Photos

• My favorite from 2008. From a good friend’s introduction ceremony in south-west Uganda. Traditional weddings are busy events, but this quiet moment made me think of the bride looking through the window to her future.
• I posted Perspective in late November – a series of before and after photos, sort of. I enjoyed compiling it because the final photo often necessarily excludes a whole lot of context.
• Little Girls in Pretty Dresses combines photos of just that with conjectures on where these second-hand lovelies came from, and where they’ve ended up.
• This lady in Gulu is so happy.

Story Behind the Story

• After I visited the Congo border, I complied 20 questions, and ultimately, questioned the way we do news.
• My first ever AP Photo of the Day came from a construction accident photo of a dead body. Yuck.
• After I took photos in the Kireka Quarry, Stephen became a Ugandan orphan with a web presence.

My Two Shillings

• African Woman magazine publishes Fistula to Fab! and I question this.
• Celebrity photographers hit up the Kivus instead of the Hamptons, and I question this, and then someone questions me.
• Why a mzungu and a matatu make me think about development tourism.

Funny things that are so funny they don’t seem true, but really, they are

• New Vision publishes about the failure to get the goat.
• My father is involved in my engagement to a Congolese man who I have never met.
• Are you looking for lion sex? And you are looking here? Really?

RLP is one of the only organizations that is advocating for the rights of internally displaced persons who live in urban settings both locally and internationally. (Remember Stephen?) While IDPs in the north receive government and non-governmental assistance, the same is not true of their urban counterparts who are more vulnerable than most slum dwellers.

Meeting Point International (supported by AVSI) also works with urban IDPs, and Siena also started a blog to raise money for a sustainable tailoring project in Kireka.

Thursday, 30th October

3.00 Trapped in Anguish – an informed account of the war in northern Uganda, its humanitarian implications and the process of return and reintergration of former combatants

3.30 Ekisil - a graphic docu-drama on the culture and values of the Karamojong and their struggle to find a lasting peace in the region

4.20 Panel discussion on the conflict in northern Uganda and the situation in Karamoja, with David Pulkol, African Leadership Institute, Naome A. Mao, filmmaker, Giovanni Dall’Oglio, filmmaker, and others

5.50 Uganda Rising - this multiple award-winning film, featuring interviews with Betty Bigombe, Samantha Power, President Museveni and Mahmood Mamdani, amongst others, gives a ground-breaking account of the 20-year war in northern Uganda

Friday, 31st October

3.00 What about us? - the Beyond Juba Project launches its documentary on urban IDPs and their exclusion from IDP policy, to be followed by a discussion with the IDPs themselves

3.30 Panel discussion on the return of IDPs and the challenges faced by their urban counterparts, with Apollo Kazungo, Office of the Prime Minister, a representative of UNHCR, and others

4.15 We didn’t know - the process of truth telling is unravelled in this insightful documentary on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa

4.40 Panel discussion on justice, truth and reconciliation in Uganda with Ofwono Opondo, NRM deputy spokesperson, a representative of the South African High Commission, and others

5.40 Red Dust – an award-winning drama exposing the complexities of truth telling at South Africa’s TRC through the disparate lives of it witnesses.

My blog there is called This is Not A Safari. I thought about sticking with the Lion theme, but i decided that maybe that platform just isn’t big enough for two large mammals. After making a list of other inane names (Thoughts Along the Nile, Kampala Musings, Lion versus Walrus), I decided on This is Not a Safari.

The new title is still related to animals, but my point with the lion was always somehow related to the fact that I have NEVER. SEEN. A. REAL. LION. When I visit America, distant acquaintances or friends of friends who learn that I live in East Africa generally reply with something like, “I’ve always wanted to go on a safari!”

As if I ride an elephant to work.

Trust me, if that option were available, I would take it, because it would be pretty awesome to just sort of step over and perhpas even do some smashing of Kampala traffic jams as I made my way to town.

But, my life is more than lions and my work is not about saving gorillas. Hence the title.

The first post there today is about a character readers of this blog will be familiar with: Stephen of (formerly) Kireka. For all of you who have been waiting to hear what happened to him, here it is.

A UGANDAN ORPHAN WITH A WEB PRESENCE

KAMPALA, UGANDA—When you Google “Stephen Batte,” you get over 600 hits. That’s a huge number of Internet references for a nine-year old Ugandan orphan, who up until recently didn’t have enough to eat, shoes, clean clothes, or a blanket, let alone a web presence.

But, now that he’s famous, in part thanks to me, he’s got an online following and about a dozen American and Canadian couples anxious to adopt him.

I met Stephen in May just outside Kampala, when I went to take photos for the Associated Press for a story about young children slaving all day to crush rocks in a stone quarry. Most people in the area are urban refugees from a twenty-year conflict that has ravaged Northern Uganda, though most of these children don’t know the place their parents left behind or the regional geopolitics that perpetuate the conflict. They do, however, know how to crush rocks: filling a twenty-litre jerry can earns them 100 shillings (about six cents). While their parents may have fled Northern Uganda for the safety of Kampala and the possibility of economic advancement, few people make it out of the quarry once they arrive. Every day, hundreds of adults and children sit scattered throughout the vast pit, tirelessly crushing rocks into smaller and smaller pebbles.I went to the quarry and found a community leader I had spoken with on the phone. She led me to Stephen, who an AP colleague had already interviewed and written about. He was shy and quiet, small and timid. I spoke with him for a quarter of an hour and then asked if I could take his picture. He let me. Then I walked around, watching dozens and dozens of children crush walks. I took about eight GB of photos over two or three days, and filed about twenty shot to an AP editor in Johannesburg, who put them on the wire. They were published in scores of newspapers across the West and posted on many web sites around the beginning of June.

Stephen’s web presence was born. (MORE…)

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.



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.

Lately, those words have felt hollow. I take a lot of pictures, and not a lot of things change. And something changing at some point in the future doesn’t pay school fees today.

But, there’s been a lot of response to the AP story about Stephen and the quarry in Kireka. The Nairobi bureau chief of AP called me the other day and said she’ll probably want Katy and me to do a follow up story. Additionally, the AP has had so many letters saying people wanted to do something that she asked me where she should direct them.

I’ve also gotten several emails, not to mention comments on this blog, about the topic. So, here are a few places you can look into if you want to do something.

• If you’re in Uganda, one of the women in the community who acts as a local leader is named Milly and can be reached via her mobile, which I won’t put here, but if you’d like her contacts, leave a comment or send me an email.
• Meeting Point International works with HIV positive women in the quarry, and they are supported by AVSI.

Mainly, though, I would like to emphasize that though Stephen’s story is sad and heartbreaking, right next to him on a pile of rocks is another kid who is also sad and heartbreaking. This is one of the fundamental problems of both aid work and journalism – every time there’s one kid like this, there’s a dozen. Or a hundred. Or a thousand.

I honestly think that while Stephen deserves help of course, something structural must change and it’s more important to funnel resources to that end. The Refugee Law Project had done a lot of advocacy work around the issue of IDPs in Kampala, and in terms of helping the community rather than an individual, they would be the way to go.

Before I went to Karamoja and said, “This is the worst, saddest, poorest place I have ever been,” the quarry in Kireka took that title, which I visited earlier this month. The little boy profiled in this story had lost everything, had nothing, and no options. I went to the neighborhood to take photos for a story another journalist had already reported. I’d visited Kireka before, but I hadn’t met Stephen.

Copyright Glenna Gordon/AP

One drunken evening, or rather, sometime in the wee hours of the morning, several journalists, myself included, discussed Stephen’s fate. Should we pay his school fees? Put him in an orphanage? He has HIV/AIDS, and he’s not eating enough to absorb medicine in Kireka, nor is the man acting as his guardian, his uncle, likely to do much for Stephen. His uncle has AIDS, too. The conversation turned to the horrors of orphanages, but ultimately, we didn’t know what else to do. Paying some money now for school fees or medicine is temporary, unsustainable, and will just mean Stephen is left without anything should my pack of journos up and leave for another country, another story.

This the kind of conversation had too frequently by expats in Africa, so aware of our own futility.

We still haven’t sorted it out, and for now, our indecision is Stephen’s continued poor health.

Now, several photos are on the web, a nice photo slide show, and as usual, more are here.

All photos Copyright Glenna Gordon/AP












All photos Copyright Glenna Gordon/AP