucks carrying goods. There’s no other motivation.” This explanation is logical because Achuka’s mobile phone was not found on his body. Police are now searching for the phone near the residences of three apprehended suspects. But even this explanation begs questions: Why would the Karamojong bite the hand that feeds them? For a phone? Feeney says police are now investigating possible motives but have yet to release information. Every story on the attack ignores causal questions, as if “ambush” and “Karamoja” are explanation enough. There is no mention of the possibility of precipitating events or inquiries into motives for the first such occurrences in years. “The warriors have the mentality of being violent to innocent people,” said Obbo in a recent phone interview, offering his explanation of the incident. “The warriors even abuse the human rights of soldiers.” But just blaming this event on the mentality of the Karamojong ignores the structural problems plaguing the region and eliminates the possibility of finding a catalyst before the search has even begun. Perhaps a better question than “Why did the Karamoja bite the hand that feeds them?” is “Why isn’t the media looking at the impetus behind the bite?” It’s easy to write this off as “another ambush”. However, doing so ignores the possibility of causal factors that, with identification, could be addressed to avoid future ambushes.
